If you’re in a gloomy mood, the Bureau of Statistics won’t be helping to pull you out of it. First it told us that wages across Australia grew at their lowest level on record, just 1.9 per cent, in the year to September. Now it tells us that, despite that unprecedented restraint, a net 70,000...

What do we know so far about the likely post-election scene? Tim Colebatch has been crunching the latest numbers MOST of us now know who our new MPs will be. What we don’t know is who will be our prime minister. And we don’t know whether there will be a majority or minority government. Indeed...

Europe offers lessons for Australian parties uneasy at the prospect of having to talk to each other In the same week as Malcolm Turnbull called the 2016 Australian election, another conservative leader on the other side of the world did what his Australian counterpart has been saying he will never do. Thomas Strobl, chairman of...

With the major parties level-pegging, a defeat for the Coalition isn’t out of the question. So what would a Labor government look like? THE conventional wisdom is that there won’t be a Shorten Labor government. The opinion polls say it, the commentators say it, and the bookies are saying it. In the past fortnight, Labor’s...

Governments are in denial about population growth and its impact on Australia’s major cities. It’s time to take up the challenge SOMETIME over the next three months, Sydney’s population will reach five million. If Melbourne keeps growing at its current pace, by 2020 it too will have five million residents – and it won’t stay...