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This article was originally published, in slightly different form, by Strong Towns Chairman Andrew Burleson on his Substack The Post-Suburban Future. It is shared here with permission. Images provided by the writer.

To warm up our minds, let’s start by thinking about a building. What makes a building a building? We all know it when we see it…. And yet, defining things like this can be tricky.

Is a bridge a building?

This will ensure that the real wages of workers on award wages will rise at a time when the overall real wages of all Australian workers are also recovering.

The cost-of-living increases of the past three years have been most acutely felt by those on low incomes – especially due to sharp increases in rents and mortgages.

This will provide some much-needed relief.

Australia Institute research shows the real value of award wages has fallen nearly 4% below September 2020 levels. This increase will still see award wages 1% lower than they were five years ago.

“Our research has shown that over the past 30 years, there has been no connection between increases in award wages and inflation,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.

“As a result, any claims from business groups that this will drive inflation are without foundation.”

He told regional leaders that they bludged off America’s generosity, getting security on the cheap and leaving it to America to do the heavy lifting of containing China by maintaining the strategic balance – whatever that might be. All they needed to do was invest much more in defence to help the US maintain its primacy. And behind his shrill calls for more money on bombs and their delivery systems was a growing US alarmism directed at China.

Hegseth spoke about the imminence of the China threat. America may well need an enemy to define its ambition and to sustain its sense of insecurity. But the question is: do we? The countries of south-east Asia have made their position pretty clear: they just do not believe it. Nor do they want to get sucked into a contest between titans. As the proverb has it, “when elephants are dancing, grasshoppers get out of the way”.

Hustlers evidently do not appreciate irony. Notwithstanding the claims of massive increases in China’s defence spending, it runs a defence budget that hovers around 1.7% of GDP, compared with America’s 3.4%. In dollar terms, China spends around USD 300bn per annum. America spends around USD 900bn, accounting for about 40% of global arms spending.

These expenditures dwarf everyone else’s. In the US case, they contribute to a deficit overhang bigger than its GDP. For our part, without any additional defence spending, we are already the 12th largest contributor to the global industrial-military complex.

Real estate agents often say, “It’s always a good time to buy a house”—because they earn their commission whether or not it’s actually a good time to buy a house.

In the same vein, over at the Wall Street Journal it’s always a good time to increase immigration. The paper’s editorial page—notorious for repeatedly advocating a constitutional amendment saying, “There shall be open borders”—recently ran a column by Jason Riley, a member of the editorial board, entitled “Want to Raise Birthrates? Immigration Is the Key.” 

Curiously for a newspaper focused on business and economics, the column contains no numbers to back up this assertion.

Now, falling birthrates are an issue for almost all countries, developed or otherwise. The way this is usually expressed is the total fertility rate, or TFR. This represents the number of children the statistically average woman is likely to have in her lifetime. To maintain a stable population, a nation needs a TFR of slightly above two—one for mom, one for dad, and an additional fraction to account for child mortality.

It has been some time since I’ve provided detailed analysis of the Trump Tariff situation. Others are covering the details of the Tariffs themselves quite well. The best coverage of the tariff details comes (unsurprisingly) from Joey Politano. I especially recommend checking out this piece as well as last week’s piece on the car tariffs. As usual then, I want to cover the underdiscussed aspects of this drama. This starts where I left off, writing about how the tariffs were putting the financial system under intense stress. Volatility, as measured by the “VIX” index peaked April 8th, and has been declining ever since. My last commentary on this topic was in my interview with Paul Krugman published last month. In it, I focused in on the desperate desire of financial traders to “see past” Trump’s erratic and destructive behavior:

The Murujuga Rock Art is a unique 40,000-year-old collection of rock engravings on the Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

These irreplaceable petroglyphs are twice as old as France’s Lascaux cave paintings and eight times older than the pyramids.

Murujuga is nationally heritage-listed and could soon be recognised by UNESCO for its world heritage value.

