Out on a country road, when something jumps out in front of you, the worst thing you can do is panic and yank the wheel. Anyone who has spent time behind the wheel outside the suburbs knows you don’t swerve wildly left or right every time the road throws up a surprise. That’s how you turn a problem into a wreck. Yet that, increasingly, is how the Albanese Government governs. When political pressure mounts, it
Like every parent watching their adult kids edge toward the real estate market, I look at the numbers with growing alarm. In 25 years, Perth house prices have jumped from roughly $200,000 to close to $900,000 — a three-to-fivefold increase — while wages have barely doubled from $50,000 to $100,000. That’s not a generational squeeze; it’s a structural impossibility. Unless the next generation marries a doctor, a diesel mechanic, a FIFO worker, wins Lotto, or
When a body like Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) — a public-sector institution charged with grappling Australia’s economic malaise — declares its staff now get eight “wellbeing days” a year without needing a reason, you know you’ve left the realm of public service and wandered into courtier-class delusion. This gem emerged as part of the latest enterprise agreement signed off by the Fair Work Commission: staff earning up to about $101,800 get their usual 18-day
There’s a rule in politics as old as the wheatbelt: never sign anything you wouldn’t be willing to enforce yourself. Unfortunately, the Australian agricultural sector didn’t get the memo. A decade ago, farm lobby groups, industry councils, commodity groups and agribusiness roundtables lined up like schoolkids at assembly to clap along to the great net-zero revival meeting. Many signed a pledge, waved the flag, posed for the photo and strutted back to the paddock believing they’d
After a decade of Labor “modernisation,” the federal wage system now comes with a hidden tripwire buried deep in the fine print — and it’s farmers who keep stepping on it Under the Pastoral Award 2020, a harvester driver on a base machine operators’ rate of $32.90 an hour can suddenly cost you $48.50 once the 152-hour overtime cliff kicks in. That’s not rational economics; it’s central planning with double penalty rates. The story of
