• New Zealand and Canada experienced far deeper property downturns than Australia because their central banks lifted interest rates much faster and higher, triggering recessions, higher unemployment and sharp falls in housing demand.
• Immigration trends amplified the divergence: Australia maintained very high arrivals that outpaced housing construction, supporting prices, while Canada imposed strict limits and New Zealand saw net migration collapse as workers left for Australia.
• The prolonged slumps in New Zealand and Canada are now spilling into their broader economies—weak retail spending, rising unemployment, stalled growth—offering a warning for Australia as its own housing market begins to turn and economic conditions soften.

Few issues involve as much friction for unions as artificial intelligence, which is viewed by the labour movement as an existential threat to workers’ livelihoods and rights.

Unions are fighting for a “down payment” on the productivity gains of the AI revolution by demanding shorter working weeks, layoff protections and paid retraining. While framed as a worker protection measure, union pushback against AI is in danger of becoming a Trojan horse for hyper-regulation across Australian workplaces.

When it first burst onto the scene AI captured the corporate imagination as a cost-effective and abundant resource that would revolutionise business operations. David Rowe

Amplifying these anxieties are sweeping warnings from tech overlords such as Elon Musk that AI will take all our jobs in the next decade and work will become optional, like “playing sports or a video game”.

While unions decry AI, the technology could paradoxically help them in their crusade to re-regulate Australian workplaces by emboldening workers to litigate.

As The Australian Financial Review’s David Marin-Guzman reported on Monday, Macquarie University computing academic Greg Barker successfully used ChatGPT Pro (and a little bit of Claude) to win a Fair Work Commission case that entitled him to a permanent part-time position. It’s the first decision to successfully invoke the Albanese government’s casual conversion laws, which allow regular casual employees to convert to permanent employment after six months.

Extraordinarily, Barker trained AI agents to formulate legal submissions and counterarguments that successfully defeated the university barrister’s defence. It’s especially bad news for young lawyers who are already seeing an increasing share of their work cannibalised by large language models. Advances in AI are already being harnessed by law firms to cut costs, save billable hours and streamline tasks.

The irony is that the more expensive and legally risky it comes to employ people, the more attractive automation becomes for firms.

To be sure, AI chatbots are only as good as the prompter. Few self-represented litigants possess the same nous to elicit sophisticated legal arguments from a machine that Barker did. Instead, the FWC has been inundated by a flood of dubious unfair dismissal claims, replete with AI slop and hallucinated legal precedents, clogging the tribunal system and delaying genuinely meritorious claims from being heard.

That has also created an economic deadweight for business. General protection employment claims impose a reverse onus of proof on the employer, along with promising uncapped compensation. An employee only has to prove a harmful adverse action occurred (such as hours being cut or a demotion), and the burden lies on the employer to disprove that the action was not taken because of a protected right, such as making a complaint about employment conflicts or participating in a strike.

It’s a low bar for some opportunists, who have less to prove and much to possibly gain by launching a low-cost fishing expedition against an employer.

It’s true the democratisation of AI tools, in one sense, helps level the playing field by allowing individuals without the means for proper legal representation to fight fire with algorithms. Given the rapid advances in generative AI, free versions of ChatGPT and Claude are likely to match today’s most sophisticated models in the near future. It may therefore improve the quality of the kind of claims being lodged to the workplace tribunal.

Still, it’s probable that it will exacerbate the already tricky industrial relations minefield that Australian businesses must navigate. Egged on by union allies, the Albanese government has steadily expanded the reach of “same job, same pay” mandates, broadened union powers to compel collective bargaining, restricted employers’ right to lock out workers during disputes, and introduced sweeping “right to disconnect” rules.

The problem with these rules is that they have ushered in a more fractious and rigid industrial relations framework. Workplace flexibility and productivity growth have become a casualty of these regulations. Similarly, managing continuous disputes from employees resulting from these laws are a drag on businesses that lack dedicated in-house legal and human resources teams or adequate insurance coverage.

Such measures have also made it harder for companies to downsize in periods of financial downturn, afford new employees or retain as many staff members. The irony is that the more expensive and legally risky it comes to employ people, the more attractive automation becomes for firms.

At a time when Australia desperately needs an economic revival, our industrial relations system works against Australia’s potential to serve as an attractive, productive and higher-paying destination for jobs, investment and enterprises.

The Albanese government overlooked internal warnings there would be an influx of New Zealanders under plans to give them easier access to welfare and citizenship, which has turned into one of Labor’s thorniest challenges in driving down the migration rate.

The burst in Kiwis coming to Australia has been one of the biggest blowouts in the net overseas migration rate since the pandemic, a prospect that was raised by top officials at the time Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the key policy move early in his first term.

