Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen The Guardian’s Greg Jericho has penned an interesting piece today calling for policy makers to focus their efforts on better redistributing the wealth gained from globalisation to poorer workers made worse-off.

By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse There’s a famous scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail where dead bodies from the plague are being heaped onto a cart.

By Leith van Onselen The political war over 457 visas has ramped-up after it was revealed that Labor allowed the expansion of the scheme to permit fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Hungry Jacks to employ temporary “skilled” foreign workers to flip burgers in places of high youth unemployment.

By Leith van Onselen Infrastructure Victoria is the latest to warn that Melbourne is facing eternal gridlock as its population soars way beyond the capacity of the road system.

With the Brexit vote in June and the Donald Trump win in the U.S.

By Leith van Onselen New research has been released showing that Australia’s major cities are benefiting the rich more than the poor and are becoming breeding grounds for inequality in the process.

By Leith van Onselen Major Projects Minister Paul Fletcher will today announce a new 15 year infrastructure plan, which will investigate the prospect of replacing fuel excise with direct road user charging over a 10 to 15 year period.

By Leith van Onselen I’ve seen it all now.

By Leith van Onselen Recent data released by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) revealed that traineeship and apprenticeship commencements have fallen by more than 45% over the past four years, with apprenticeship commencements declining by 10.1% in just the 12 months to March (see below chart).

By Leith van Onselen The ABS has released data on the value of construction work done for the September quarter of 2016, which registered a seasonally-adjusted 4.9% fall in total construction activity over the quarter and a 11.1% decline over the year.

From Deutsche Bank comes a new report looking at Australia’s terms-of-trade bounce and whether it will stimulate the economy: The surge in commodity prices is likely to see the terms of trade up around 10 per cent through the year come the end of this year and the start of next.

By Leith van Onselen For days I’ve been reading/hearing about how Sydney’s population will go from 4.5 million to 6.5 million in 20 years, and then to 8 million mid-century.

Amusing from The Australian: Mining magnate Gina Rinehart has urged the Australian government to adopt the stimulatory policies being promised by US president-elect Donald Trump or risk following Greece along an ­“irresponsible’’ path of increasing government expenditure and debt.

By Leith van Onselen On Friday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its State Accounts for 2015-16, which contained some interesting data on the trade performance of Australia’s states and territories.

From Westpac: • With barely 30 shopping days left till Christmas, the latest signs from the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment survey point to a more downbeat holiday spend than a year ago but with plans still in slightly better shape than other ‘post GFC’ years.

From the business apologists at the AFR: Competition regulator Rod Sims has plenty of work to do to improve relations with business judging from a survey of leaders from a range of industries undertaken as part of an annual report card.