Blogotariat

The latest rental vacancy report from SQM Research showed that the nation’s vacancy rate fell to 1.0% in January 2025, down 0.1% from a year earlier. “The sharp decrease in rental vacancies strongly indicates Australia’s rental market crisis is not over and has potentially deteriorated at the start of 2025”, SQM Research noted. SQM Research

The post Australian renters have been bled dry appeared first on MacroBusiness.

This is how catastrophic the East Coast gas cartel will become if left to its own devices. Competition cop Gina Cass-Gottlieb has picked a fight with Australia’s top energy companies over data she says shows they are planning to increasingly use gas produced for domestic purposes to meet commitments to foreign buyers. Queensland’s three major

The post That giant sucking sound is the gas cartel in your wallet appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Victoria has been a stronghold for the Labor Party in recent federal and state elections. In the 2022 federal election, Labor won 24 of 39 Victorian seats and 54.83% of the two-party preferred vote. However, in the forthcoming election, Victoria will become a serious problem for the Albanese government. Poll Bludger shows a 5.4% swing

The post Victoria may decide the federal election appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The scale of Labor’s victory in 2021 makes it hard to know what seats are likely to be the most interesting seats at the 2025 Western Australian election, or the shape of the likely result.

Recent polling points to a Labor two-party-preferred vote of 55-56% – five polls conducted between July 2024 and February 2025 all gave a result in that range.

Conveniently, that is pretty much exactly the Labor 2PP achieved at the 2017 state election. Labor polled 55.5% that year, and then gained a swing of 14.1% for a result of 69.6% in 2021.

First term of the Albanese government fails to deliver a promised transformation in Australia's climate efforts. New government data shows just how bad the failures are.

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.

Let us begin with AEP in full flight. Telegraph. Donald Trump’s assault on the US federal government and the world’s interlinked manufacturing system have together reached an economic tipping point. “It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” said Jesse Rothstein, Berkeley professor and former chief economist at the US

The post Welcome to the Madman’s recession appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Donald Trump might be a speed hump on the road to net zero, but the business and climate case for renewables leaves Australia in the box seat to capitalise.

The start of a second Trump presidency has led many to question the future outlook for energy in Australia and around the world, and what impact the new US administration will have on the move towards net zero.

Goldman on the currency fantasy. We remain skeptical of a centrally-planned currency accord, but open to the possibility that shifting government policies around the globe could bring about the right conditions to weaken the Dollar. The market and macro set-up heading into either the Plaza Accord or the Smithsonian Agreement was very different than it

The post Australian dollar saved by Mar-a-Lago Accord? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

After hosting crisis talks on Ukraine, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer laid out important steps that the leaders discussed behind closed doors on Sunday.

"We will keep the military aid flowing and keep the economic pressure on Russia to strengthen Ukraine now," Starmer said at the press conference.

He also underlined that "any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security" with Ukraine at the table. 

Israel will stop the entry of essential aid into the Gaza Strip starting Sunday, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.

Governments want you to feel powerless, but the tools for change are in our hands. Australia’s economy is failing to decarbonise. Burning trees to produce electricity is phoney environmentalism.

You’re never too small to make a difference

Environment: Governments like docile populations, that’s why they intimidate activists    By Peter Sainsbury

For those who keep track of the slings and arrows crossing the broader geopolitical chessboard non-stop, it’s an immensely powerful – and humbling – experience to one day be contemplating the devastated Avdeyevka, in the heart of the war in Donbass, and a week later struggling to understand the devastation inflicted on villages in southern Lebanon.