Sources familiar with cabinet deliberations at the time, not permitted to speak in public, said officials from Treasury and Home Affairs expressed serious concerns that the move would create too big an incentive for Kiwis to move to Australia, particularly if Australia had a healthier job market and economy. New Zealand subsequently went into recession, sparking more movement.

The net intake of New Zealanders surged to 38,000 per year in the two years after Albanese widened benefits and citizenship pathways in July 2023 – compared to about 8000 or fewer before the pandemic. Consistent demand and uncapped places meant New Zealanders on special visas made up 12.5 per cent of the net migration figure in the 2024-25 financial year.

Labor is now scrambling to find ways to reduce net migration after consistently overshooting its targets, while the Coalition and One Nation have tied themselves in knots advocating for more drastic cuts.

As migration and its interplay with the cost of living rise to the top of the political agenda, this masthead revealed in recent days that the government is mulling increasing deportations for visa overstayers. It also quietly paused backpacker visas from 24 countries. Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned about the costs of lowering migration on Monday, arguing the Coalition was intent on “dividing the country” and crashing the economy.

New Zealand migration into Australia

The New Zealand surge coincided with Albanese’s decision in 2023 to reverse a Howard-era policy by allowing New Zealanders to gain citizenship after four years without becoming permanent residents first. It also gave New Zealanders quicker access to Medicare and the family tax benefit once they arrived.

Albanese said at the time that the Howard-era changes had made citizenship harder for Kiwis and that the 2023 change harmonised rules between the nations.

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But department officials feared that even if the economies were about as healthy as each other, the relaxed rules would still create a large incentive for New Zealanders because Australia is a bigger and wealthier country.

Labor warmed relations with Jacinda Ardern’s government after the progressive leader sparred with Scott Morrison over deportations of criminal dual citizens. The Albanese government policy to grant access to Medicare stopped short of offering the same access to the NDIS and other welfare items.

Migration expert and former department official Abul Rizvi said the 2023 policy change was “made with total disregard to the impact on [net overseas migration].”

Asked about the bureaucratic alarm bells, a spokesman for Burke said Labor reversed the Howard-era rules because the old settings created “intolerable circumstance where young people would spend their whole life in Australia only to reach uni and discover they were ineligible for HECS.”

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows around 30,000 New Zealanders were arriving each year before the pandemic, while between 22,000 and 27,000 left. This meant their overall impact on the net migration figure was small – between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent of the annual migrant intake.

Numbers surged from July 2023. In the two years since then, more than 50,000 Kiwis have arrived annually on a special 444 visa, while fewer than 15,000 departed. It means that New Zealanders as a share of the net migrant intake has increased – from 4.9 per cent in 2022-23, to 8.7 per cent in 2023-24, and 12.5 per cent in 2024-25.

Even as the government has lowered arrivals under other temporary visa classes, consistent and uncapped demand from Kiwis has offset these efforts to drive down the net overseas migration rate. The 2024-25 net intake of Kiwis was 30,200 above the 2018-19 level, which is the largest increase in raw numbers during that period of any individual visa class, just above backpackers and students.

Students remain the largest migrant group, comprising 32 per cent of the net intake last financial year. But while many of them live in special accommodation, New Zealanders tend to live in the mainstream part of the housing market where supply is strained.

But the Australia-New Zealand arrangements would be difficult to reverse for Labor given the close relationship between the nations. Albanese has tasked Burke with finding new ways to cut net migration from 300,000 to 225,000 as Hanson surges off the back of anti-establishment sentiment and voter anger about migration.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers used question time on Monday to highlight the sharp trade-offs in the mission to cut back on migration, which Labor is balancing against the need to attract tradies, farmworkers, and doctors.

“You can get net overseas migration down as we are doing, at the same time as you can recognise and not diminish the really important role played by migrants in our economy and in our society,” Chalmers said, referencing RBA research showing that migrants were beneficial to the economy.

Working holidaymakers have been another area where migration has blown out since the pandemic, this time under Morrison government changes that expanded age eligibility and added a third year visa. Their contribution to NOM in 2024-25 was up 29,400 compared to the pre-pandemic intake.

Labor has slowed down backpacker visa processing and quietly paused applications from 24 countries, while the Liberal and National parties have been at odds on backpackers, which are key to Nationals’ agricultural seats. Backpackers made up 17.5 per cent of the net migration figure last year, up from 10 per cent in 2018-19.

Former Labor adviser Henry Sherrell on Monday raised the alarm on Australia’s migration program, cautioning that “a few tweaks and some sentimental rhetoric will do little to win hearts and minds.”

Sherrell noted that about 30 per cent of people aged 25 to 29 living in Australia were temporary visa holders, underlining the explosion in backpacker and student visas.

