Shortly before Britain went to the polls for the 2010 General Election, then Opposition Leader David Cameron released the Conservative Party’s manifesto, pledging to cut net migration into the U.K. from 200,000 people per year to “tens of thousands of people per year”. At the time, polling showed that immigration was the second most important
Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week showed that the combined recurrent spending of the federal and state governments rose by 7.7% in 2024-25, to $1.02 trillion. In contrast, government revenue increased by just 4% during the financial year. The increase in recurrent spending was driven by a number of factors.
The latest polling shows that support for the Susan Ley-led Coalition has collapsed. Newspoll shows that the Coalition’s primary vote has bombed to just 27%, well below Labor’s 36%. This marked the worst primary vote in Newspoll history. The Coalition’s two-party preferred vote has also plummeted to just 42%, down significantly from the 44.8% two-party
Australia already had the highest concentration of international students in the world before the pandemic hit. As illustrated below by Salvator Babones, an Associate Professor at Sydney University, Australia had more than twice as many international students as the United Kingdom as a share of its population and roughly three times as many as Canada
I have remarked many times how strange liquidity-fed markets have become. Iron ore is no exception. The anti-involution rally appears to have topped out with the opposite outcome of that intended. Steel prices have fallen while input prices have risen, killing profitability. That will only produce more deflation over the stretch as squashed margins meet
From the Market Ear: Comfortably numb The S&P 500 officially hits 6,600 for the first time in history, now up +36% since its April 2025 bottom. Nasdaq is up ~50% off the April lows. This marks one of the best 5-month stock market rallies in US history. At the same time the exuberant sentiment that
This month’s Australian Financial Review property summit contained the usual bluster on the need to lift Australia’s housing supply to meet demand. NSW planning minister Paul Scully accused anti-development residents in wealthy suburbs of NIMBYism and trying to lock future generations out of housing. Mike Zorbas, chief executive of the Property Council of Australia, heaped
When the Morrison government handed down the 2022-23 federal budget in late March 2022, shortly before that year’s federal election campaign kicked off, it was projected that net overseas migration for the full 2021-22 financial year would be 41,000. With only a little over 3 months remaining in that financial year at the time, it
By Lucinda Jerogin, Associate Economist at CBA The CommBank Household Spending Insights index recorded its sixth consecutive month of gains, lifting by 0.3% in August to be 5.0% higher annually. Business survey data reinforced our view that the Australian economy is recovering. Consumer sentiment was weaker in September after a strong result in August. Offshore,
Leading Sydney auctioneer and agent Tom Panos has issued a warning for Australian home buyers. Panos believes that Australia’s property market is the hottest it has been since the Covid boom and will only get worse once the Albanese government’s 5% deposit scheme for first home buyers comes into effect next month. In his weekly