Over recent years, I have called for an overhaul of Australia’s dietary guidelines, including Australia’s Health Star Rating System, which has too often ignored the prevalence of sugar while demonising natural saturated fats. I have also criticised Australian dieticians’ staunch defence of existing failed dietary guidelines that promote a high carbohydrate / low fat diet.
Andrew Charlton from AlphaBeta has released a new report examining the cost of late payments to Australian businesses and the wider economy. The key findings are as follows: There’s plenty of evidence that late payments hurt cashflow, employment and wages for small businesses internationally. But there has been little data to truly quantify these costs
The Australian’s Judith Sloan has penned an article today attacking claims of “generational injustice”: Intergenerational injustice is a myth… what do we mean by intergenerational injustice? The Grattan view is that people on the same income should be taxed in exactly the same way irrespective of their age. It doesn’t matter to the researchers that
The Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Janet Hume, has given the strongest indication yet that the Coalition will scrap the legislated increase in the superannuation guarantee (compulsory super) to 12%, as well as make superannuation contributions voluntary for those aged under 25. From The SMH: Jane Hume urged warring industry and retail funds to “lay down
Australia’s housing bust has driven the biggest fall in new car sales in nine years, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI): Sales of new cars in Australia have fallen for 14 consecutive months… “You’ve got the election, you’ve had a negative impact on lending as a result of the royal commission and you’ve
Things have gone from bad to worse for residents of Sydney’s Mascot Tower. After the building was evacuated two weekends ago amid serious structural cracking, engineers have reported that the building is “moving in downward motion”. From SBS News: Mascot Towers’ coordinating engineer has now identified a new issue along the northern and eastern boundaries
By Leith van Onselen The NSW Office of State Revenue has released stamp duty data to May, which reveals a massive $1.6 billion (23%) decline over the past year and a $2.1 billion (29%) decline since stamp duty receipts peaked in October 2017: The latest retracement in stamp duty receipts follows a sharp 22% decline
Last week, the ABS has released two crucial pieces of data for Australia’s housing market. First, the March quarter residential property data was released showing the total number of dwellings in each state. Although this series only dates back to September 2011, it is arguably the best data to use when assessing actual dwelling supply,
For well over a decade, Australia’s business lobby has argued that a strong intake of skilled migrants is required to overcome perceived chronic shortages in the labour market. However, the data has never supported this assertion. First, the Productivity Commission’s (PC) 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report showed that while the majority (two-thirds) of Australia’s
Global Macro / Markets / Investing How single family zoning makes cities financially fragile – Strong Towns Oil prices climb as Middle East tensions simmer – Reuters Solar Energy Has Record Start to 2019 – Fool Artificial intelligence and the threat of diminishing returns – Forbes Americas: How single family zoning makes cities financially fragile
Federal Treasury conducted a business liaison program in February and March, the findings of which were used to inform the Budget. A number of submissions to the program claimed that bans on plastic bags were hurting the $320 billion retail sector, as shoppers were less able to carry large amounts of groceries to their car
Former Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris says the federal government should consider adopting key recommendations in the ‘Shifting The Dial’ report, which the Commission released in 2017. In particular, he has called for state governments to phase out stamp duties on property transactions in favour of a land tax, arguing that this would help to
The NSW Government wants to accelerate approvals for higher density developments across Sydney’s ‘missing middle’ suburbs by making it easy to subdivide blocks. Specifically, the government wants to give developers the ability to build without lodging a development application and without having to notify neighbours. From The ABC: Sydney’s population is expected to swell to
By Leith van Onselen When it comes to cruelty against the unemployed, it’s hard to top the Morrison Government. As the Budget heads back towards surplus, and with the Government pledging tens-of-billions of dollars for tax cuts, it refuses to lift Australia’s Newstart Allowance, which is about to fall to 30% below the poverty line:
While residents of Sydney and Melbourne are suffering from crush-loaded roads, trains, schools, and hospitals, as well as smaller and more expensive housing, toll road company Transurban is making out like a bandit. Earlier this year, ABC News reported that Sydney’s toll road network is the most expensive and extensive in the world : …transport
