For anybody who has followed this debate for any length of time, this is as depressing as it is typical from The SMH. Chief executives of 10 major manufacturers have decried the “broken” state of Australia’s gas market, telling the Albanese government it must force a significant reduction in gas prices and limit exports of
No big surprises overnight as the expected softening of the US jobs situation was confirmed by the weekly initial jobless claims and private ADP prints, giving a clear run to a September rate cut by the Fed. Of course, a worsening situation for middle/lower America is gold for Wall Street which rallied nearly 1% across
Canberra is in the grip of the most cowardly pack of no-hopers anybody can remember. Earlier this year, Australian passenger planes were targeted by live missiles in the Tasman Sea with no warning. The moment a Virgin Airlines pilot raised the alarm about a live-firing exercise by Chinese warships in the Tasman Sea can be
Financial markets have extinguished hopes of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) delivering a rate cut at the September monetary policy meeting. Their pessimism is warranted given the stronger-than-expected recent run of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The trimmed mean CPI inflation indicator for July rose materially, increasing by 0.6% to 2.7%.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday released the national accounts for Q2 2025, which revealed stronger-than-expected growth. Analysts had tipped a 0.4% rise in headline GDP, and the RBA had forecast 0.5% growth. However, a 0.6% rise was recorded, led by household spending. Household spending per capita rose by 0.5% in Q2, the
Asian share markets were quite mixed with local stocks regaining some of their losses on interest rate speculation that the Fed is likely going to pull a put if tomorrow night’s NFP comes in bad as expected. Meanwhile bond markets are trying to recover with many long dated yields across the UK, Japan and USA
Friday’s NFP is a massive release for markets. BofA offers its preview. August payrolls:re-acceleration? We expect Aug payrolls to rise by 90k (consensus:75k, Jul: 73k). Although initial claims increased during the survey week, the four-week average remained at modest levels and not far from the July average (Exhibit 2). Also, continuing claims declined during the
Last week, my local WhatsApp group exploded with footage of an attempted daylight carjacking a few hundred metres from my home in Ashburton. The footage made national news. It was the third type of event close to my home in the past month, the others being one successful and one attempted home invasion and car theft.
Australia is starting to resemble 1984’s Ministry of Truth. First, the Albanese government performed a policy-180 and announced that Australians under the age of 16 would be banned from viewing YouTube. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also wants to expand Australia’s draconian media restrictions globally. Albanese indicated that he will advocate Australia’s world-first social media age
We should not be surprised. It was obvious in 2021/22 that Labor had no compass for Australian strategic policy in the national interest. Not to mention the longer-term campaign by greybeards of the party to sell us to Beijing. Back then, when China unleashed its trade coercion attack, Labor could not wait to blame Australia