True to form, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took to Twitter (X) to declare that “Australia has one of the fastest growing economies”, “unemployment is down, real wages are up”, and “the private sector is continuing to drive economic growth”. It is worth investigating each of these claims. First, on Australia’s growth, Alex Joiner provided the
You can’t talk about it. You can’t protest against it. You can’t do anything about it. Woe betide anybody who questions it. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has dumped Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from the frontbench after the controversial Northern Territory senator continued to resist calls to apologise for her remarks about Indian immigrants and refused to
Australia’s transition to renewable energy will be extremely expensive, raising power bills. The reasons are simple. Renewable energy sources are weather-dependent, resulting in intermittent power and low capacity factors. As a result, renewables require backup hydrocarbon generation and lots of expensive storage. They also require far greater network infrastructure to connect the distributed web of
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has slashed the official cash rate by 2.5% since July 2024. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, the decline in New Zealand’s official cash rate has sent mortgage rates sharply lower: Historically, falling interest rates have been associated with rising home prices, as increased mortgage serviceability
Victoria’s finances are dire. The state has the nation’s lowest credit rating and the highest per capita debt. The major rating agencies have warned that unless Victoria gets its debt under control, it will face more ratings downgrades. Interest repayments on the state’s debt, already forecast to reach $10.6 billion annually by FY 2029, would
Ferrous madness continues as steel margins collapse. Scuttlbutt is nonsense. Miner Rio Tinto could be forced to build refiners for the Simandou ore in Guinea, Australia’s Financial Review reported on Sunday. The Simandou iron ore project, with an annual production capacity of 120 million metric tons, is expected first ore shipment in November, and put
Japan wants security of supply. Australia risks failing to capitalise on the unpredictability of US energy exports under President Trump because of uncertainty on the rules for its east coast gas market and the world’s toughest emissions limits for LNG, the head of a Tokyo-based energy think-tank has warned. Tatsuya Terazawa, chairman and chief executive
Australian dwelling values hit a new record high in August. The national final auction clearance rate also averaged 69% in August, the strongest result since February 2024. The bounce in dwelling values and auction clearance rates follows three 25 bp rate cuts delivered by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) since February, taking the official
Over the last 25 years, China has undergone an absolute meteoric rise as an industrial and economic power, inadvertently dragging Australia along for the ride. At the turn of the new millennium, China possessed the sixth-largest economy in the world, sandwiched between Italy and France in the rankings and possessing an economy just one-quarter the
The solution to Australia’s rental crisis is being played out in real time in Canada. Rents in Canada soared to a record high in response to the country’s largest immigration influx in history. Last year, the Canadian government imposed a three-year pause on population growth to relieve the strains on housing and infrastructure. In the