Over the past 15-years, Australia experienced an unprecedented construction boom, which has seen high-rise apartment complexes mushroom across Australia’s major cities: Over recent years, it has become apparent that many of these apartments likely carry some type of structural fault – be it flammable cladding, cracking or problems with water-proofing and mould – which has
CoreLogic has released its preliminary auction report, which reported a small retracement in the national clearance rate from last week’s 14-month high. The preliminary national auction clearance rate was 63.7%, down from last week’s preliminary clearance rate of 66.4%, but well above the 55.5% final clearance rate recorded in the same weekend of last year:
Last week, Australia’s media triumphantly reported that seven of Australia’s Group of Eight (Go8) universities were ranked in the top 100 of universities globally. However, these strong rankings came amid a surge of international students, which has driven a significant rise in the ratio of students to teachers: Australian universities have bucked a declining trend
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: The Petrodollar, American Imperialism, Domestic Inequality, and their Oncoming Collapse – Medium Artificial intelligence and the threat of diminishing returns – Forbes Predicting Economic Outcomes with MMT & Minsky – YouTube The Future Is Blockchain: Untraceable Brings Back the Blockchain Futurist Conference – Medium Facebook removed from S&P list
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: $12 trillion of negative-yielding bonds are sending a clear message of distress – QZ Deutsche Bank Under Investigation for ‘Potential Money-Laundering Lapses’ – Daily Beast Growth in Global Financial Wealth Screeched to a Halt in 2018 – Bloomberg More spent on S&P 500 buybacks than all 2018 R&D –
By Leith van Onselen The Teranet-National Bank House Price Index for May has been released, which shows that Canadian house prices rose by 0.5% across the 11 major markets, with annual growth falling to 0.7%: Across the three major markets, values fell by 0.2% in Vancouver in May, but rose by 0.7% in Toronto and
By Leith van Onselen Labor’s frontbench will meet on 24 June, amid growing pressure from within the party’s ranks to back the federal government’s full income tax package. Some Labor MPs are of the view that the party may need to accept that the Coalition’s election win has given it a mandate for its three-stage
By Leith van Onselen The Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Janet Hume, says providing better outcomes for superannuation savers is her most important priority. With a rise in the superannuation guarantee from 9.5% to 12% having been legislated but not implemented, Hume says the federal government has a “moral obligation” to ensure that the super system
By Leith van Onselen The federal Treasury’s deputy secretary Meghan Quinn says Australian resources companies have been more effective in the use of new technologies to boost labour productivity than other sectors of the economy. She has told an OECD productivity forum that Treasury’s analysis suggests that non-mining sectors could lift productivity by 6% if
By Leith van Onselen From 1 July 2019, the ACT Government will abolish stamp duty for first home buyers (FHBs) earning under $160,000. This policy will effectively extend the existing scheme by extending concessions from new homes only to established dwellings and vacant land. Moreover, it will replace the existing $7,000 FHB grant. With the
By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) yesterday released its quarterly labour force report, which breaks-down employment at the industry level to May 2019. Below are some key charts, which present the changes in employment aggregates on a trend basis. First, the quarterly change in employment by industry: Next, the annual employment
By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 20 June 2019, the CoreLogic 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, rose by 0.09% – the first weekly rise since August 2018: Values fell across all major markets: So far in June, dwelling values have fallen by 0.16%, with all
At the beginning of the year, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews wrote a letter to the National Tertiary Education Union promising to demand a federal government review of university English-language requirements amid concerns that many international students were struggling to participate in class and complete assignments, as well as placing undue strain on teaching staff: “International
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: Deutsche Bank Under Investigation for ‘Potential Money-Laundering Lapses’ – Daily Beast More spent on S&P 500 buybacks than all 2018 R&D – Axios Trump Moves From Trade War Toward Currency War – Bloomberg The World Now Has Three People Worth More Than $100 Billion Each – Bloomberg Asia stocks
By Leith van Onselen Last weekend, CoreLogic released its preliminary auction clearance rates, which revealed the following results: Today, CoreLogic has released its final auction results, which reported a 4.6% decline in the final national auction clearance rate to 61.8% – well above the same weekend last year (52.4%) and way above last week’s 48.3%:
