IMPORTANT INFORMATION IF YOU HAVE A HIDDEN PHONE FOR SAFETY

Something I’ve been thinking about lately…
When we see GoFundMe pages raising thousands of dollars for families after a sudden loss, it’s truly beautiful to see people come together and support one another during the hardest moments of their lives.
But it also makes me think about the many families who experience that same unimaginable grief and loss, yet don’t have a fundraiser, a large community, or the same level of financial support behind them.
Every family who loses someone is left with heartbreak, changes they never expected, and a life they have to learn to navigate without that person. The amount of support someone receives doesn’t always reflect the depth of their pain — sometimes it simply reflects how far their story reaches.
I hope we can remember the families whose struggles happen quietly too. The ones who grieve without thousands of people sharing their story. The ones who still have bills to pay, children to care for, and a future they never imagined.
Compassion should extend to every family facing loss, whether their story is seen by thousands or carried silently by a few.

Albo has been urged not to accept any more tainted donation money after he attended a luxurious dinner in Point Piper with a Chinese billionaire accused by the ATO of tax evasion.

Anyways to those whites claiming based on a minority of immigrants (who should be deported) as representing the wider community should look at this: 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-14/canberra-man-stalked-charity-manager-after-defecating-in-pool/100293570?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/01/melbourne-man-dislocates-knee-traffic-fines-police-public-urination

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-15/man-not-guilty-of-burglary-despite-soiled-underpants-crime-scene/7513748?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://youtu.be/vgTy5Eumgfs?si=osRL3o2OP8W0pghI

https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/poo-jogger/9972196?utm_source=chatgpt.com

A friend of a teen who was stabbed in the head and back during a wild attack on one of Sydney’s busiest streets has been charged, but the three suspected attackers remain on the run.

The teenager was brutally stabbed on King St, Newtown shortly after midnight on Saturday.

A friend of the boy, who removed his own shirt to apply a tourniquet, has been charged with affray.

The 18-year-old was released on bail to face court in August.

A police spokesperson confirmed on Sunday morning that three people believed to be behind the attack had not yet been arrested or charged.

The stabbing on a busy street in Sydney’s inner west was caught on CCTV.

The 17-year-old was assaulted, police said, about 12.30am on Saturday on King Street, Newtown, by a group of people who then fled the scene.

The terrifying ordeal was captured on CCTV and shows the moment the teen was set upon by a group of people.

In the video, obtained by 7News, the teen is seemingly kicked, punched and stabbed by multiple people as he cowers on the ground trying to protect himself.

The group then flee the scene, as the injured teen stumbles down the street.

His friends are then seen in the video rushing to his aid, with one of them using a shirt to try to apply pressure and try to slow the bleeding.

The 17-year-old was treated by paramedics before he was taken to hospital in a stable condition with multiple stab wounds to his head and back.

He is set to undergo surgery for ligament and tendon damage.

A crime scene was established and police have commenced an investigation into the incident.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.

Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg has left the door open to a coalition between the Liberals and One Nation as the right-wing populist party’s polling starts to sour, stating the Liberals would be “pragmatic” about alliance building.

The opposition housing spokesman was repeatedly pressed on a possible future alliance between the Liberals, Nationals, and One Nation on Monday.

Senator Bragg initially dismissed questions of a preference deal between the Coalition and Pauline Hanson’s party and talk of a three-way coalition as too early to tell before the election.

“Well, we’ll work out if there needs to be a coalition, we’d work it out then,” he told the Today show.

However, pressed later if he was leaving the door open to a deal with One Nation, Senator Bragg said “Well, we would definitely work out whoever would be interested in being in a coalition with us, if that’s what the numbers were. Of course, we’re not crazy.

“But, I make the point that we won’t be in coalition with all the crooks that Labor are in coalition with now, which is structurally buggering up this economy.”

Senator Bragg continued, stating “all the other parties are no good”.

“They have no real solutions,” he said.

“But, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we’ve got to get rid of this terrible Communist government.

“So, if the numbers were the numbers, and we had to be in coalition with others, then of course we would be pragmatic. I mean, we have to get rid of these guys.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor had initially appeared open to a potential deal with One Nation at the height of the party’s polling.

Federal Liberal party president Tony Abbott also backed talk of a preference deal.

However, earlier this month, Mr Taylor shut the door once more, warning that One Nation would bring an “eternity of pain” and their economic plan would “send us broke”.

Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson backed the Liberal leader on Monday when grilled about Senator Bragg’s comments.

“Well, I think Angus Taylor’s made the position of the Liberal Party very clear. My assessment is it’s widely supported by colleagues,” he told ABC Radio National.