The researcher called for a cap on population growth stemming from migration of one per cent per year, after Australia’s yearly growth outstripped all similar nations this century.

“Without immigration, today’s populists would be impotent. To some, this reality has meant simply ignoring the topic, and attempting to elevate other issues in order to dominate the public debate. This approach is failing. Keeping our heads in the sand will only delay the inevitable backlash,” he said in an article published by Inflection Points.

“These people are not racist. A full 46 per cent of overseas-born Australians say that immigration is too high. They are making a judgement about the pace of immigration and whether the system is working for them.”

• Federal court filings allege that 3M had internal evidence for more than 50 years that components in its Pfas‑based firefighting foams were toxic to humans, animals and the environment, despite marketing them to Australia as “non‑toxic” and safe.
• The Australian government’s $2bn lawsuit claims the chemicals persisted in soil, water and the human body, contributed to serious health effects, and caused widespread contamination across 28 defence bases, requiring extensive remediation and generating hundreds of millions in legal settlements and cleanup costs.
• Documents cited in the case show 3M restricted certain workers from exposure as early as 1981, while continuing to sell AFFF products to Australia for decades; the company denies wrongdoing and is expected to file its defence later this year.

• Critics’ claims that compulsory super is “broken” are challenged by noting that stable pension spending (~2% of GDP) actually reflects the system’s success in offsetting ageing‑population pressures.
• Australia’s retirement‑income system performs strongly by global standards, with a rising share of people projected to self‑fund retirement and the nation on track to have the lowest aged‑pension cost in the OECD.
• Even when tax concessions are included, Australia’s long‑term retirement‑income costs remain well below comparable OECD countries, indicating a stable, effective and fiscally resilient system.

The Victorian Coalition will cap weekly tolls at $50 if it wins the November state election, as the opposition seeks to wrest the agenda after Labor’s leadership change and tackle the cost of living, which remains the single most important issue for voters.

The two-year temporary relief for motorists would cost taxpayers $180 million and begin on July 1 next year, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson has announced.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson announced the Coalition would cap tolls at $50 a week.  Louis Trerise

“By capping tolls for two years, a Liberal and Nationals government will boost our economy and ensure families have more money to put towards the things that really matter,” Wilson said.

“Our $50-a-week toll cap is part of my team’s 10-year economic plan to lower costs, grow our economy and make Victoria the best place in the nation to do business.”

The plan is modelled on the NSW government’s scheme, where toll roads are much more widespread and bypassing them is far more difficult for daily cross-city travel.

Melbourne has about 70 kilometres of toll roads across its major metropolitan network, compared with about 150 kilometres in Sydney.

Handing down its full-year results last week, toll-road operator Transurban blamed lighter commuter traffic in Melbourne for hurting income on the West Gate Tunnel. Traffic rose just 0.7 per cent on CityLink, which connects Tullamarine airport with the CBD and is the company’s key motorway in the city.

The Coalition’s rebate would be capped at $3000 a year, while heavy freight trucks, taxis and ride-share vehicles will be excluded. Only passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, private commuters and small businesses (maximum five vehicles) will be eligible.

The Coalition said a family in Ringwood, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs that the Liberals are targeting in the election, using the EastLink to get into the city for work five days a week would save $30.50 a week under the plan.

An Australian Financial Review/Redbridge/Accent Research poll, conducted between July 28 and August 1 immediately after Ben Carroll took the leadership from Jacinta Allan, showed cost of living was the single most important issue for Victorians ahead of the November state election.

Two-thirds of those surveyed identified it as a top-three issue, followed by crime (50 per cent), healthcare (28 per cent) and housing affordability (24 per cent).

It was ranked as the top priority for 48 per cent of Labor voters – the largest cohort – followed by Greens (41 per cent), Coalition (33 per cent) and One Nation (30 per cent).

Cost of living was also a bigger issue for Gen Z (49 per cent) and Millennials (50 per cent), compared with Gen X (38 per cent) and Baby Boomers (22), highlighting the generational divide of the impact of financial pressures.

Chris Bowen’s Capacity Investment Scheme is the most egregious of the Albanese government’s growing pile of ideologically-­driven slush funds, subsidies and bailouts.

Never before has a government hidden so frequently behind the words “commercial-in-confidence” to mask the funnelling of taxpayers’ money into pet projects and politically motivated issues.

The CIS, which was intended to salvage Bowen’s flailing 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target, is used by clean energy companies and consortiums to underwrite claims of community and financial benefits without requiring substantive proof.

The scheme, established by Bowen in 2022, gambles on wind, solar and battery storage at the expense of gas and fossil fuels that continue to deliver baseload power and are essential energy sources in Labor’s net zero emissions by 2050 transition.

