Jacolope

This is what our politicians have become. Nothing more than marketing bi-lines seeking a headline. There are the facts: 1) New business registrations don’t reflect economic health. Over recent years, they increasingly reflect people in ‘gig’ or contracting roles using a company to minimize legal liability and a lower tax rate. 2) More and more businesses are non-employing, with 64% of all businesses now employing NO-ONE. This continue to climb. 3) Business exits are increasing at a faster rate than new business registrations, with the ‘churn’ rate now around 15% and continuing to climb. 4) The average number of employeees per business continues to decline steadily over the past 10 years; from 6.3 employees per business to 5.0 currently. 5) At the top end of town - our largest companies - the top 10 companies in Australia grew earnings 0.8% pa over the past 10 years - significantly less than inflation - and did not grow employment at all!! NOT ONE NEW JOB! Where are Australia’s growth engines Mr Chalmers? Oh! As it turns out, it is small businesses. 1) The vast majority of productivity growth in Australia comes from businesses that are less than 5 years old. AND 2) Only 3-5% of those businesses account for 70-80% of employment growth. So how does Mr Chalmers encourage these businesses? 1) Removal of the CGT 50% discount. 2) Minimum 30% CGT rate!! 3) Massive regulatory increase continues. 4) A complete inability to fire under-performers. This is what happened when we have a treasurer who has spent his career explaining, not building; as an employee, never an employer; a taker, not a giver.

Humanity just did something it hasn’t done in 200,000 years. Stopped replacing itself. Global fertility fell below replacement for the first time in our history, and the numbers in 2026 are worse than the warnings were. China is in its 4th year of population decline. The share of young Chinese women who want zero children went from 5% to 47% in a decade. Taiwan now has the lowest rate on earth, under 0.8. Japan sits at 1.2. The US is at 1.62, the UK 1.49, while 2.1 is the line for a population to hold. Colombia was forecast to level off near 1.8. It’s at 1.1. Latin America is falling faster than East Asia did and demographers admit they can’t explain why. Germany has recorded more deaths than births every single year since 1972. If Thailand holds its current rate, 63 million becomes 2 million. Australia is one generation away from deaths outnumbering births, held up entirely by immigration. Every baby bonus, every incentive scheme, every government campaign has failed everywhere it’s been tried. The overpopulation panic ran for 50 years but the real crisis is the opposite and it’s here now.

A few facts please. 1) New business registrations don’t reflect economic health. Over recent years, they increasingly reflect people in a ‘gig’ or contracting role seeking legal immunity and a lower tax rate. 2) Most businesses are non-employing, with 64% of all businesses now employing no-one. 3) The average number of employeees per business has declined steadily over the past 10 from 6.3 employees to 5.0. 4) Business exits exceed the number of business registrations, with the ‘churn’ rate continuing to climb - now around 15%. 5) At the top end, the top 10 companies in Australia grew earnings 0.8% pa over the past 10 years and did not grow employment at all. We are Australia’s growth engines Mr Chalmers? Oh! The vast majority of productivity growth in Australia comes from businesses that are less than 5 years old. AND Only 3-5% of small businesses create 70-80% of employment growth. So how does Mr Chalmers encourage these businesses? Minimum 30% CGT rate!!

NEWS: More new businesses were created in June, after the Budget, than in any other month on record. New numbers out this week show more new businesses were registered last month than in any other month since these records first began in 1999. More businesses were created in the month after the Budget than in any other month on record. There’ve been 30 times the businesses starting up than closing down each day on average under Labor, and insolvency rates are almost half what they were under the Howard Government.