But it is facing destruction from acid rain caused by nearby gas processing. Gas processing that does not need to happen at Murujuga.

The new Australian Environment Minister Murray Watt, however, decided to approve a 50-year extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project. This could have devastating consequences for the rock art.

A video report presented by Stephen Long, Senior Fellow, and Contributing Editor at the Australia Institute on Ngarluma land.

Cinematography and Editing by Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer at the Australia Institute

Featuring:

They exceed those voting for the Liberal and National Coalition – which is, at least theoretically, the “alternative government”.

At 33.6 per cent of the vote, independent and minor party voters are almost as numerous as the 34.6 per cent who cast their first preference for the Labor government.

Of course, independent and minor party candidates represent a variety of ideologies, approaches and personalities – although, as the last fortnight has demonstrated, the same is true for major party candidates.

The Australian electoral system allows every voter to express their preferences, without reducing the effectiveness of their vote.

Some Greens voters prefer an independent to the Labor candidate; others prefer Labor. Some Liberal voters would settle for a non-Labor candidate such as a Green or independent; others will plump for Labor if the Liberal doesn’t make it to the final two.

This system, called full preferential voting, is why you must number every box on your ballot paper. You must express a preference between every candidate running to be your local member.

It means that in most cases you do not need to worry about voting “tactically” – your vote will still help decide between the final two candidates.

The trade-off is that counting votes takes a bit longer than it does in the US or Britain, where they use “first past the post” voting.

There seems to be an endless supply of news articles on this topic, ranging from concerned tutting to full-blown doomsaying and accusations of class war. Almost all this coverage misses the mark; these changes, while modest, are an important first step in reforming Australia’s broken and unequal superannuation system.

So, what’s changing?

Currently, most people get a tax concession on their superannuation earnings (the money made by your super investments). Rather than being taxed at your marginal tax rate, the money made from your super investments is only taxed at 15 per cent. That is a lot less than the top income tax rate of 45 per cent (plus the Medicare levy).

But the government is proposing to raise the tax on superannuation balances of over $3 million. These people will pay an additional 15 per cent on earnings.

Importantly though, it is only on the amount above $3 million. For instance, if you have $4 million in super, you will only pay additional tax on a quarter of your earnings.

The tax is projected to raise $2.3 billion in its first full year, and $40 billion over a decade.

If $3 million in super sounds like a lot of money; that’s because it is. Very few of us have anywhere near that amount of super. According to Treasury, the tax will initially affect 80,000 people or one in 200 (0.5 per cent) super account holders. For comparison, according to the most recent Tax Office data, less than half of people in their 60s have more than $250,000 in super.

Because, after blowing up the show on Tuesday with his own Groucho Marx “principles” (“those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others”), David Littleproud has announced that the Coalition’s divorce is on hold.

In modern parlance, the Coalition has been reduced to a situationship.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley had been due to announce her shadow ministry on Thursday, while Littleproud was to announce the spokespeople for his little party. Both put their announcements on hold after deciding to re-enter negotiations for the new Coalition agreement.

Ask anyone inside the Nationals what happened and you’ll get different versions. They all agree that there was a meeting to decide portfolio spokespeople. That suddenly the spokespeople were told to hold their fire. That party heavyweights, current and former, had spent 48 hours pressing for calmer heads to prevail. That doubts began to creep in immediately when it became clear the response to the party room decision was not one of back, but forehead, slapping.

Party elders immediately began urging Littleproud and those pushing the split, including Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie, to reconsider. The panic button was hit as it became clear the shadow ministry was about to be announced.

“The moment Sussan announced her cabinet, it would be over for us,” one Nationals MP said.

On this episode of After America, Matt Duss joins Emma Shortis to sort the signal from the noise in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. They discuss Trump’s approach to the Middle East, its negotiations with Iran, and the continued influence of China hawks in his Cabinet.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 28 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order After America: Australia and the new world order or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.