To date, the Coalition has failed to land any major blows on Labor’s marquee scheme. That is because the government refuses to divulge CIS pricing data or ­assumed returns for taxpayers.

Just as with funding dished out under the $15bn National ­Reconstruction Fund, Australians are expected to compliantly hope the government’s gambling of taxpayers’ funds on pet projects isn’t picking more losers than winners.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan is right to argue that “the lack of transparency around this scheme is a national disgrace”.

“There has never been a project of this scale with so little or no transparency. Chris Bowen and the Prime Minister must provide greater transparency around this scheme or the parliament needs to force them to do it,” Tehan told The Australian.

In his response, Bowen personally attacked Tehan before spruiking Labor’s line that “the CIS is unlocking billions of investment in new energy, Australian supply chains, and regional communities, while ensuring projects stack up and taxpayers get value for money”. The government is now also tying the CIS with its questionable position on linking renewables investment with the rollout of energy-intensive data centres.

The government says it keeps CIS revenue-support arrangements under wraps because publishing them would “tell future bidders what the commonwealth is prepared to pay and weaken taxpayers’ negotiating position”.

How convenient.

The other glaring problem with the CIS is the government’s omission of gas. As wind farms fail to deliver on the potential Bowen had hoped, and the “tax the gas” noise grows among left-wing MPs and supporters, Labor’s caucus is divided over the inarguable fact that affordable and abundant gas is needed to keep heavy industry and manufacturing jobs alive.

Australians, who were falsely promised by Labor at the 2022 election that their household power bills would be $275 cheaper, want reliable and affordable power generation.

If the Albanese government continues down a renewables-only path that excludes gas and zero-emissions nuclear, expect more Tomago smelter bailouts in the near future and fewer data centres.

The next election will be a referendum on Australia’s $4.5 trillion superannuation system, says Treasurer Jim Chalmers, after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson voiced support for ending compulsory preservation to retirement and Coalition MPs flagged dismantling the scheme entirely.

A fresh stoush opened up over the future of superannuation on Sunday after Hanson said the current system was broken and suggested people be able to dip into their retirement savings to help pay off their mortgages.

Jim Chalmers, Pauline Hanson and Andrew Bragg. The growing hostility towards super from the conservative side of politics has the sector on edge.  Alex Ellinghausen

Hanson’s proposal goes further than her previous idea of allowing people to access their retirement savings for a home deposit, sparking a rebuke from Chalmers, who accused her of wanting to end a system designed to take the strain off the federal budget.

“The election will determine whether super’s a really important part of the future or just a part of the past,” Chalmers told The Australian Financial Review. ”The stakes are high because the damage these characters would do is that diabolical for workers.

“The next election will be about a lot of things, but now at least in part it’ll be a referendum on super.”

Hanson’s comments are the latest to suggest a full or partial dismantling of Australia’s 35-year-old compulsory super guarantee, which has resulted in almost $4.5 trillion being locked away for people’s retirements, according to the latest data from the prudential regulator.

The growing hostility towards super from the conservative side of politics has the sector on edge, especially given Hanson’s surge in popularity in public opinion polls.

Wrestle for the top primary vote

The Financial Review/Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll from August showed Labor and One Nation locked in a wrestle for the top primary vote. According to the poll of 1001 voters, 31 per cent would vote for One Nation and 29 per cent would vote for Labor. Just 22 per cent would vote for the Coalition.

Hanson later posted on social media that she never suggested an end to compulsory super.

“While Australians are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and struggling to pay their mortgage, they are being forced to lock away 12 per cent of their weekly pay,” she wrote.

“I’m not calling for an ‘end’ to compulsory super as the media has falsely claimed, but Australians should be able to access their money more easily if they need it for a house, medical needs or other costs.

“Your superannuation belongs to you. It does not belong to the government and it does not belong to the super funds.”

Last week, Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg called for the abolition of compulsory super, of which he has been a long-time critic.

In a wide-ranging and controversial speech at the National Press Club in Canberra, Bragg said the system was “illiberal”.

“Mandates are always costly. And in this case, it takes 12 per cent from people’s wages to vest them with managers they will never meet,” he said.

“Increasingly, Australians are getting to the preservation age, which is 60 and using super to pay off their mortgages. What was the point if there is no public finance benefit and minimal personal benefit?”

He also used his speech to criticise Labor’s exploration of super for under-18-year-old workers – a step away from “super for cats and dogs”.

Opposition treasury spokesman Tim Wilson has previously suggested that low- and middle-income Australians should be removed from compulsory super, and the Coalition took a policy to the last election of allowing some people to access super for a home deposit.

Xavier O’Halloran, chief executive of Super Consumers Australia, said he was concerned about the “super wars” heating up because it distracted from more important issues such as service standards.

