The 4 economic wildcards between now and election day

There are four economic wildcards between now and the election, and we know exactly when each will be played. The first is this Wednesday at 11.30am eastern time, when we get the official update on inflation. We’re likely to see a figure so large it will take many of us back to the 1990s, to a time before anyone under 30...

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This model tipped the last 2 elections. It’s pointing to a Coalition win

This election will be won by the Coalition and Prime Minister Scott Morrison if the economic models perform as expected – and they usually do. A model refined in 2000 by then Melbourne University economists Lisa Cameron and Mark Crosby found that most federal election results in records going back to 1901 can be predicted...

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Forget the election gaffes: Australia’s unemployment rate is good news – and set to get even better by polling day

When Labor leader Anthony Albanese couldn’t say whether the unemployment rate was 5% or 4% on Monday, he might have had a point. It’s 4%. But for a decade – the entire decade leading up to COVID – it never strayed too far from five-point-something per cent. Melbourne University labour market specialist Jeff Borland points out that in March...

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One issue matters more to top economists than any other this election: climate change

Offered a menu of issues to choose from as the most important in the May 21 election, Australia’s top economists have overwhelmingly zeroed in on one. Three quarters of the 50 top economists surveyed by The Conversation and the Economic Society of Australia have nominated “climate and the environment” as the most important...

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The super giveaway that gives more to the already-wealthy, tax-free

One of the strangest, certainly one of the hardest to justify, measures in last week’s budget was called “supporting retirees”. A better title would have been “supercharging the wealth of those retirees who already have more than enough to live on”. It flies in the face of the findings of the government’s own retirement income review and legislation it introduced partly in response earlier this year. It happens not to support...

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