This is so selective. The proportion of non-mooring businesses continued to rise; now up at 64% of all registered businesses don’t employ anyone. And the average number of employees has dropped from about 6.3 to 5. In addition, the number of business exits continues to rise faster than the number of new registrations. Hence, the ‘churn’ rate continue to climb ever higher. These are hardly the stats of a robust and vibrant economy reinvesting itself through new start-ups. So, let’s look at our top 10 companies. How do they fare? Well, earnings growth of 0.8% pa for the last 10 years. Not even keeping up with CPI. And as for employment, they haven’t grown employment at all for 10 years. This is what you get with a Labour or a Liberal party in Government. Low growth, low risk, low investment, low aspirations as people shun buying a house, getting married, starting a family. The erosion of our country’s social capital right before our eyes.

Interesting fact post-budget: The number of new private sector companies registered in June was a record month at 43,000. For 2025-26, there were 386,000 business registrations, also a record high

@TheKouk The pick-up has nothing to do with the budget and everything to do with the fact that May represented to worst of the Iran war!!

Facts. Since the budget, there has been a solid pick up in confidence in the Australian economy. Consumer confidence is up 17% (Roy Morgan - ANZ measure) while business confidence is up 9 points. Of course, both measures are still pessimistic; but the turning point is welcome news. Suffice to say, the bleating of a few about how the budget measures will ruin the economy are hot air & not reflected in the way Australians see the economy. youtube.com/watch?v=UC2ZUb…

@DavidBassanese @cjoye Pretty amazing when you consider that Australian companies already have the highest dividend payout ratio in the world. Within 10 years of dividend imputation being introduced, the dividend payout ratio increased from ~45% to ~75-80%.

So investors are now seeking low tax dividend investments over higher growth opportunities. What a crazy outcome of the CGT changes. afr.com/markets/equity…

What really matters to the market and the US economy is not the Strait of Hormuz.

@AndreasSteno So says Andreas Steno “If you cannot show it in a meme . . . then it’s not true” Larsen - one of the world’s truly great philosophers. NOT!!!

Michael Burry is really nothing but a one trick pony. He is no longer curious or investigative .. just a doom-monger.. I am not saying he won’t end up being right, but his “analysis” is simply just lazy at this stage

@BNWishere @EVERALDATLARGE Wtf?

@EVERALDATLARGE Australia was abandoned during the 1930s by Scullin and Lyons. They had a weird preoccupation with neoclassical economics. Curtin and Chifley taught us, that it was the role of govt to step up during a crisis. Albo govt could opt for targeted ownership of Telstra, but won't.

I grew up in rural village of Linville during Great Depression of 1930's. No home had phone or car & there was no doctor within 100 miles. People died as there was no one who could help. We accepted it as part of life. Now we demand that govt should fall when 000 does not work.

@EVERALDATLARGE Isn’t that called progress? Increasing expectations due to improved delivery capabilities and services? Do you really want to promote Luddism?

Buy Internet Stocks You Idiot!

@FootyLock6 Except it’s not true and you have no evidence for it. Why then would you spread this rumour?

If Saul Caddy knows Hirds going to be the coach of Essendon and is telling heaps of people, it’s not great governance by the club. If it’s true and all these calls to potentials are just fake, it would be extremely disappointing

Love the logic and understand the fundamentals. However, CBA has been over-valued based on fundamental analysis for years. As have some other ASX stocks. It’s the weight of money influence that is very difficult to analyze. With the weight of money increasing - both from institutional funds and households, what will cause the correction? And when will it occur? Or is it simply that CBA’s share price does nothing or declines by 10% every year for the next 10-15 years?