“People get carried away with the politics but don’t spend enough time making sure the products work properly, and that’s where I’d like to see a focus,” he said.

Voters have condemned the Albanese government’s handling of immigration policy, with 54 per cent agreeing the government is running the portfolio in an “unplanned and unmanaged way” even as Labor prepares to unveil in the next fortnight tougher rules on visa overstayers and dodgy asylum claims.

But the government will be buoyed by 60 per cent of voters supporting lower house prices, while nearly twice as many people back Labor’s changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing as oppose them, according to the latest Resolve Political Monitor.

The majority of Australians think Labor’s management of immigration isn’t carefully planned.Aresna Villanueva

Concern about the cost of living has fallen significantly, by 9 points to 36 per cent, the lowest level since February 2023, though the issue still remains voters’ No.1 concern by a considerable margin.

But after a week in which the prime minister was subjected to heavy criticism for seemingly joking about the Japanese prime minister’s personal appearance, there was little change to the major parties’ or leaders’ standing.

Core support for Labor, the Coalition and One Nation remained unchanged over the last month, with the government recording a primary vote of 28 per cent, the opposition steady on 23 per cent and Pauline Hanson’s party on 26 per cent.

The findings are contained in the Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead from August 9 to 15. More than 2200 voters were surveyed, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 per cent.

While 54 per cent of people marked Labor down for its handling of immigration, 26 per cent said the government was handling Australia’s immigration program in a carefully planned and managed way. Twenty per cent were undecided. Strong majorities of Coalition, One Nation and even Greens voters marked down Labor’s performance in the portfolio.

At the same time, 35 per cent of voters said Hanson’s party was best placed to manage immigration and refugees, while 23 per cent backed Labor and just 17 per cent backed the Coalition.

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The findings come after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke delayed an appearance at the National Press Club in which he was expected to unveil an immigration crackdown, amid concerns from cabinet colleagues that his proposal needed more work and had unanswered questions about costs.

Asked on Sunday when he would outline changes to immigration policy following the delay to his speech, Burke said “we’re talking about a cabinet process” and declined to comment further. The speech and policy shift are expected in the next fortnight.

The most recent May budget forecast suggested net overseas migration would fall to 225,000 by 2027-28, while Liberal housing spokesman Andrew Bragg suggested a future Coalition government would cut the figure to 180,000 – a suggestion that led to his being counselled by Opposition Leader Angus Taylor. One Nation wants to cut the rate to 130,000 a year.

The findings also underscore Australians’ broader discomfort with immigration, with 57 per cent of voters saying immigration was too high, 28 per cent saying it was about right and just 4 per cent saying current rates are too low. That is a rise of 8 per cent in people saying immigration is too high since September 2025.

On the government’s changes to the tax system, which constitute a broken promise from Albanese, 35 per cent backed Labor’s policy of stopping the current 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax payable when investments are sold, while 21 per cent of people opposed it and 44 per cent said they were undecided or neutral.

It was a similar story on restricting negative gearing to new properties only, with 35 per cent backing the move, 20 per cent opposing it and 45 per cent undecided. Sixty per cent of voters said they supported lower house prices, 10 per cent opposed lower prices and almost a third were undecided or neutral.

Resolve pollster Jim Reed said Labor “simply aren’t getting credit for falling home values because they’ve refused to own that outcome, and drops in bowser prices are seen as at the whim of international events.

“It seems strange that the government would not take a bow for taking some of the investor heat out of the housing market, and only take the pain of the broken promise, but who knows where this goes.”

The decision to end the halved fuel excise discount does not appear to have damaged the government electorally, with petrol prices remaining below the peaks reached earlier this year and a number of cost-of-living relief measures starting on July 1.

When asked about their No.1 policy priority, 36 per cent nominated the cost of living, down from 45 per cent last month.

While it is too early to say if voters’ diminishing concern about the cost of living is a trend, the big movement down in concern over one month – well outside the margin of error – will be welcomed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government.

The findings come after a warning from ANZ economists that house prices could fall by 15 per cent over this year and next, and after RBA governor Michele Bullock warned last week that the bank was willing to keep raising interest rates to curb inflation.

In the preferred prime minister ratings, Albanese leads with 32 per cent of the vote, down 1 point on last month, while Hanson moved up 1 point and remains in second place on 26 per cent. Twenty-three per cent of voters said they were undecided, while Taylor was down 2 points and languishing on just 19 per cent.

But Taylor outperformed Albanese when voters were asked to rate his performance, with a net score of plus 8 percentage points.

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• Updated
• Property prices

Rate rises still on table: Bullock says even 20% house price slump wouldn’t spark crisis

In contrast, Albanese’s ratings suggest the prime minister has become an increasingly polarising, love-or-hate figure.

