Blogotariat

Judge says council case against contested wind project has "gone off the rails" and orders it to re-plead its case.

Like other advanced nations, Australia is facing pressures from an ageing population. The federal government has tried to mitigate these ageing pressures by running a high immigration policy to mitigate labour shortages and increase the number of taxpayers. Former senior immigration department bureaucrat Abul Rizvi believes that Australia’s annual net overseas migration will average 300,000

I have been reading the book ‘The Great Wave’1 by Michiko Kakutani which was given to me by a mate who thought I would enjoy it. Kakutani is an American Pulitzer Prize winning literary critic and writer2. The book is subtitled ‘The era of radical disruption and the rise of the outsider’1.

While the first 60 or so pages have been interesting, there have been a few sections on that road which piqued my interest. One of these was a paragraph (on p. 45) quoting Jaron Lanier3, who was a “pioneer in the development of virtual reality and a member of Silicon Valley’s founding generation”1.

The biggest solar project in Victoria to date, which has been a testing ground for robotic technologies, has sent its first power to the grid.

AGL seeks federal green tick for a state-approved two-hour big battery, its third battery project in the heart of New South Wales coal country.

As conservative commentator David Frum said several years ago: “If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy”1.

The energy transition is not only about wind turbines and solar panels. It is also about using the most stable, abundant and local energy source available: Geothermal.

Australians have suffered the deepest decline in real wages in recorded history. As of the June quarter of 2025, Australian real wages were tracking 6.0% below their June 2020 peak, at roughly the same level as December 2011. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released its Statement of Monetary Policy (SoMP) this week, which contains

The post Australia’s real wage depression appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The US jobs market is being buffeted by a number of forces. reduced government spending; tarrif shocks to margins recouped through labour efficiencies; investment uncertainty owing to the orange madman; and AI. The BLS labour market data is still down, but Revelio has a decent correlation with the NFP (roughly 0.75%), and it just printed

The post AI job shock begins in America appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The Deloitte Investment Monitor for the September quarter is out. Releasing the latest edition of the quarterly Investment Monitor report, Deloitte Access Economics Partner and lead author, Stephen Smith, said: “The value of projects in the Investment Monitor database is just under $1.2 trillion in September, which is 7% higher than a year ago. “As

The post Infrastructure winddown exacerbates jobs bust appeared first on MacroBusiness.

We’ve suddenly lurched from AI is unstoppable to a growth scare as jobs data weakens. The Market Ear. Wishing & hoping & thinking & praying AI mentions on earnings calls have exploded tenfold. Retail traders are back chasing the Mag7. Tech giants are borrowing record sums to fund data centers. For now, optimism is profit

The post Stocks blow off the froth appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The Grattan Institute was at it again this week, claiming that Australia could magically solve its housing shortage if governments only permitted three-storey buildings to be allowed on any residential block in any suburb. “The key problem is that state and territory land-use planning systems say ‘no’ to new housing by default, and ‘yes’ only

The post YIMBYs deliver fake property boom appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The ferrous jaws must close. CIAS output for the last ten days of October crashed 9.8% with steel profitability. CISA steel inventories fell even faster, down 11.8% to 14.63mt. Yet steel could still not get a bid. The MacroMicro series, the source of which is not disclosed, rose in the past week. MySteel data for

The post Iron ore at the cliff’s edge appeared first on MacroBusiness.