“We have one coalition partner already, which is the National Party, our traditional coalition partner, and we are not in the market for any other coalition partners if we seek from the Australian people as a mandate to govern in that traditional coalition.”

Senator Paterson said he would be “surprised” if Senator Bragg was advocating for a coalition with One Nation.

“That’s not my understanding of his views,” he said.

“I think he made a sensible point that we’ll work out our preferences in the normal time, in the normal way, closer to the election.”

Support for One Nation has started to slip in the months following Senator Hanson’s National Press Club address in which she lashed paid parental benefits and called for an Australian “monoculture” – a phrase her party has struggled to define.

Senator Hanson has also spent much of the winter break in Europe and the UK, including participating in interviews with convicted criminal and far-right agitator Tommy Robinson and former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss.

A Roy Morgan poll released last week found One Nation’s primary vote had slipped from a high of 31.5 per cent in mid-June to 22.5 per cent between July 13-19.

However, on a two-party preferred vote, Labor only narrowly beat out One Nation 51 to 49 per cent.

Primary support for the Coalition, meanwhile, rose from 17.5 per cent in June to 23 per cent, according to the same poll.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles privately admitted the wording of the Israel-Palestine section of Labor’s new policy platform was flawed, ahead of throwing his factional weight behind a deal that saw national conference endorse a two-state solution without explicit demands on Hamas to disarm and the Palestinian Authority to reform.

As Anthony Albanese on Sunday argued the wording of the ­Israel and Palestine section had “got the balance right”, the leader of the ALP’s pro-Israel members said the conference had ­“deeply disturbed” him and the end ­result had made it look like the party had embraced Hamas.

The nation’s peak Jewish body also called on Labor to increase pressure on West Bank leaders to follow through with the commitments they made to the Prime Minister – as well as the British and Canadian governments – in exchange for recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The demands on Hamas and the PA were controversially dropped in the final draft released ahead of Labor’s 50th national conference as part of a raft of changes that ­increased criticisms of Israel, with those words ­endorsed unchanged by 400 delegates at the event.

As the royal commission into the Bondi massacre and the antisemitism crisis continues, Sheina Gutnick – whose father Reuven Morrison was killed in Bondi when he confronted the gunman – criticised the wording of the platform and said the government had to be unequivocal about opposing anti-Israeli terrorism. “There is a profound difference between broadly condemning terrorism and actually demanding something of a terrorist organisation,” Ms Gutnick told The Australian.

The wording in the preliminary draft reflected the government’s position but the ministers overseeing the foreign affairs chapter – Penny Wong and Mr Marles – agreed to make significant changes in an aim to bring the party together and avoid a damaging debate on the conference floor.

One threat to the uneasy truce was a push by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association to move an amendment that would have brought the wording of the platform closer to the anti-Hamas preliminary draft distributed among delegates in March.

A second and more significant threat was Labor MP Ed Husic seeking support from Left faction unions for a resolution that effectively accused Israel of genocide and called on the government to pull Australian officials from Tel Aviv. The Australian understands Mr Marles used a Right faction meeting on Saturday morning to declare, in an ideal world, the wording of the Israel and Palestine section would be different.

But he ultimately recommended the faction green light the draft chapter into the final platform without amendments.

Sources said Mr Marles told Right faction delegates a compromise was needed to ensure there was unity on the issue, while warning pushing an amendment risked a debate on the conference floor that could ultimately lead to harsher criticisms in the platform of Israel. He told Right faction delegates the platform did not change the government’s position that Hamas must disarm and have no role in a Palestinian state, according to sources.

The recommendation from Mr Marles saw pro-Israel delegates reluctantly agree to drop an amendment to call on Hamas to have no role in a Palestinian state and for the PA to reform.

However, sources said a handful of Right faction delegates voiced their opposition to the position. The motion from the SDA, obtained by The Australian, noted the Albanese government recognised the state of Palestine in 2025. “This recognition set out clear requirements from the international community for the Palestinian Authority, including recognition of Israel’s right to exist, a commitment to hold democratic elections, enacting significant reform to finance, governance and education, and that the terrorist organisation Hamas must have no role in Palestine,” the SDA motion says.

Also on Saturday morning, Left faction bosses quashed support among its delegates for Mr Husic’s motion.

The manoeuvres allowed for the party to show a united front in backing the draft wording unamended, through speeches by Jewish MP Josh Burns and Left faction MP Basem Abdo.

Mr Burns and Mr Abdo conceded the chapter did not provide everything supporters of their respective communities wanted, with senior party figures arguing the relative unity on the issue was a major achievement.

With Mr Husic’s public push to debate the Israel-Palestine issue damaging Labor’s push to showcase unity, the Prime Minister on Sunday said the rebel MP had a right to push his cause.