Some important maths on inflated bank valuations got trimmed out of my AFR column - full analysis below… One reason the banks trade at globally anomalous multiples is the interaction between compulsory super flows and APRA's performance test. With the superannuation guarantee climbing to 12 per cent in July 2025, the system's $4.5 trillion in assets now dwarfs the ASX's $3.3 trillion capitalisation, and solid nominal wage growth has turbocharged inflows. Treasury itself concedes the Your Future Your Super test creates powerful incentives for funds to hug their benchmarks, converting rivers of new member money into price-insensitive, index-weight purchases of the banks that dominate the ASX 200. Accordingly, the banks' pricing premium reflects regulatory plumbing and flow dynamics, not fundamentals. That breeds vulnerabilities if and when investors refocus on intrinsic worth. A record housing slump coinciding with a default cycle and policy changes that hammer capital gains could usher in an enduring stretch of sub-par returns. It makes, for example, zero sense for CBA to be trading at 3.5 times book value. With the cash rate at 4.35 per cent and the 10-year Commonwealth bond yield around 4.5 per cent, a conventional CAPM cost of equity for CBA (with a beta of about 0.9 and an equity risk premium of 5-6 per cent) lands at roughly 9.5-10.5 per cent. Against a 13.6 per cent return on equity, CBA genuinely earns a spread of only 3.5-4 percentage points over its cost of capital. Plugging that into the standard residual-income identity, P/B = (ROE − g)/(COE − g), with long-run growth of 3 per cent justifies a multiple of (13.6 − 3)/(9.5 − 3), or 1.6 times book — roughly where NAB and Westpac sit, and less than half CBA's actual rating. So what does 3.5 times book imply? Inverting the same identity, the market is pricing one of two things. Either CBA's cost of equity is (13.6 − 3)/3.5 + 3, or 6 per cent — an absurdly skinny equity risk premium of 1.5 percentage points over the risk-free rate for an 18 times leveraged institution with a return on assets of just 0.77 per cent. Or, holding the cost of equity at a sane 9.5-10 per cent, investors are implying a sustainable ROE of 3.5 × (9.5 − 3) + 3, or 26-27 per cent — double what CBA has ever delivered and about triple the system's capacity in a mature, APRA-capitalised, low-credit-growth economy. Hold on to your hats... afr.com/markets/equity…

@DonCaldwelll Don’t disagree with anything here, but why? Why is that when players leave Essendon, they seem the thrive? What is it about Essendon that doesn’t get the best out of people? Coach? Culture? Club? Weather?

Jordan Ridley…. Has played in just 24 of the last 62 Essendon games, and looks about as checked out as Joe Daniher before he left the club. In Joe’s last 3 seasons at Essendon, he played in 15 games. But in Brisbane, he played in 96 of a possible 101 games, didn’t miss a final, won the clubs goal kicking twice, played in 2 grand finals & won a flag. Sam Draper has played 15 games in a row this year for Brisbane, something he only managed to do in 1 of his 5 seasons at Essendon. Ridley (27) looks to be another player to depart and flourish at another club.

@PaulAmy375 Maybe he should coach Essendon!

Port Melbourne coach Brendan McCartney at QT: 'Drive your legs ... and harden the f... up! Casey leading the Borough by 20 points.

@RalphyHeraldSun What’s the point being made I this post? Have you been drinking?

What will Essendon be like next year if Merrett and Ridley are out of this side as expected? Kudos to Dean Solomon for playing the kids. No one doubts much of the heavy lifting has been done in this rebuild. It will eventually turn. Nic Martin will be back. But full blown rebuilds can take forever

Beginning of the end? META is starting a cloud business to sell access to excess / over-supply of AI compute. Sounds like dark fibre. Is the earnings asymmetry between suppliers like NVIDIA, and customers, like META, about to reverse? techcrunch.com/2026/07/01/met…

@JacintaAllanMP I just can’t believe how bad you are as a leader.

See you at 4am.

@AlboMP @AustralianLabor Maybe mine’s in the mail.

A note to every working Australian.

Doesn’t the same logic as to the reason income is taxed apply equally to income from labour as income from capital gain? The Government doesn’t do the work in either, take the risk in either nor suffer losses in either. When it comes to Government, people serve three purposes: 1) Fight for them in times of war; 2) Pay taxes; and 3) Riot to overthrow the Government if they are not happy.

Capital gains taxes make no sense & shouldn't exist I invest my capital. I create the opportunity. I take the risk. I do the work. I take the chances. I accept the losses if things go wrong So why should the government collect a slice when things go right? They didn’t take the risk. They didn’t build the business. They just take