Blogotariat

The federal election result carries some hard-won lessons. The overarching lesson for the Liberals is to accept that they’re just not very good at politics.

A fundamental failure: They’ve been suffering a shrinking share of women’s votes since 1996. But the evidence shows they prefer to keep the boys’ club intact even if it pushes them into extinction.

BY Peter Hartcher (SMH)

Labor is entering its second term with climate and energy policies we can track with great accuracy and high frequency - here are some numbers to keep an eye on.

Over the past decade, the Australian economy has recorded some of the poorest productivity growth in the world and the nation’s poorest productivity growth on record. Last week, I presented five reasons why Australia’s productivity growth has declined, namely: The mining boom of the 2000s and the associated surge in the Australian dollar contributed to

The post The root cause of Australia’s productivity collapse appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Arkansas GOP Senator Tom Cotton is just ITCHING for a war with Iran. In a recent congressional hearing Cotton pointedly asked President Donald Trump's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine if he is prepared to propose bombing Iran as an option to the President. Cotton also mocked antiwar voices who suggest that our foreign policy is leading us into yet another “endless war.”

The speakers discuss the ongoing Ukraine war, criticizing U.S. involvement and framing it as a geopolitical trap for former President Trump, who they argue should have immediately withdrawn all support to Ukraine upon taking office. They believe that doing so would have ended the war early, with Russia still achieving most of its goals. They argue that Russia was always willing to negotiate for a neutral, demilitarized, and "denazified" Ukraine, but the West ignored this.

A remarkable before-and-after experiment provides conclusive evidence: the BBC favours the right and excludes the left.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 1st May 2025

As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.

The Q4 2024 national accounts reported that Australian real per capita household consumption had fallen for eight consecutive quarters: This decline in consumption was in response to an 8% decline in real per capita household disposable incomes: It was also in response to the recent surge in mortgage and rental payments: Westpac has released survey

The post Cautious Aussies choose saving over spending appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Over the past decade, the Liberal government in Canada has run the nation’s biggest immigration program in history, which culminated in a record 1.2 million net migrants arriving in the 2023-24 financial year. This surge in population created a record shortfall of housing, as illustrated below: As a result, rental vacancy rates collapsed to record

The post Canada reboots mass migration policy appeared first on MacroBusiness.

If Albo’s idiots have any brains at all, they will immediately spend their Trump windfall of political capital on embracing Peter Dutton’s gas reservation policies. Returning Australian gas to eastern states’ use is essential to stabilising inflation, the energy transition, and industrial growth, all KPIs for the renewed government. In the meantime, there is potentially

I’m a proud lonely weed

In the middle of the median strip

A small crack for me to creep

Through the concrete decrepit

I am an unwanted plant in the wrong place 

With insignificant blooms and ugly face

So the humans say but I think I’m pretty

And prolific too short-lived unfortunately

Some call me dandelion or pissenlit

Others insist on Taraxacum officinale