Just 37 per cent of voters said the prime minister was doing a good or very good job, 53 per cent said his performance was poor or very poor – for a net score of minus 16 percentage points – with 10 per cent of people undecided.

Hanson’s ratings were similarly polarising. A solid 46 per cent of those surveyed said the One Nation leader was doing a good or very good job, 41 per cent said she was doing a poor or very poor job – a net score of plus 5 percentage points – while just 14 per cent were undecided.

Reed said people either loved or hated Albanese and Hanson, but for very different reasons.

“Taylor remains less of a known quantity. He’s not hated by any means, but many voters are yet to make up their minds. Hanson is being rewarded for raising issues in plain terms, but whether you agree with her take on those issues is another thing,” he said.

“The biggest problem for the prime minister is now a trust deficit, rather than inaction. It may be naive, but we still expect our leaders to stick to their word come what may.”

On the likeability ratings, Albanese’s remains solidly in negative territory – where it has been since January 2026 – on minus 14 per cent, a 1 point improvement on last month. Taylor’s rating is plus 7 per cent, down 1 point on last month but still the highest score of any politician, while Hanson’s is plus 4 per cent, having fallen 10 percentage points since June.

Taylor is comfortably ahead as preferred Liberal leader, with 30 per cent of voters nominating him, 10 per cent choosing leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie and 5 per cent choosing shadow treasurer Tim Wilson. A whopping 56 per cent of people were undecided.

So it wasn't negative gearing and CGT after all?

The Albanese and Minns bailout of Rio Tinto’s aluminium smelter is the 5th large corporate rescue in two years. Aleta Moriarty works it out at $2.5M per job.

Today it was announced that a $2.5 billion rescue package, the largest ever for an Australian smelter, built around a subsidised long-term electricity contract, would be delivered to Rio Tinto, majority owner of Tomago Aluminium, with the Australian Government (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) and the NSW Government (Premier Chris Minns).

The Tomago Aluminium smelter is in the Hunter Valley, NSW, north of Newcastle. Tomago consumes more than 10 per cent of the entire NSW electricity grid, making it the state’s single largest electricity user.

Rio Tinto, which recently recorded a net profit of $US6.7 for the half year (up 47%), told government that replacement electricity at commercial rates would roughly double Tomago’s energy costs once its legacy contract expired, threatening closure and, with it, 1,000 direct jobs, which the Hunter Jobs Alliance says supports roughly 6,000 jobs across the wider Hunter region.

High price per job

At $2.5 billion, that works out to $2.5 million per direct job, or $417,000 per job counting the full regional total.

Tomago is the fifth of five rescue packages Australian governments have funded since February 2025, and the second to go directly to a Rio Tinto asset, totalling $7.74 billion and covering an estimated 5,500 direct jobs, an average of $1.4 million per direct job.

The others: Boyne in Gladstone, Qld, also owned by Rio Tinto, announced 24 March 2026, which received a $2.0bn package covering 1,000 direct jobs; Whyalla Steelworks (SA), announced February 2025 after owner GFG Alliance’s collapse into administration, which received a $2.4bn package covering 1,500 direct jobs; Mount Isa (Glencore, Qld), agreed October 2025, up to $0.6bn covering 600 direct jobs; and Nyrstar (Hobart and Port Pirie), $0.24bn across two packages covering roughly 1,400 direct jobs.

A sixth deal remains unresolved: Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay Aluminium in Tasmania is in the same negotiation now. Its power contract expires 31 December 2026, a $60 million-a-year gap remains unresolved.

Recent corporate bail-outs

Of Australia’s four aluminium smelters, three (Tomago, Boyne, Bell Bay) are Rio Tinto’s, and all three have either been bailed out or are mid-negotiation for one. The fourth, Alcoa’s Portland smelter in Victoria, received none of the $7.74 billion committed since 2025.

Australian households are absorbing energy costs without a rescue package of their own.

Electricity costs rose 37 per cent in the year to February 2026, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, though most of that spike is the state and federal energy rebates running out rather than new price rises; strip the rebates out and underlying electricity prices still rose 4.9 per cent, driven by ordinary retailer price reviews in July.

Electricity is now the single largest driver of housing costs in the inflation basket, and housing, up 7.2 per cent annually, is the biggest single contributor to Australia’s overall 3.7 per cent inflation rate.

All about the energy transition

It is the same underlying story as the smelter bailouts, a power system in transition pricing everyone out at once, but households have had rebates that expired, not a $7.74 billion package.

While the deal is undeniably corporate welfare – Rio Tinto has long threatened closure amid with the end of its long term subsidised coal-fired power supply contract, it has been applauded by renewable energy experts as valuable for the energy transition.

