The Price of Stability

Australia risks settling into a low-productivity, high-population-growth equilibrium: stable yet stagnant. Ageing, cheap credit, and migration mask weak dynamism, keeping the natural rate of interest pinned low. Escaping the trap demands productivity, not inflation.

Australia’s Energy Betrayal: From Abundance to Austerity

Australia once built prosperity on cheap, reliable power. Three decades of regulatory failure and moral vanity squandered that advantage and locked in mediocrity for a generation.

The Q3 inflation surprise

The Q3 2025 inflation print surprised on the upside, with annual headline inflation once again exceeding the Government’s 2–3 per cent target band. The Government has downplayed the result as statistical noise, arguing that inflation remains on a trajectory towards the centre of the band. That may prove correct - very occasionally rogue prints happen - but the data are not yet conclusive. For now, the result makes it increasingly unlikely that the RBA will cut rates at its November 2025 meeting.

The Mirage of a Return to Cheap Power

Australia’s energy debate is trapped between green idealism and coal-era nostalgia. Our transition demands realism, sequencing, and resilience — not ideological speed or nostalgic retreat.

Why No One Is Building New Coal Plants in Australia

The energy transition has flipped the logic of the electrical grid. What mattered once – scale and steadiness – now counts against coal, and even against nuclear.

Net Zero: Caught Between Urgency and Feasibility

Australia’s net-zero debate is torn between moral urgency and practical constraint. Real progress demands honesty about pace, cost, and technological limits.

The Weekend That Shook Crypto

Crypto’s machinery looks modern, but its foundations are medieval – a casino built on debt and faith.

Measured Consideration: Initial Reflections on Grattan’s “Bills Down, Emissions Down”

The “bills down” claim flatters itself with aggregation. Electrification may lower total energy costs in theory, but for many households the transition means dearer electricity, persistent fuel spending, and inflation that feels anything but transitory.

The Fragile Promise of a Net-Zero Grid

Spain’s 2025 blackout exposed the fragility of inverter-dominated grids. Australia’s net-zero plan must master four physical pillars – energy, capacity, inertia, absorptivity – or risk abundance becoming the next blackout.

Anchoring the Cycle: Why Independent Central Banks Matter

An exploration of how central banks evolved from crisis lenders to stabilisers of modern economies, showing why independence, credibility, and disciplined expectations remain vital to managing inflation, employment, and public trust.

Echoes of Euphoria: The Dot-Com Bubble and the AI Boom

A comparison of the late-1990s dot-com boom and today’s AI surge, exploring how financial exuberance, over investment, and slow productivity diffusion distort genuine technological revolutions.