Hi all, A quick note to offer guidance on the new website. As well as the layout changes that make it easier to access content for new readers, it comes with a dramatically improved sign-up and resubscription process, greatly enhanced speed, and a much better mobile experience (since 95% of traffic is now phone!). The
Various bank economists predicted that the economy would slide back into a per capita recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GDP per capita, ahead of Wednesday’s Q2 2026 national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). However, the result was slightly stronger than expected, with Australia’s real GDP
To great fanfare. This is not quite as salubrious as it seems. This is installed capacity, not actual electricity produced. On that measure, solar and wind are still well behind coal. Be aware that 2026 H1 is annualised, so it may overstate the coal displacement. There are a few reasons to expect the transition to
Australia’s productivity growth over the past decade has been among the poorest in the OECD, hampering economic and per capita growth and contributing to the nation’s inflationary pressures. Australia’s original “productivity tsar”, Professor Gary Banks, was the long-serving founding chair of the Productivity Commission (1998-2013). Back then, you could trust the PC to deliver sound
Roy Morgan sees 18-year highs in mortgage stress. New research from Roy Morgan shows 32.5% of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in July 2026, up 2.2% points from June 2026 and after three interest rate increases from the Reserve Bank (RBA) during the first few months of this year. The 32.5% of mortgage
Australia has experienced the biggest migration boom in the nation’s history. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, 1,100 net migrants per day landed in the first 3.5 years of the Albanese government. As a result, there were nearly 300,000 more migrants in Australia as of Q4 2025 than if migration had
RBC says buy gold. We’ve stayed consistent this year, sticking with the forecasts we published back in December of last year, and for good reason. Repeatedly in our weekly “Commodity Comment, ” we have highlighted that while the underlying drivers for gold may have been on pause, they remained intact. Despite more than a lost
War headlines today. US attacks southern Iran with a BB gun. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says if Iran can’t export oil, nobody can but admits some is getting through. Iran welcomed at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting. War intensifies in Yemen. Markets are freaking out just a little today as Brent rises strongly and
Amid the collapse of mega Australian developer Bathla, administrators have revealed that the company owes $3.3 billion, plus the deposits of thousands of buyers of off-the-plan properties. An editorial in the Australian Financial Review called Bathla’s collapse: “Australian private credit’s cockroach moment” With the fall into voluntary administration of a developer that is currently building
Cotality has revised its daily dwelling values index downward, making the current housing correction worse than previously thought. The quarterly rate of decline at the 5-city aggregate level is now 3.8%, up from 3.0%, with all major markets recording significant declines. The decline from the most recent peak is also now far worse than thought,
Leading up to Wednesday’s June quarter national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia had experienced 10 out of 15 quarters of negative per capita GDP growth, with the March quarter of 2026 printing at -0.1%: Following the release of the GDP partials by the ABS on Monday and Tuesday, economists are
Just when you thought the Albanese government’s gaslighting over the housing crisis couldn’t get any lower, Anika Wells, the Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport, published the following videos on social media equating the housing crisis to the supply of Ooshies: Wells remarks that “the ushy market and the Australian housing market are dictated
This is a beauty of a union claim at Sydney University. The union is demanding “provisions to protect staff against any adverse effects of artificial intelligence systems in the workplace,” as well as a 20 per cent pay rise for all staff, and 17 per cent superannuation for casual workers, in a log of claims
I argued last week that Australia’s globally high inflation is homegrown, as illustrated by services inflation tracking at 4.1% in the year to July, well above the broader trimmed mean inflation rate of 3.6%. Housing inflation is posing a particular problem for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). It comprises nearly one quarter of the
I noted yesterday that Chinese steel output is going bust. This has failed to put a dent in inventories. What it is doing, nonetheless, is rocketing the steel price. This does not make much sense. For instance, rebar has enormous idle capacity. Radiant is still in its death throes. Radiant World’s head of China iron
Luke Kinsella at The AFR has written a fantastic report on the rising number of federal public servants under the Albanese government. Australia’s federal public service has grown dramatically under the Albanese government—up 23% or around 36,700 staff since 2022. The APS is expanding by 28 new staff per day, reaching 195,847 employees by December
It has been the miracle on the harbour for far too long. It has been nearly twenty years since the GFC, which reset major global city prices, and Sydney has only gone up. No longer. House prices in Australia’s biggest property market are plummeting at a rate on track to deliver the largest annual decline
Today’s war headlines: US bombs two mine-laying rocket launchers on Larak Island, which could, and may have, landed mines in the Gulf of Oman. Iran bombs Jordan in response. US President Donald Trump says “we’re going to hit them hard,” which sounds like TACO to me. In short, the US made a tiny strike, and
As the debate over the impact of the changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount on existing residential property continues, claims keep spreading that the Albanese government’s budget marked a tipping point for rising rents. This claim is made daily on social media, with these narratives frequently permeating the mainstream as quotes
The claim that property rents would spike in response to the federal budget’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax has aged like milk, with new data from Cotality instead showing that rental growth is moderating amid rising vacancy rates. National rents grew by 5.7% in August, according to Cotality, down from 5.9% over
Changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax in the federal budget have driven a sharp decline in investor credit growth. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) credit aggregates data for July, illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, shows that investor housing credit growth slowed sharply to 0.46%, down from the recent peak
Australia has long had a problem with what to do with former prime ministers, but it appears Scotty from Marketing takes the cake. Former prime minister Scott Morrison says Labor’s plans for a domestic gas reservation scheme pose a threat to the country’s long-standing and close energy supply partnership with Japan. Morrison, who is vice
I reported last week on The Age newspaper’s interactive tool showing what Melbourne will look like when its population soars beyond 10 million. The modelling suggests that six activity centres will be denser than anything that exists in Melbourne today: The number of dwellings across the top 15 centres is projected to massively increase under each
Bloomberg describes Trump’s emerging strategy for wrecking the midterms. The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a temporary win this week by lifting a ruling that was holding back his plan to restrict voting by mail. But the decision was narrow: The court ruled only that the states challenging the push sued too soon,
The business lobby, policymakers, and the federal government have long argued that Australia needs to run a mass immigration program to overcome future skills shortages. The argument generally goes something like this: Australia’s population is ageing fast, and with the large baby boomer cohort heading into retirement, Australia faces an acute shortage of workers. Australia
The ferrous complex is trading like Chinese stimulus is flowing like the good old days. But it’s not, even if it’s trying. It’s still crushed by realty with no end in sight. Turning to steel, demand is down a meaty 5.6% yoy. While production has all but collapsed. Yet inventories are not coming down. And