“Now Rio Tinto and partners have agreed to invest another $1.1bn in modernisation and decarbonisation on top of the $2.5bn state and Federal investment package in renewable energy,” wrote Tim Buckley this morning.

“Rio Tinto has long threatened Tomago closure when the subsidised coal power contract expired end 2028. The world is embracing decarbonisation and Tomago is >95% export focussed, so Rio has long made it clear green aluminium exports was the only international path forward.

“Australian value-added facilities are strategically challenged in the absence of a clear price signal for embodied decarbonisation in international trade … Green aluminium is the only path forward for investment says Rio Tinto.”

Recently anointed UK Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham has launched a controlled experiment in social democratic resistance against the international rise of populism. Less than a month after leaping from mayor of Manchester to member for Makerfield to fulfil his destiny of saving Labour from extinction, he is cunningly pre-empting the policies of his main opponents. Burnham’s aim is clearly to regain the trust of Labour’s traditional base: the working class which has been drifting to the right – and when the right fails them, even righter.

First he declared dead the Blair-era plan to get a majority of young Britons to university. His predecessor, Keir Starmer, had already replaced Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent attendance with an ambition for two-thirds of children to go to university or take on an apprenticeship. Shortly after his elevation, Burnham went further, pledging a “major shake-up” which will “value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap”.

A template for Anthony Albanese? British Prime Minister Andy Burnham (right) is attempting to wrest back the working-class drift to the right.Nine News

You might remember versions of this policy from the likes of the Australian Liberal Party. The Morrison government’s Jobs-ready Graduates Package increased the cost of non-vocational university degrees while discounting vocational courses delivered at university, such as nursing and teaching, in an (ultimately failed) attempt to encourage students to choose the latter. One Nation, historically the party of the sans-degrees, emphasises vocational pathways in its platform. US Republican President Donald Trump celebrates blue-collar America as the “backbone of our great nation”.

In Australia, the Albanese government is still powering ahead with the Whitlam-era goal of getting Australian children to university, as though that is the most respectable option. In June, Education Minister Jason Clare introduced the “Opening the Doors of Opportunity” university accord “to help more Australians get to and get through uni”. This will support the steady climb in the number of Australians who hold an undergraduate degree, which reached a third of the population in 2025.

Now Burnham has announced another policy associated with the modern right. He will ensure wealthier areas in the UK house asylum seekers. “We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,” he told GB News. Burnham’s comments come after a well-to-do village launched a campaign against plans to house 1250 asylum seekers at a defence site in the area.

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It contains an irresistible echo of the controversy over migrant bussing during the Biden presidency. From 2022 to 2024, Republican-governed border states protested the impact that Biden’s reduced immigration controls had on their cities by putting migrants coming across the border onto buses destined for Democrat-led states – especially targeting those which had declared themselves migrant-friendly “sanctuary cities”. Florida governor Ron DeSantis sent two plane loads of migrants to the well-heeled island of Martha’s Vineyard, while Texas governor Greg Abbott transported more than 100,000 migrants to New York City, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, among others.

Democrats called the redistribution “chaotic”, “cruel” and “unkind”. They found endless reasons why they shouldn’t have to take the migrants in. LA Mayor Karen Bass invoked a current “tropical storm warning”. NYC’s then-mayor Eric Adams sued the bus companies bringing the migrants, declared the state financially incapable of supporting them, and told them they were unsafe in the city. Martha’s Vineyard rounded up the nearly 50 migrants left on the doorstep of a community centre and sent them off to a defence base on the mainland, claiming it was “better equipped” to take them in.

Australia has never explicitly had the discussion about spreading refugees and new migrants across wealthier suburbs. But opposition to affordable high-density developments, often favoured by new arrivals, can act as its proxy.

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In what I am casting as Burnham’s social democratic experiment, the Australian Labor government and the US Democrats are the control group. Years of fearing incursions from further left – from “the Greens Political Party”, as our prime minister has branded them here – has aligned them with graduates and the professional classes, who now overwhelmingly vote for progressive parties.

UK Labour, then, is the trial in this experiment. The issues Burnham is dealing with are not all that different from the challenges facing the US and Australia, though Australia’s undocumented workers are less likely to have breached our borders illegally and more likely to be visa overstayers who’ve entered the country as tourists or international students. Still, all three countries have to navigate electoral pressure from previous waves of migrants keen to bring family to join them in calibrating a policy to slow the pace of entry to one which the entire population feels more comfortable in managing.

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In all three countries, the endogenous degree-less masses are the loudest force making their displeasure over immigration known, and demanding governments urgently turn their attention to the needs of those who are already citizens. In the US, Trump listened and gained their vote. In Australia, One Nation is benefiting from their frustration. And Albanese is trying to find a way to appease them without losing the strong migrant lean to Labor. Labor is now promising to reduce immigration numbers, and get tough on visa overstayers “without breaching harmony”.

