One of the negative side effects of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which took effect in 2005, was that it increased patent and copyright terms, raising the price of drugs and copyrighted products. Thomas Faunce of ANU assessed that AUSFTA “undermined Australia’s PBS” by “allowing the US to alter the basic processes of
Goldman shows why Australia’s rental shock isn’t over. Weekly data from SQM suggest growth has picked up somewhat over recent months (Exhibit 6). The SQM data tends to lead CPI rent inflation, given SQM measures average rents across the flow of newly advertised properties, whereas the ABS measures rents across the entire stock of rental
Ferrous market prices are holding as steel output plunges. CISA has been catching down to cratered offical data in recent months. Chinese export data for July showed steel exports still going strong, but iron ore imports are down 2.3% year to date despite being up 4.7% in the month. After a tough start to the
In the lead-up to the 2022 federal election, Labor promised to run a smaller immigration policy if elected. However, as soon as they came to office, they convened the Jobs & Skills Summit, which was packed with pro-Big Australia shills, and used it as cover to gain a fake consensus to ramp immigration to record
In a recent tweet, Yellow Brick Road (Home Loans) Executive Chairman Mark Bouris made the case that Australia needs to act with confidence and for our leaders to put our nation first. In this Bouris is very much correct; Australia needs leadership that looks at the true state of the economy and our society in
What a sad sack of Labor leaders these two are. One is a backroom bovver boy with the economic nous of a gnat. The other wrote a PhD on economic reform and political bravery to fill the void of his own cowardice. Like many successful political partnerships, their point of difference is that they are
The 2025 UBS Global Wealth Report was released this week, which once again showed that the median Australian is among the wealthiest in the world. UBS ranked Australians second in the world for median wealth, with the typical Australian worth US$268,424. Australia also had 1,904 US dollar millionaires, according to UBS. Not surprisingly, Australia is
Australian inflation is rapidly becoming a one-trick pony as energy price hikes devour everything in their path. Various government energy rebates are still having a big effect as they roll off.. After increasing by 16.3% in March, electricity increased by 8.1% in the June quarter. However, because of the second wave of the Commonwealth Energy
I have warned repeatedly that Australia’s labour market has been living in a ‘fool’s paradise’. The nation’s unemployment rate remains historically low at 4.3% and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) expects unemployment to remain at this low level. However, Australia’s labour market is not nearly as rosy as the official unemployment suggests. First, Roy
Risk markets were unable to move much overnight as the latest US initial jobless claims came in slightly higher than expected (until revised by Sharpie by the Fanta Fuhrer) while a lot of Fedspeak around the slowing US economy led Wall Street to closed mixed at best. Oil prices pushed lower while the USD was