Wake Up Australia

Michael is joined by Judith Sloan, Contributing Economics Editor with The Australian, who writes that ‘the promoters of a Big Australia never give up, irrespective of the circumstances.  Strong economic growth?  We need more migrants. Weak economic growth?  We need more migrants. The answer is always the same.’

 

‘What’s worse than the constant, self-serving urgings is that these interest groups clearly have the ear of most politicians at all three tiers of government.’

‘Sadly, it seems the federal government, which controls the migration program, is keen to resume high levels of migration as soon as possible.’ ‘

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Michael is joined by Trent Nikolic, from Caradvice.com.au, for his take on U.K. billionaire James Dyson pulling the plug on his electric car which would have had a 600-mile range per charge and could go from zero to 62 mph in 4.8 seconds.

 

But after funding the project out of his own money, a reported $940 million, Dyson scrapped the EV plans last October telling his staff via email “though we have tried very hard throughout the development process we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable.”

 

He added that the company would “concentrate on the formidable task of manufacturing solid-state batteries” as well as other “fundamental” technologies such as machine learning & AI.

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Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute Household Finances Program Director, who writes that fewer homes will be built in Australia during the coronavirus downturn, which means job losses in the construction industry. But we need to be smart about stimulus.

 

Covid-19 has caused migration to slow to a trickle. About 2.6 million Australians have either lost their jobs or had their hours cut in the past two months which all makes for fewer homes being built in the coming months.

 

That means fewer jobs in the construction industry, which employs nearly one in ten Australians. The Morrison government is set to announce a coronavirus stimulus package for the construction sector as soon as this week.

 

But what should it include?

Michael is joined by Geoffrey Thomas, Aviation writer, author & commentator, regarding yesterday’s announcement that Bain Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners will be the final two bidders left in the race to buy Virgin Australia following the airline posting almost $7 billion in debt when going into voluntary administration.

 

Deloitte’s administrator Vaughan Strawbridge has declared that the two US-based private equity firms are “well-funded” and have “deep aviation experience” were chosen from a pool of five interested buyers after holding talks with Deloitte over the weekend.

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Michael is joined by Dr Nicola Powell, Domain’s Senior Research Analyst, regarding property values across Australia falling for the first time since June last year, as the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic take a toll on sales.

 

But Australia’s property market may be in for a softer landing than projected, with the latest CoreLogic Home Value Index, released on Monday, showing the combined value of houses and apartments dropped only 0.4 per cent last month to a national median price of $557,818.

Values fell across five of the eight capital cities in May, dropping 0.9 per cent in Melbourne to a median of $686,798, 0.4 per cent in Sydney to $885,159 and 0.1 per cent in Brisbane to $508,386.

Values also dropped 0.6 per cent in Perth to $443,669 and 1.6 per cent in Darwin to 393,939, however they were up in Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart, which had the largest gain at 0.8 per cent.

Dr Powell says the marginal movement in prices had coincided with the slowdown in transactions and she expected to see continued price weakness in the months ahead.

“It will be sometime before we see transactions at a level that we would expect for this time of year,” Dr Powell said. “We’ve seen a pullback in both sellers and buyer activity which will provide somewhat of a floor to prices.”

Listen to the full show podcast with Michael McLaren.

Michael is joined by Tom Switzer, Political adviser, former senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre (2009-17) & Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies. 

They discuss the tense protests that have broken out in America sparked by the death of George Floyd and just how the country will bounce back from this.