I’ve long argued that water is the ‘elephant in the room’ of the immigration debate, something policymakers and pro-Big Australia supporters never acknowledge. A series of reports has warned that Australia faces chronic water shortages and rising water bills as its population grows by millions due to persistently high immigration volumes. For example, a 2021
Victoria’s finances are in dire straits, carrying the nation’s highest debt and lowest credit rating. Victoria’s net debt was only $22.3 billion when the Labor government delivered its inaugural state budget in 2015. However, according to budget projections, net debt will reach $194 billion by 2028-29, up from $155.5 billion today. Victorian net debt per
DXY is poised to go lower. AUD is counting down to lift off. CNY is a tailwind now. Oil and gold wait. Metals still no bueno. Big miners meh. EM warming to DXY. Junk meh. Yields rebounded. Stocks nervy into the NFP. A couple of previews. Goldman. While the employment component of the ISM services
The lifeless ferrous market refuses to die. The mix of growth is not changing. From Goldman: Taking stock of the current state of the economy, we have not seen a meaningful rotation in growth drivers from external to domestic demand. Export volume increased 13% yoy in April despite notably higher US tariffs. Retail sales growth
Last night saw the ketamine Nazi having a Twitter/X stoush with the Adderall TACO-baby online after their recent public divorce, with Trump threat of taking away Tesla’s subsidies sending its stock price down over 14%. Against this childish backdrop was the possibility of trade talks with both China and Canada and the potential stalling of
Australians experienced the developed world’s largest decline in real per capita household disposable income, which fell by more than 8% between mid-2022 and mid-2024. Wednesday’s national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that the income recession is over, with real per capita household disposable income jumping by 1.8% in the year
In this week’s Treasury of Common Sense on Radio 2GB/4BC, I lambasted the Albanese government for opposing East Coast gas reservation and explained its implications for energy bills and the economy. In the early 2010s, the Rudd/Gillard Labor government made the fateful decision to approve LNG exports out of Gladstone QLD without requiring gas producers
Stock markets were quite mixed in the Asian session today without a solid lead from Wall Street as concerns over rare earth metal supply held back Japanese equities while currency markets are awaiting tonight’s ECB meeting. Most of the undollar’s remain in a strong position vs the almost dethroned King Dollar with the Aussie about
Westpac was caught up in a responsible lending scandal in 2018, where it admitted to breaching responsible lending laws by approving over 10,000 home loans that should not have been automatically approved. The bank used an automated loan assessment system that relied on the Household Expenditure Measure (HEM)—a benchmark for living expenses—rather than evaluating customers’
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) population data has become a lottery. The population estimates in the Q3 2024 and Q4 2024 national accounts releases (here and here) differed wildly from the official quarterly population statistics released a few weeks later. The Q1 2025 national accounts, released on Wednesday, implied that Australia’s population growth accelerated