The AFR’s Luke Kinsella is the latest commentator to warn about Australian real wages, which have collapsed back to 2011 levels and face a painfully slow recovery amid sluggish productivity growth. Kinsella notes that ordinary Australians are struggling with higher costs for essentials like housing, food, and energy. As a result, rising living costs are
Overnight action on stock markets was muted given the selloff in bonds across most sovereign markets with Treasuries falling back following hawkish comments from all sides on inflationary pressures. It appears the Fed may soon adopt the cautiously hawkish approach going into 2026, even after a pre-Christmas rate cut, inline with other central banks which
Australia has run one of the strongest immigration programs in the world this century, which has grown the nation’s population by an extraordinary 8.9 million people (based on the latest reading from the ABS Population Clock). Australia’s population growth has outpaced virtually every other developed nation this century, thanks to 20 years of mass migration.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its Q3 Labour Account, which revealed the extent to which Australia’s job market has been artificially fuelled by government spending. As illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, the annual growth in filled jobs remained stronger in the non-market (government-aligned) sector in the year to September 2025
The latest Japanese GDP figures were the biggest catalyst here in Asia while a boost in tech stocks is seeing Chinese shares lift higher in afternoon trade. The possibility of an BOJ rate hike maybe lessening on the faster than expected retraction in GDP growth as the Trump regime’s tariff hits exports. Yen strengthened somewhat
By Ross Elliott from The Pulse: Increasingly, I am curious why the presence of a train station on a map immediately conjures up in the minds of some urban planners images of potentially vast numbers of people transiting by rail—an opportunity too good not to capture. ‘Transit-oriented development’ as a concept seems in practice almost
The Parliamentary Budget Office’s (PBO) 2025–26 National Fiscal Outlook shows that Australia’s combined national fiscal position has worsened compared to 2024, with deficits persisting across most jurisdictions, rising debt levels, and limited fiscal space for new spending. The report consolidates Commonwealth, state, and territory budgets to provide a whole-of-nation view of fiscal sustainability. The aggregated
Australia has seen a major decline in revenue from tobacco excise in recent years, attributed to increases in excise. A legal packet of cigarettes now costs about $50 (of which $34 is tax and excise), compared to a cost of around $15 for illegal cigarettes, which are readily available. The growth in illegal cigarettes has
When the Nationals followed by the Liberal Party walked away from their commitment to Net Zero, it was swiftly branded everything from a gift to the Albanese government to flat-out political suicide for the Coalition. In a vacuum, it certainly makes it harder for the Coalition to win back the affluent urban seats now held
Modelling by Infrastructure Australia in 2017 predicted that household water bills would quadruple over 50 years due to population growth and climate change, rising from $1,226 in 2017 to $6,000 in 2067 in real dollars. A 2021 analysis by the Productivity Commission (PC) also warned that the expected 11 million increase in Australia’s metropolitan populations