The Under 16 Ban on Account access to Social Media has been steamrollered through the lower house, and will be guillotined through the Senate without debate.
Questions of substance are being thrown off the table in an unseemly mess, being supported by both major parties. Why? Because under the hood this is actually the last battle between old media and new media, and both major parties must support the hidden hand.
As a result the door is flung open for greater digital control, in line with top-down directives.
Parents, children and ordinary Australians are caught in the cross-fire.
Kudos to small band of Senators who have stood against the bill. This will not end well for major parties.
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This is an edited version of a live discussion about the conundrum of property investing. Some are selling as quickly as they can, others are piling in. We look at the latest data to figure out what is going on. The key is a realistic assessment of net investment yield, which varies across locations and property types.
You can ask a question live!
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https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/dfa-one-to-one/ for our One to One Service.
Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
DFA Live Q&A Replay: Property Investing: Nightmare Or Great Deal?
Another week and what a week its been, with the complete failure of the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill (yeh!). Pity about the U16 Bill!
Property related Bills will be passed though, underscoring the narrowing base of the Australian economy, even as more small businesses go out of business.
In this show Edwin, our property insider looks at the latest in listings, and sales with dramatic differences across locations. We also discuss the price of property relative to Bitcoin and Gold, and also consider whats ahead.
Edwin’s tip of the week in a warning relating to car insurance.
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Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
The Albanese government has dumped its controversial mis- and disinformation bill, conceding there is “no pathway” to getting the proposal passed through the Senate.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, insisted misinformation and disinformation remained a grave concern for democracy, national security and online safety, but said the government would not proceed with the proposal. It is the second time Labor has pulled the bill, after an initial version also failed to gain support and raised concerns about freedom of speech online.
“Based on public statements and engagements with senators, it is clear that there is no pathway to legislate this proposal through the Senate,” Rowland said on Sunday.
As I discussed in previous shows, the mis- and disinformation bill would have put legal obligations on social media platforms to address false, misleading or deceptive content, or content reasonably likely to cause serious harm, as well as equip the Australian Communications and Media Authority to regulate such content. However it was strongly opposed by a wide range of bodies including human rights organisations, church groups and libertarian groups, as well as many of the non-government members of parliament. A first version of the legislation was redrafted in a bid to win wider support, but the second attempt also failed to garner parliamentary backing or assuage wider concerns from critics. The Coalition has long pledged to oppose the bill, while all other members of the Senate crossbench had said in recent days they would either vote it down or were not yet sufficiently convinced to vote for it.
The Australian Human Rights Commission said back in October that “although there have been improvements to the bill, freedom of expression is not sufficiently protected”.
That leaves the age of under 16 ban on access to social media still in play, and it looks like this legislation will pass this week despite major flaws in the bill, and concerns it could be a back door to wider social media access controls. As I discussed recently this bill is also deeply flawed, but Labour is after a win, any win politically speaking before the election.
The short time-frame and rushed consideration of the Bill means it is likely to be of poor quality. Given the importance of the issues contained in the legislation, a more detailed and longer path is required to ensure the best approach possible is developed.
Given the proximity of the next election is appears that political considerations are driving the time-frames, and for the reasons outlined above, the Bill in its current guise should not be passed into law.
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This is our weekly market update, where we start in the US, cross to Europe and Asia, and end in New Zealand and Australia, covering crypto and commodities along the way. This is data heavy, so strap in.
Global stocks registered a strong weekly gain on Friday while U.S. Treasury yields slipped as markets eyed President-elect Donald Trump’s likely policies and their impact on the U.S. economy, even as bitcoin traded near the $100,000 threshold as bets that Trump’s administration will take a lighter-touch approach to regulation as chairman Gary Gensler plans to step down on January 20, the day Trump is inaugurated.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 0.33% to 854.13 and gained about 1.4% for the week. Europe’s Stoxx 600 share index ended the week 1% higher, snapping four straight weeks of losses.
All three Wall Street indexes finished higher and each notched a weekly gain. Industrials, consumer discretionary, financials and consumer staples drove gains while communication services, utilities and technology equities were the biggest losers.
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), the world’s most valuable company, ended down 3.2% after the artificial intelligence chipmaker reported strong quarterly results but issued lacklustre sales forecasts having hit a prior record high.
European equity markets closed higher on Friday, despite investors digesting weak economic data as well as the intensifying conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Data released earlier Friday vividly illustrated the economic woes that Europe is currently suffering, pointing to further interest rate cuts by both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. Germany’s DAX rose 1% and the UK’s FTSE 100 gained 1.4%, while France’s CAC 40 climbed 0.6%. The pan-European STOXX 600 jumped 1.2%, its best daily performance in nearly two months.
Most Asian stocks rose on Friday, buoyed by strength in chipmaking and cyclical stocks, which helped markets weather heightened tensions over the Russia-Ukraine war.
A rally in oil prices on fears of an escalation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict pushed energy stocks higher, sending the Australian sharemarket to a fresh closing high on Friday. Australia’s ASX 200 benefited from a shift into economically sensitive sectors despite Australian PMI data showing a contraction in both manufacturing and services activity.