Our independence is our strength – and only you can make that possible. By donating to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year appeal today, you’ll help fund the research changing Australia for the better.

Guest: Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, Center for International Policy // @mattduss

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Photo: The White House/Flickr (U.S. Government work)

Like Capital one hundred years before it, Mario Tronti’s Operai e capitale has served as a bible for generations of militants. From Silvia Federici and Toni Negri’s iterations on the theme of operaismo to John Holloway making the primordial ‘scream of negation’ his own, and Harry Cleaver’s authorship of the extraordinarily useful, Reading Capital Politically, the line continues into the present. “Within and Against” is everywhere if one knows how to look.  

Richard Audoly and Roshie Xing

On this episode, Paul Barclay talks with Alex Sloan about the importance of independent public broadcasters, why they need to be well-funded in an increasingly privately-owned media landscape, and how they are the barometer of a strong democracy.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 19 March 2025, and things may have changed since the recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Alex Sloan, former ABC broadcaster and award-winning journalist and interviewer

Host: Paul Barclay, Walkley Award winning journalist and broadcaster // @PaulBarclay

Show notes:

Submission: An independent ABC for a strong democracy by Benjamin Walters and Bill Browne, the Australia Institute (November 2023)

Royal Commissions and inquiries prompted by ABC journalism by Bill Browne, the Australia Institute (August 2023)

Home ownership is declining across the West. In America, the rate continues to fall, down 3.5 percentage points since its peak. Australia is down 3 points, Great Britain is down nearly 7 points since, and so on.

These might look like only small drops, but they’re part of a worsening trend. In America, people under 35 have seen the largest decline in home ownership of any cohort, with their real rates falling by 12 points since 1990. Not long ago, the average age of a first-time buyer was around 30. Today it is almost 40 years old. The housing crisis, in other words, is disproportionately a younger person’s crisis.

IBR is once again delaying releasing a new cost estimate for the Interstate Bridge Project.  It’s an ominous sign that the cost is going to be much, much higher.

IBR leaders have known since January of 2024 that costs were going to be even higher–but repeatedly they’ve delayed releasing a new estimate.

In April, IBR project director Greg Johnson announced that there would be yet another delay, until at least September 2025– in telling the Oregon and Washington Legislatures and the public how much the IBR project will cost.

The IBR cost estimate, which jumped from a maximum of $4.8 billion in 2020 to as much as $7.5 billion in 2022, has grown increasingly stale.

Expect the total cost of the project to exceed $9 billion. 

Meanwhile, Washington state has upped the amount of debt it can issue for the project to $2.5 billion, and the federal government now seems hostile to making an hoped for contribution of $1 billion for light rail transit.  

A Chronology of delayed cost estimates for the IBR

In January, 2024, the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project acknowledged that costs were rising, and that a new estimate would be done in about six months.  IBR Director Greg Johnson says “costs are going up.  We are going to be reissuing an overall program estimate probably later this summer.”

That didn’t happen.

Hello readers. As discussed at the beginning of this week, there are a lot of exciting things coming out of Notes on the Crises quite soon. At least a couple of them are coming this coming week. In the meantime however, I thought it was a good time to start running premium pieces from the Notes on the Crises archive on the weekends that newer readers might not be familiar with. This piece, published almost exactly four years ago, is an important one that I think has stood the test of time. Of course, we now know that the major players in Bitcoin are seeking to sustain it with the support of public money- a major inversion of Bitcoin's original raison d'être. I wrote about that in my piece near the end of February "A Scam Built Atop an Accounting Gimmick Wrapped in Bullshit: Why Visiting Fort Knox Is Not About Selling Gold but is About Buying Bitcoin".

What City Observatory Did This Week

Breaking News: Grassroots Bench Builders Score a Win in Bay Area

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This Tool Makes Municipal Finance… Fun?

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