Population acceleration
There was yet another thumping (by-)election result yesterday - this time a historic win in Aston - and once again swinging hard to Labor, which will be causing some serious angst in Liberal circles, and possibly even in time a leadership spill.
Zooming out and looking at the bigger picture, the Labor Party has now assumed a position of total dominance right across Federal and State politics, with very little prospect of a close election contest between now and 2028 at the earliest.
In recent years, more and more we are hearing policy conversations discussing the journey towards a huge Australian population of 100 million, and the new ALP government has wasted no time at all in dialing up immigration to record highs.
Total population growth is now running at around 600,000, roughly double what we'd been used to in the post-resources boom years.
For whatever reason, the unions don't seem too fazed by this, and more broadly PM Albanese and Jim Chalmers seemingly don't believe that high immigration has a deleterious effect on wages growth or productivity, as discussed in The Spectator here.
Whether or not an Aussie population soaring to 100 million is actually a good thing is a bit of a moot point at the moment, since Labor will set population policy without any serious contest for at least the next 6 years...and possibly 9 or 12.
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There were more strong auction results in Sydney yesterday, and now we head into the Easter break and the cooler Autumn months, so tight stock levels will likely decline even further over the months ahead.
PropTrack again noted rising housing prices for February - largely unreported - with unit prices in Sydney leading the way, increasing by +0.7 per cent over the month, and Brisbane units also again in positive territory.
Overall, PropTrack sees prices only -3 per cent lower than a year ago, but still +30 per cent higher than pre-pandemic lockdown levels.
