Victoria’s public debt is already the highest in the country, and the state has the lowest credit rating. One of the causes of Victoria’s ballooning debt is the state’s wasteful infrastructure splurge, which frequently involves massive projects that do not stand up to critical examination. Victoria has recently seen cost overruns totalling $2.5 billion for
Chinese house prices are bouncing along the bottom. Goldman. The National Bureau of Statistics’ 70-city house price data suggest the weighted average property price in the primary market decreased by 0.8% mom annualized in January after seasonal adjustments. Both Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities continued to show sequential increases in primary home prices in January, albeit
Via Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. The worsening supply-demand outlook in Australia’s eastern states has prompted renewed calls for increased gas production. However, such measures have consistently failed to address the longer-term risk of supply gaps, and policy solutions should be further explored instead. Most notably, while LNG producers prioritise exports to take
Deloitte Access Economics has released its latest Employment Forecasts, which noted that “the market sector workforce experienced modest employment growth in 2024 with most job growth very much sponsored by the public sector”. “The non-market sector (health care, education, and public admin) drove most of the growth in the past year. An ageing population has
The gall of Treasurer Jim Chalmers is unbelievable. Following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) decision to cut the official cash rate on Tuesday, Chalmers gave a “blunt” warning to landlords to pass the mortgage interest savings onto tenants. “When interest rates are cut, that has a broader impact than just people with a mortgage”,
Andrew Boak of Goldman Sachs should be RBA governor. Although he is not a liar, so that rules him out. On unemployment. The upside surprise in employment and participation suggests the unusual post-pandemic increase in workers changing jobs or taking extended leave over the summer holiday period is normalizing back to pre-pandemic trends earlier than
Melbourne’s office market has the highest vacancy rate in the nation. According to JLL Research, Melbourne’s CBD office vacancy rate increased to almost 20% in Q3 2024, well above the other capital cities, which recorded falling vacancy rates. Separate data from the Property Council of Australia (PCA) showed that Melbourne’s office vacancy rate was 18%
The Ukraine War should never have happened. Russia should have been courted by the West instead with economic access and security guarantees. When it did happen, it drove Russia into the arms of China, forming a titanic “no limits” autocratic Asia supercontinent, intensifying Cold War 2.0. Undoing this in some measure is no bad thing
Overnight saw another stumble on Wall Street as large industrial stocks warned of recessionary fears with European shares also failing to get back on trend as the Ukrainian situation sours in Russia’s favour. A reversal in fortune for USD as all the undollars led by Yen made big gains overnight with the Australian dollar leaping
They are queuing up now, and why not? The Bullock RBA is schmozzle. Poor communications. Terrible forecasting. Empty intellectual integrity. Rules on the run. Here is Luci Ellis at Westpac taking her pound of flesh. As was widely expected, the RBA cut the cash rate this week by 25bps to 4.1%. Inflation has declined faster