Are the US and China getting back together? Goldman is skeptical. Latest US-China developments: Last Friday, US Treasury Secretary ScottBessent had a “constructive”video call with Vice Premier He Lifeng and President Trump indicated that the meeting with President Xi would go ahead in South Korea later this month. Despite these positive developments, we think risks
While the level of migration remains a hotly contested issue, from the nation’s halls of power to backyard BBQ debates, for the longest time, migration conceptually was considered a positive by a majority of the public. But recently, the public’s attitude on the issue has begun to shift significantly. According to polling from Essential from
I love QLD. It is the last state of Australia. But, like Australia, it can be really, really stupid. Queensland has put its southern neighbours on notice and drawn a red line through a gas reservation proposal under consideration. As federal Labor deliberates whether to restrict east coast gas exports to prevent a forecast domestic
Former senior immigration department bureaucrat Abul Rizvi posted an article in Independent Australia where he explained how the Albanese government secretly increased the permanent migrant intake well above the official published level. Rizvi showed how Labor “has significantly increased the size of permanent migration compared to the situation pre-pandemic (see Table 3)”. A time series
In 2013, the Grattan Institute, under the energy policy leadership of former Origin Energy executive Tony Wood, lobbied hard against an East Coast domestic gas reservation policy: Grattan also lobbied for Western Australia to remove its gas reservation policy: The federal government listened to Grattan as well as other lobbyists and failed to implement an
The ferrous complex continues to weaken as steel mill margins collapse. Production must be cut. It is a little bit. Demand is still funky. The newsflow is about piles of ore. One for the Pilbara killer. Rio Tinto has stockpiled 2 million metric tons of high-grade iron ore at its Simandou project in Guinea for
Victoria disease is the phenomenon of a permanent Labor government leading to a mass-immigration-led economy without the aforethought of appropriate supply-side expansion to accommodate it. This economic model crush-loads public services amid fiscal wreckage, crowds out private sector growth, triggers housing perma-crisis, falling living standards and disenfranchised violence. Symptoms are everywhere. Private security guards patrolling
A possible change in sentiment from the Trump regime towards China gave Wall Street a boost on Friday night with the TACO trade now in full swing. Meanwhile the USD saw a small reversal in its recent decline as Yen and Euro weakened slightly while the Australian dollar came back a little, managing to almost
The Albanese government’s Housing Accord, signed with the states at National Cabinet in 2023, set a target to build 1.2 million homes over the five years from FY2025 to FY2029. This target requires 240,000 homes to be built annually. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week released dwelling construction data for the June quarter
By Lucinda Jerogin, Associate Economist at CBA The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.5% in September. The Minutes from the September RBA Monetary Policy Board Meeting and several RBA speeches this week reinforced the more hawkish tone struck in the Statement and accompanying press conference. The CommBank Household Spending Insights Index recorded its seventh consecutive