Blogotariat

We are now coming towards the end of the Victorian council elections. For the councils I have been covering, final primary votes have been recorded for all wards, and in the vast majority the winners have been determined and preferences distributed.

For this post I am looking at 310 contests over 32 urban councils that use single-member wards. I am excluding the City of Melbourne, which uses quite a different electoral system, but otherwise cover all councils with a population over 85,000.

My latest interview on Professor David Flint’s Save the Nation program explained why Australia’s productivity and living standards are declining. The interview discusses a range of topics, including: The drivers of Australia’s poor productivity growth. Australia’s record per capita recession. Why Australia’s economy faces a low-growth future. The actual cause of Australia’s housing shortage. Below

While official speeches commonly cite ‘democracy’ among the causes for which Australians and our allies have always fought, we are free to wonder if that is not ‘the lie in the soul’ this Remembrance day.

Remembrance Day ceremonies, especially at a local level, sincerely seek to honour the war dead, and to offer solace to the grieving. Worthy objectives.

Yesterday, I fired up the Big Green Egg and decided to tackle cooking a whole duck. Until now, I’d never cooked one myself. Usually, we grab a roasted duck from Chinatown and have them carve it for us to make this duck salad everyone loves. But for some reason, ducks were on special this week, so Jane picked one up instead of a chicken. I had my doubts, but I figured, why not?

A young woman was killed at the music festival which was attacked by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and a friend of hers who was kidnapped and later released, gave a speech explaining how they were let down by the United Nations because the UN did not save her or the other hostages. It seems…

The post False Equivalence. Life is full of ‘could be’s’ appeared first on The AIM Network.

This is wrong. Apostle Funds Management portfolio manager John Barrasso says having Trump in the White House will keep mortgage rates higher for longer, with no immediate relief from inflation. “A strong American economy and a stable or improving Australian one is likely to result in a higher level of inflation than the RBA expected,”

The post American tax and tariffs means Aussie rate cuts appeared first on MacroBusiness.

By Denis Hay Description Australia US alliance has costs. Learn how this impacts Australians and how reallocated funds could benefit citizens. Introduction Australia and the United States have been strategic allies for over seventy years. This Australia US alliance, often celebrated with the phrase “old allies and true friends,” is rooted in shared history and…

The post Australia US Alliance: Is It Time to Rethink Our Loyalty? appeared first on The AIM Network.

The second administration of US President-elect Donald Trump will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling it to take back all the territory it has lost to Russia, Bryan Lanza, a senior campaign advisor to the US president-elect, has said.

Western media never tire of citing the atrocities of Hamas while diminishing and justifying the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the majority of them are women and children. But how accurate is this portrayal of events?

Atrocity propaganda: Hamas, human shields and genocide   By Craig Nielsen

The coalition government has collapsed at a moment when Germany's mood is already down. Many people are feeling unsettled by multiple crises.

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DXY is a bull at a gate. AUD is back at the line of control. CFTC AUD positioning remains bizarrely bullish as the currency is murdered. This is very bearish. CNY and AUD are the world’s worst bet. Stay wary of gold and oil. And dirt. Big miners were hosed. EM too. Junk is back.

The post Australian dollar the world’s worst bet appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The Westpac card tracker is not happy. The Westpac Card Tracker Index* declined further over the last fortnight, falling -0.7pts to 136.2 for the week ended November 2. With the full October results now on hand, Q4 seems to have begun on a weak footing. The index has fallen for four consecutive weeks, a result

The post Vicious RBA bullhawk devours consumer hope appeared first on MacroBusiness.