Australia

Way back in the late 1990s, more than a quarter of a century ago, the consumer price index (CPI) used to actually reflect the cost of living. It included all of the big costs incurred by households, including – importantly – mortgage interest payments. At the time, mortgages accounted for an average of $5 of every $100 each wage earner spent.

Then in September 1998, in response to representations from the Reserve Bank and the Treasury, the bureau changed the way it calculated the index. It excluded mortgage and other interest payments, in a decision it acknowledged would make the index worse at measuring living costs.

[…]

While the consumer price index (the one quoted by the treasurer) increased 5.4% in the year to September, the living cost index for households headed by wage earners climbed 9%.

For these working households, the price of food climbed 4.8% in the year to September, the price of electricity 14.5% and the price of mortgage interest charges 68%.

It’s the increases in mortgage rates that have made the increases in the other prices hurt so much.

The overall increase in prices faced by wage-earners – 9% – is way above the typical wage increase of 4%.

Bill Mitchell of the University of Newcastle points out that on this measure, the correct one, the buying power of wages has been falling for two and a half years. He says it puts the treasurer’s comments in a wholly different light.

I don't usually follow the Federal Budget nonsense, as it's generally a lot of content-free platitudes and political horse race analysis, but my friend and colleague Kev seemed certain that the Albanese government (of all people) were taking a step in the right direction. So my cynicism led me to seek out business lobby press releases, half-expecting to find smoking guns all over the place. I was wrong. Of course the business lobby are not going to announce "This is fine!" They are professional whingers. To them, it's always the end of the world. However this one sunny exception stood out:

AFIA is also assessing announced changes to negative gearing, set to be limited to new residential property builds, and the decision to replace the 50 per cent CGT discount with cost base indexation and a minimum 30 per cent tax from July 2027, applying to all existing CGT assets.

“In terms of our housing markets, it is pleasing to see the government balance these major tax reforms with complementary supply-side measures – establishing a $2 billion local infrastructure fund and putting $227 million towards accelerating environment and planning approvals.”

"Supply side measures" means public subsidies (such as the 5% Deposit Scheme and the Help to Buy Scheme) to maintain the steady supply of borrowers that are the bread and butter of the finance industry, and critical to keeping property prices inflating at the pretty constant rate of the last quarter century.

Well, what a surprise!

Saul Eslake, an independent economist, said the scheme had likely been used by people who would have bought homes anyway while inflating their debt.

“The way it was expanded by Albanese goes to the heart of why we have the housing problems that we have,” Eslake said.

“Whenever governments do things that allow people to spend more on housing than they would have otherwise, they end up spending more on housing.”

A borrower with $50,000 in savings, if required to make a 20% deposit, would only have been able to borrow $200,000. Under the 5% deposit scheme, they would be able to borrow $1m

Recent polling has shown her party One Nation have pulled ahead of both Labor and the Coalition in popularity, largely thanks to her penchant for making sweeping and often inaccurate statements scapegoating minorities for the real crises at play in modern Australia.

Like most of Hanson’s stunts, it has garnered a lot of media attention. That’s both good and bad — good because it’s important to know what Hanson is espousing, but bad because it gives her the notoriety and airtime she so clearly seeks.

Here, we combat that approach by fact-checking her speech and debunking a handful of the incorrect claims she made throughout it.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has used her first-ever address to the National Press Club to launch a broad attack on the rights and existence of trans people, describing the movement for trans equality as a “militant force” that must be “confronted” and a “subversive transgender ideology” that must be “dismantled”.

In the 17 June speech in Canberra, Hanson claimed that “almost every instrument of government” was dedicated to what she described as a “transgender ideology which seeks to redefine humanity”. She also pledged to remove Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner and argued that transgender “propaganda” was being imposed on children in school.

Hanson used military-like languge to imply transgender people and their supporters are an attacking army (like ‘militant’, ‘force’, ‘insurgency’), language to imply disease (like ‘infecting’), and also used out-of-date language (such as ‘transgenderism’).

