The futures market has truly lost its marbles, ratchetting up its Australian interest expectations even higher. As shown below, the RBA cash rate is now forecast by the market to hit 2.75% by the end of this year and around 3.7% by September 2023: The next table shows what the market’s forecasts would mean for
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Morrison failure complete as PLA “strongarm” troops to Solomons
As the Morrison Government has sat on its arse for eight months knowing this was coming, we are watching the formation of China’s Pacific Axis in real-time: The Solomon Islands opposition says Chinese security personnel could soon outnumber Australian peacekeepers in the country, warning that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is likely to install a “strongarm”
Shock horror! Investor property tax rorts benefit the rich
The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has presented research on negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount, which would have been useful in 2018-19. According to the PBO, both tax lurks overwhelming benefit higher income earners – something MB has argued for years: 57 per cent of negative gearing deductions go to the top
Morrison pork or Howard worship to blame for rate rises?
So say “economists“: Cost-of-living spending in the federal budget “100 per cent” helped pull forward the Reserve Bank’s decision to increase official interest rates, say economists who warn most Australians will suffer real falls in wages over the next 18 months. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg defended their handling of the
Worst fears confirmed in Solomons
The ABC is carrying the story of the latest verbal missile thrown at Australia from the Solomons: The Solomon Islands Prime Minister has launched a tirade in parliament, suggesting Australia and its allies are deliberately trying to undermine his government, criticising the Western response to Russia’s invasion and praising China’s treatment of Christians. Manasseh Sogavare
Morrison gaslights integrity commission
More Morrison corruption today: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has opened a new front in the debate over a national integrity commission, declaring Australia could become an unrecognisable “public autocracy” if such a body is given too much influence over government decision-making. With Labor, the Greens and the “teal” independents campaigning hard on the need for
NSW ICAC chief labels corrupt ScoMo a “buffoon”
NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) commissioner Stephen Rushton, SC, appeared before state parliament’s ICAC oversight committee yesterday. Rushton told the committee that people who have referred to ICAC as a ‘kangaroo court’ were “buffoons”, and that such comments risked eroding trust in ICAC and undermining public trust in governments. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has
Roy Morgan: ALP widens lead as government confidence collapses
Much like Newspoll and Resolve yesterday, Roy Morgan’s latest polling on voter intentions has Labor (55.5%) widening its two-party preferred lead over the Coalition (44.5%): The ALP gained 1% point on a two-party preferred basis during the week to Sunday May 1, increasing its lead to 10% points: ALP 55.5% cf. L-NP 44.5% according to
Coalition, Labor lock horns in faux housing affordability war
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has attacked Labor’s proposed shared equity scheme for home buyers, which would see the federal government take a 30% to 40% share in their property. Morrison claims Labor “wants the government to own your home”. However, he has previously supported similar schemes operated by state governments and the private sector: Morrison
ACTU attacks Coalition for decade of lost wages, ignores immigration
A new report from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) claims that a 10.3% increase in workers’ productivity since the Coalition government won office in 2013 has not been reflected in wages growth. The peak union body says the average worker would have been $10,000 better off if real wages had kept pace with
Unchecked climate change to destory all ocean life
She’ll be right. A new peer-reviewed shocker published in Science for the loons to ignore. — Rising temperatures, rising risks Climate change brings with it the increasing risk of extinction across species and systems. Marine species face particular risks related to water warming and oxygen depletion. Penn and Deutsch looked at extinction risk for marine
Desperate Morrison throws fresh bribe at wealthy boomers
March’s Federal Budget extended its minimum pension drawdown requirement for a further 12 months, thus enabling affluent retirees to keep their superannuation balances without needing to sell their assets. The biggest beneficiaries of the extension are wealthy retirees, who use superannuation tax breaks to escape tax on funds they are accumulating to pass on to their
Solomons welcomes Australia to gunboat diplomacy
Friday’s coordinated attacks on PM Morrison from Beijing and Honiara said it all. This is a taste of the future if China is allowed to militarise its Pacific Axis. Whenever Canberra is engaged in any decision of magnitude, the Axis will make its view known in loud and unyielding terms. If it is an issue
Polls swing to Labor landslide
Newspoll first: Resolve is more Labor bullish. Pollbludger: Resolve Strategic does not provide a two-party preferred result (though the Age/Herald report fills the gaps), but these numbers suggest around 54-46 in favour of Labor using flows from the 2019 election compared with 52-48 last time, albeit that the overall size of the non-major party vote
Labor announces ‘radical’ housing affordability gimmick
Labor has announced a ‘radical’ new “Help to Buy” shared equity scheme, in which the federal government will take an equity stake in 10,000 homes a year, in turn enabling Australians to enter the housing market with just 2% deposits: The scheme, called Help to Buy, is designed to help Australians buy a home with
Solomons and China humiliate Morrison “red line”
PM Morrison is being humiliated across the Pacific today: …“What right do these countries have to tell China what to do? What right does Australia have to draw a ‘red line’ between the Solomon Islands, which is 2000 kilometres away from it, and China, which is 5000 kilometres away? If this is not violation of
Labor in civil war over JobSeeker increase
Two weeks ago, Labor stated that it would not commit to increasing the $46 a day JobSeeker payment and axed its planned review of the unemployment benefit if it won the upcoming federal election: The policy position, confirmed by shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh in an Australian Council of Social Service forum on Tuesday, has
Liberal MP demands pay rise for struggling federal politicians
With the annual inflation rate of 5.1% now more than twice the rate of wages growth, and the average Australian worker’s wages are going backwards in real terms, Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt has called for federal politicians to be given a pay rise. The base salary of federal MPs is $211,250 a year, while
The complete list of Coalition corruption
Matthew Davies has compiled a comprehensive list with references of over 1,000 instances of Coalition corruption over its eight years in office. Below is a sample of the Coalition’s spurious decisions: Cut $14 million from the national audit office, after that office discovered substantial improprieties and wasteful spending (such as the sports rorts, and paying
Gladys Liu exposes Morrison’s true colours
Liberal MP Gladys Liu appeared in a car crash interview on the ABC yesterday including this little pearler on an integrity commission: https://t.co/fwTzMdEyFh — Phillip – 交通工程师 (@pyap001) April 28, 2022 Hoocoodanode Ms. Liu would be so unfamilar with integrity? Remember that ASIO warned about Liu’s CCP links before she was preselected but, now, according
Former ASIO head: Coalition lost the Solomons
Former ASIO, ONA and RAMSI head, Nick Warner, today: It’s not that no attention was paid to the South Pacific. In the 1990s Labor’s Gordon Bilney worked hard to strengthen relations, followed by Richard Marles a decade later. Alexander Downer focused a lot of successful effort on PNG (Sandline and the Bougainville peace agreement that ended a
Labor takes aim at ‘cult of consultants’
For years MB lamented how Australia’s public service has been stripped raw by decades of government outsourcing, waves of senior redundancies, and a preference for governments to seek advice from paid consultants. The end result is that the “frank and fearless advice” that the public service was once renowned for has vanished, replaced by spin