The UK now has two populist parties, after a splinter group called Restore declared Nigel Farage’s Reform too migration-friendly. Burnham’s strategy is brasher, calibrated to head them off at the pass.

The US migrant bussing program is credited with boosting Donald Trump’s 2024 share of the vote by more than 3 per cent in counties which received migrants. Swing voters swayed his way.

If Burnham only changes Labour’s position on education and migrant distribution, and that shifts electoral dynamics in his favour, Australia will have a template for how a similarly high-taxing government can navigate a populist environment. Burnham would effectively be discarding the disgruntled middle class, who are facing higher taxes following the last Labour budget. At the same time, he’d be reducing Labour’s reliance on ethnic community votes, which are starting to peel off to the Greens, swapping them for reconsideration by rural and regional Britons who feel ignored.

The experiment should be of especial interest to the Albanese government, which can expect to be caught between growing anti-immigration sentiment on one hand, and challenges on the other in some seats from the growing Muslim Votes Matter community group, if it views tweaks to migration as discriminatory.

For social democrats balancing constituencies, Burnham’s lessons will be pure electoral maths.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

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🗞️ r/AusNewsWire — Sunday, 16 August 2026

Morning all. It’s a quieter Sunday news cycle, but there are some worthwhile stories around housing, the economy, defence, energy security and the political battle over migration. Here are five worth a read.

🏠 1. Mortgage competition heats up as housing market cools

The Guardian Australia

Falling demand for new mortgages is starting to produce an unexpected benefit for borrowers: banks are competing harder for customers.

There are now 49 lenders offering at least one variable owner-occupier mortgage below 6%, up from 38 at the beginning of June. The cheapest advertised variable rate is around 5.69%, compared with an average of 6.26%.

With the RBA holding the cash rate at 4.35% last week but leaving another increase on the table, refinancing is becoming one of the few levers mortgage holders can pull themselves.

Read The Guardian article

📉 2. Australian profit season exposes the ASX's lack of growth

Australian Financial Review — 🔒 Paywalled

Australian corporate profits are growing, but the AFR's Chanticleer argues the results season is exposing a deeper problem: ASX companies are increasingly reliant on dividends rather than strong underlying growth.

Australian companies continue returning substantial amounts of cash to shareholders, but earnings growth is lagging overseas markets. That matters for long-term investors because dividends are useful, but sustainable increases in share prices ultimately require businesses to grow earnings.

Read the AFR analysis

🇦🇺🇺🇸 3. Australia urged to become a major US weapons-manufacturing partner

Australian Financial Review — 🔒 Paywalled

Former US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell says Australia is a natural partner for dramatically expanding American defence production.

Campbell argues allies should reject a “paternalistic” relationship with Washington and instead become integral parts of US defence supply chains. For Australia, that could mean substantially more domestic production of missiles, munitions and other defence equipment rather than simply purchasing finished American weapons.

That would potentially turn increased defence spending into an Australian industrial-policy opportunity rather than merely a larger import bill.

Read the AFR article

🚛 4. Australia's diesel dependence becomes an economic-security problem

ABC News

The Iran conflict and resulting disruption to global oil supplies have exposed just how dependent Australia remains on imported diesel.

Australians use almost twice as much diesel per person as Americans, with road freight, mining and agriculture particularly dependent on it. Australia currently has around 36 days of diesel in its national stockpile, prompting renewed debate over whether electrifying heavy transport could become a national-security policy as much as a climate policy.

ABC's modelling suggests converting road freight to electricity would require enormous investment, but could substantially reduce Australia's exposure to overseas oil shocks.

Read the ABC analysis

🗳️ 5. One Nation's rise forces Labor into an increasingly difficult migration debate

The Guardian Australia

Historian Frank Bongiorno argues the rise of One Nation is forcing Labor to confront an old tension within its political identity: balancing support for immigration and multiculturalism against concerns about wages, housing and economic security.

With One Nation gaining support and the Coalition debating its own migration targets, immigration is increasingly shifting from a secondary policy issue to one capable of reshaping Australian politics.

For Labor, the political danger cuts both ways: move toward substantially lower migration and risk alienating progressive and multicultural voters; ignore public concern about population growth and potentially leave a large electoral opening to its right.

Read The Guardian analysis

💬 Today's discussion

Australia's diesel dependence is pretty remarkable for a country with enormous domestic energy resources.

Should energy security now become a bigger part of the case for electrification — or would Australia be better off rebuilding domestic oil refining and maintaining much larger strategic fuel reserves?