“But now I want to turn to one very, very important social and cultural issue facing this country. I refer firstly to the transgender insurgency. The transgender ideology has penetrated almost every regulatory authority and it is supported by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Anna Cody, who in government I would sack. So too, the head of the Human Rights Commission, Hugh de Kretser.”

Hanson continued to comment on transgender people in sport, and who should be allowed in what bathrooms, before launching into LGBTQIA+ organisations being involved in regulatory bodies.

“We cannot be a multicultural society,” she told the packed club.

“We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella.”

Hanson also made a broadside attack on transgender rights, pledging to sack Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner and claiming “almost every instrument of government [is] dedicated to a transgender ideology which seeks to redefine humanity”.

The report, released tonight, recommends scrapping rules that force developers to include a minimum number of car park spaces when building housing.

The "Wasted Space" report found that upwards of 40 per cent of car parks were left empty each night in apartments in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

"State and local governments typically require new housing to include off-street parking — often much more than residents want, needlessly driving up the price of housing," the report said.

The report found these parking minimums increased construction costs by $70,000 for a two-bedroom Sydney apartment.

The lack of self-awareness in naming a site that excludes anyone who isn't a bigoted joyless monomaniac "Giggle" cannot be emphasised enough.

Last week, the Federal Court upheld a 2024 decision that it was discriminatory to exclude a transgender user from a women-only app.

The court had been considering an appeal from Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover over the 2024 finding that she discriminated against Roxanne Tickle by blocking her from using the app and refusing to reinstate her.

Grover and Giggle argued the decision to exclude Tickle was exempt from being classed as discrimination because the app aimed to achieve "substantial equality" and create a safe space for women.

On Friday, the Federal Court upheld its decision that the exemption did not apply, meaning similar arguments made in defence of single-sex spaces would likely also fail.

On Saturday, Opposition leader Angus Taylor said in a statement on social media that the finding confirmed "the Australian law does not properly protect single sex spaces for women and girls".

He vowed on social media to amend the Sex Discrimination Act if the Coalition won government, "to ensure that women and girls (and men and boys) have protections based on biological sex".

"We are not removing a single protection from anyone," he said.

"But we are recognising something that should never have been in doubt: biological sex is real, it matters, and women and girls deserve spaces where it is respected."

Taylor said a move to "define biological sex in the Act" as "the sex you are born" would be a first-term priority.

"This is not radical. It is common sense," Taylor said.

Sigh. Yes, we've heard it all before. It's reality that's being excessively radical, therefore we must legislate against reality.

Harrowing, but unsurprising reading:

Systemic weaknesses in New South Wales’ childcare sector have allowed predators to work in the industry and abuse children, a scathing inquiry has found.

In its final report, published on Wednesday, a NSW upper house inquiry into the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector found “the proliferation of for-profit services and a lax regulatory approach” had led to “predators” being allowed to work in childcare and abuse children.

The report said operators backed by private equity have “no place” in the sector, and that the state’s regulator for early education had “failed to respond appropriately” to services with “extensive histories of non-compliance, breaches, safety incidents and persistently poor ratings”.

Woolworths and Coles are big companies that plan to stay around for a long time. Could not one or both of them commit to a policy of truthful advertising and stand by it long enough to establish a reputation that customers could trust?

This hasn’t happened – with supermarkets, or telecoms, or banks or anywhere else, at least in the absence of comprehensive public shaming driven by government action. But why not?

One explanation, apparent from the evidence in the Coles case, is that no one wants to be the first to move. Given the short-term pressure that decision-makers are under, it’s easy to imagine that any proposal of this kind will be put in the too-hard basket and left there.

Another possibility is that distrust is so widespread that no single company can break the pattern. The era of neoliberalism has certainly strengthened this distrust. There was a time when used car dealers were famously untrustworthy but financial institutions were pillars of probity. Today, when buying a second-hand car, the biggest risk is not that the speedo will be wound back but that you will be sold a loan with deceptively high interest. In this context, you just assume everyone is lying.