Today
Where the election will be won and lost
Saturday’s election will be a fight with three acts: Labor versus Coalition, Labor versus Greens and Coalition versus teal.
Yesterday
What Australia’s election winner should learn from Keir Starmer
The British government admits the “UK has been regulating for risk, but not regulating for growth”. Could Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers ever utter such words for Australia?
The moment Australia’s politics pivoted
Donald Trump flipped the polls against Peter Dutton, but a late surge for minor parties could still deliver Australia minority government.
How the Greens’ disastrous strategy will help Albo win
The party’s embrace of dubious housing policies, the corrupt CFMEU and “genocide” claims has alienated its base. John Black explains.
Farewell, Alex: conceited, boomer (cartoon) banker
After 38 years, the comic strip is bowing out. Both sharply satirical and acutely anthropological, it got right inside the pinstriped world of high finance.
This Month
This is how far the Chinese car industry has come in 20 years
In 2005, the Asian giant’s car companies were making shameless copies of Daihatsu hatchbacks. Now, China is home to the largest motor industry the world has seen.
April
China’s military spending has surged. So have the purges
As Australia remembers its war dead on Anzac Day, the Chinese military’s huge build-up and sophistication is raising questions in China and countries across the region.
‘Not fit to fight’: The blind spots in Australia’s defence capability
The government is spending on big and expensive equipment such as submarines, but critics say vital conflict weapons such as drones and missiles need priority.
‘Not fired’: How the bond market limits Trump’s power and protects Powell
Donald Trump threatened to fire Jerome Powell. Then he didn’t because that could prompt a bond market revolt against the president’s trade war.
Australia’s housing crisis is about NIMBYs not negative gearing
Housing has been getting less affordable for a generation or so because of increasingly burdensome restrictions on what sort of dwellings can be built where people want to live.
‘It’s the cost of living, stupid’: How Dutton squandered his lead
At the halfway mark of the election campaign, the opposition leader is playing catch-up on the cost of living and Donald Trump’s trade war chaos hasn’t helped.
Will China’s bid to win allies in Asia work?
The world’s second-largest economy is settling in for the long game with a strategy that could soon extend to Australia.
Trump’s crisis is only beginning. It will make you question everything
The issue that really matters for markets and the world now is: do Donald Trump’s actions mean America is no longer the safe haven it’s been for decades?
Trump goes all-in for his biggest deal ever: China
Amid the ruins of the rules-based global trading system, the US president has bet the house on Xi Jinping playing along with his art of the deal.
Nine rules for investors to navigate the trade war
Trade wars, like pandemics, have the potential to break traditional correlations in financial markets. But do not despair: trade wars also have their logic.
Trump is now the third candidate. That’s good news for the PM
Incumbency, not so long ago deemed a curse in global politics, is suddenly an advantage.
Could China win a ‘fight to the end’ against Trump?
There is a real chance the two largest economies in the world decouple. If that happens, both will be competing to be the engine room, and the cornerstone, of global trade.
The bond market teaches Trump the art of the squeal
The US president is not easily humbled, but he’s learnt to respect a bond market that has grown far more powerful and consequential than ever.
There is no cunning theory behind Trump’s tariff plan
The White House cited my classmate’s economic research to justify its reciprocal tariffs – it got the maths wrong. But it gets worse.
Why Trump is right about daylight saving
As Australians turned their clocks backwards on Sunday, some US states have “locked the clock” to stay on summer time year round. But scientists (and Donald Trump) say daylight saving is unhealthy.