Australia’s performative democracy is a circus of jingling clowns pretending to care about national interests while doing nothing of substance. This situation is largely due to the structure of political parties, which lends itself to corruption and cowardice in the face of vested interests. Therefore, political parties avoid conflict at all costs, even when it
Between the mid-1990s and 2004, Australia saw a strong rise in household formation for the 25 to 34 age demographic. With an adequate supply of new homes compared with dwelling completions, as illustrated by the chart below from AMP’s Shane Oliver, the nation’s younger demographics were able to form households in greater and greater numbers.
Roy Morgan’s latest mortgage stress report notes that the risk of mortgage stress fell to its lowest for three years in January, before the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) hiked the official cash rate: Roy Morgan estimates that 23.9% of mortgage holders (1,184,000) were ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in January 2026, down 4% from
Cotality’s daily dwelling values index reports that Melbourne home values have declined by 0.1% over the past 28 days, whereas Sydney’s have recorded 0% growth: This week’s Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey for March showed that while consumer house price expectations remain strong, sentiment around whether now is a good time to buy a home
Energy Minister Chris Bowen suggests that the recent energy crisis in Australia is largely down to you. Following a crisis conference of key stakeholders, the government said that the primary reason of shortages that are beginning to affect the regional sectors of agriculture and fisheries is panic buying of fuel, particularly diesel. Energy Minister Chris
Proponents of high immigration claim that it is necessary to alleviate purported labour shortages. The argument was always spurious: Australia has run one of the largest migration programs in the world this century, yet has suffered from persistent labour shortages: In effect, Australia has played a game of migration ‘whack-a-mole’ – it has imported migrants
Yes, you read that right; the Australian gas price continues to crash. Electricity demand is down sharply year on year, which accounts for some of it. With gas prices crashing, power prices are flatlined. However, the Asian price for gas is still about $22Gj, so there is a lot more going on than favourable weather.
The wage price index for the December quarter from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that real inflation-adjusted wages fell by around 0.3% in 2025 and were tracking 6% below their Covid-19 ‘bubble’ peak at around late 2011 levels: The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) forecasts, as laid out in its February Statement of
Yesterday, ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence dropped 3.7 points to 73.4 points. At 77.0 points, the four-week moving average decreased by 0.9 points. The four-week moving average increased by 0.3 percentage points to 5.5%, while “weekly inflation expectations” increased by 0.8 percentage points to 6.1%. The last year’s “current financial conditions” dropped by 1.2 points, while the
Independent senator David Pocock used a February Senate estimates hearing to highlight how lightly Australia taxes offshore gas, pointing out that beer excise now raises more revenue than the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). Pocock asked Treasury officials whether it was “accurate to say that the tax on offshore gas exports — PRRT — is