The S&P/ASX 200 jumped 0.9 per cent to 8393.8 at the closing bell, resetting Tuesday’s record of 8374. The index climbed 1.3 per cent this week. The All Ords rose 0.8 per cent.
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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
Markets Reach For The Stars Again, Even As The Ground Shifts Under Foot!
Last week I published a show titled “The rental stress pips are squeaking” where I did a deep dive into rising rental stress across the country, to underscore the crisis we have in the rental sector. I called it the hidden crisis, because we get massive coverage of mortgage stress in the mainstream, media but rental stress not so much.
To underscore the crisis, new modelling from Impact Economics and Policy, a group of expert economists and policy specialists, estimates that back in 2022, as many as 3.2 million people were at risk of homelessness across the country, where one negative shock could result in them losing their home. This represents a 63% increase between 2016 and 2022 in the number of Australians at risk of homelessness.
A recent survey showed that 39% of Specialist Homelessness Services had to close their doors to people seeking help because they were unable to cope. With the homelessness services unable to cope despite the increase in people needing help, not enough are being assisted, and many are not even seeking help because they know they won’t get through.
Now, SGS Economics and Planning has release the tenth edition of the Rental Affordability Index (RAI) today, which shows that since 2015, rental affordability has declined in most cities, limiting where people can live and work and reshaping communities nationwide. Once affordable areas like South West Sydney and South East Melbourne are now increasingly out of reach for average rental households. Their analysis based on a different approach aligns with what I have been reporting.
The report lands as the Albanese government struggles to get support to pass two key housing bills, dismissing a last minute offer from the Greens as more about politics than progress.
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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
Homeless; Renters Punished And Perth Is Worse Than Sydney!
As expected, Australia’s communications minister Michelle Rowland has now introduced a world-first law into Parliament today that would ban children under 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents’ toughest challenges. She said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.
The bill has wide political support. After it becomes law, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restriction. But this bill is being rushed through with embarrassing haste, and the LNP appear to be supporting it in the main.
This created quite a stir among the cross benches In the Senate. You have just a 24 hour window to make a submission with the Senate trying to examine the bill in just 5 days.
So, this is another watershed moment in democratic freedom in Australia and the Uniparty appears to be running their own agenda, not ordinary Australians.
True these are steps which need to be taken to rein in the power of social medial platforms, and to ensure children have enough capability to navigate the digital age we are all part of. But a simplistic age related verification approach, which is impossible to implement well, and can we circumvented is not the best approach. Ramming this through now is more about political advantage than doing what’s right for Australia. The age Control Sledgehammer won’t Crack the Online Safety Nut, but it does lay another brick in the wall of digital control.
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Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
Age Control Sledgehammer To Crack Online Safety Nut?
OK folks a rant warning. It seems you are better placed financially and socially, if you are old with property compared with being young with none or a massive mortgage! And its structural thanks to bad policy across the board. One reason why younger people are turning away from the major Uniparty.
If you are one of the many thousands of younger Australians struggling to try and get on the property ladder, you will already know there is a war on youth, thanks to mass immigration, a permanent per capita recession, the rent shock, the energy shock, unaffordable homes, crushed wages, rampaging mortgage repayments, destroyed and expensive education, plus a ruined built environment a wrecked natural environment, oh and a dying planet.
But Older Australians are in a completely different world. CBA says Australians are freeing up more of their wallet for discretionary purchases with a focus on value and convenience, according to the latest CommBank iQ Cost of Living Insights analysis. Overall spending continues to trail inflation, up by just 1.5 per cent compared to the same time last year.
The combination of higher prices and mortgage rates has pushed the percentage of median household disposable income spent on mortgage repayments on a median-priced home to a record high of 50.6% nationally.
But on another planet, far, far away, cash sales in property surged 14 per cent to $138 billion across NSW, Victoria and Queensland over the past financial year, fuelled by wealthy downsizers, retirees and investors, a new report shows.
So it’s better to be old, with property, than young with no property or a massive mortgage, and the intergenerational gap is continuing to grow. Trouble is, unless things change trends are set to deteriorate further. Sure if you have parents with property who will fall off the perch sometime in the future, you may gat a look in, but if not, permanent renting is the order of the day. So much for the Australian dream of property ownership.
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Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.
Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.
Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.
Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.
Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.
This is an edited version of a live discussion with Robbie Barwick from the Australian Citizens Party, as we pick apart the latest developments across economics and banking.
We will explore the latest on cash availability, the postal bank, the misinformation bill as well as broader financial and economic reform. No doubt we will also touch on the latest international developments too, because that is also part of the picture.
You can ask a question live!
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/dfa-one-to-one/ for our One to One Service.
Find more at https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/ where you can subscribe to our research alerts
Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
DFA Live Q&A HD Replay: Time For A New Political And Economic Agenda: With Robbie Barwick
In this weeks show Edwin, our property insider and I look at the latest designs for higher density housing and highlight some important questions for prospective purchasers and governments. It won’t end well.
And we look at the relative performance of markets, comparing Sydney and Melbourne. What is the media pushing, and what is the reality?
And of course we look at the latest numbers and our tips for the week.
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Find more at https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/ where you can subscribe to our research alerts
Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.
Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.
Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.
Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.
Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.