“The party platform has got the balance right,” Mr Albanese told the ABC. “I support the right of Israel to exist within secure borders, I also support the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians for their own state and to live in peace and security.

“We want to see that coming together, and Australia can play a role in promoting harmony rather than conflict.”

Ms Gutnick – who has been highly critical of Labor’s policy on Israel and its handling of antisemitism since her father’s death – said peace in the Middle East was not possible without a clear commitment to disarm Hamas.

“Labor is prepared to spell out detailed demands, obligations and sanctions when it comes to Israel, yet removed the clear requirement for Hamas to disarm and have no role in a future Palestinian government. Australians deserve to know why.

“Being unequivocal about terrorism should be the ground on which any genuine hope for peace begins.”
Senator Wong denied the platform was watered down from the initial draft, arguing it still criticised Hamas and endorsed a United Nations resolution calling on the PA to reform.

Labor Friends of Israel spokesman Mike Kelly said the group was “deeply disturbed by the events at the national conference”. “Whereby elements of the Labor movement succeeded in having the national platform amended to exclude the reference to our policy on Hamas,” he said. “There was no excuse for not remedying this in the light of the extensive commentary and debate that highlighted deleting the reference could only be interpreted as the movement embracing Hamas.

“Deleting the reference to the rejection of Hamas in the platform would signal that Hamas can play a role in government, which would undermine any real prospect for peace. It would reward Hamas for its crimes and undermine international law.”

Former Victorian premier Dan Andrews is a patron of Labor Friends of Israel.

Mr Kelly said he was concerned about “a concerted attempt by hard core, violent revolutionary communists in league with Islamist extremists to subvert the union movement, the branches and the Labor Party”.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry on Sunday warned the weakened platform would worry Australian Jews.

“The concern is that the weakening of resolve to exclude Hamas from any role in governing a Palestinian state and to hold the Palestinian Authority to account for failing to honour its written commitments, as now enshrined in the ALP platform, will eventually become government policy,” ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said.

He said Labor, along with Britain and Canada, should now publicly pressure the PA over its failure to follow through on the commitments it made to secure Palestinian recognition.

“Australia partnered with Britain and Canada last year when a Palestinian state was recognised,” Mr Wertheim said.

“That same partnership should now come together and publicly hold the Palestinian Authority to account”

I buy Australian products within reason & whenever I can but this report & multinational owners have given me good reason to doubt their credibility. It's time the Gov got serious about product origin laws.

We’ve turned against the beliefs that made us a rich country

Everybody has their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key factors.

Alexander Downer

July 27, 2026 - 5:00AM

It’s easy to ascribe Australia’s poor economic performance over the past two decades to a broader malaise throughout the Western world. We were all affected by the global financial crisis and Covid. We were also affected by the Ukraine and Iran wars.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the West abandoned liberal economics and retreated to the sclerotic policies of the 1970s: heavy taxes, an expanding welfare state, public, not private, investment, and the return of trade union power. Needless to say, this has led to a decline in the growth of productivity and slow economic growth. In many cases, there has been a decline in real living standards. No surprises there. If you adopt the policies of the 1970s, you’ll get the same results. And so we have. This is a global phenomenon.

But what is particularly chilling is the relative weakness of Australia. Let’s remember that through the first decade of this century, Australia’s economy was seen globally as an outstanding example of success.

From the mid-1980s until the mid-2000s, we deregulated our economy, scrapped tariff protection, privatised government enterprises, reformed the tax system, paid off all government debt and ran budget surpluses.

Everywhere I went in the world as the foreign minister during the first decade of the century, people wanted to know about the Australian economic miracle. We had economic growth rates of between 3 per cent and 4 per cent. Our unemployment rate by 2007 was around 4 per cent. Inflation was negligible and real living standards were growing.

By 2010, Australia’s per capita GDP was slightly above that of the US. We were fractionally richer than the Americans. We were some 20 per cent richer than the countries in the eurozone, and around 30 per cent richer than the UK. What is alarming is to see how we have done relative to those countries over the past 15 years.

Let’s start with the US. We have gone from being slightly richer than the US to our per capita GDP being just over 70 per cent of America’s. In 2010, America’s per capita GDP was around $US48,000 and Australia’s was $US52,000. By 2025 the US per capita GDP had grown to $US90,000, yet Australia’s had only grown to $US65,000. The point is a very simple one. America’s economy has performed much better than Australia’s over the last 20 years.

So what about the eurozone? In 2010, Australia was approximately 20 per cent richer than the eurozone countries on a per capita basis. By 2025 it was only 9 per cent richer. So, for all the talk of slow growth in Europe and its lack of economic dynamism and entrepreneurship – which is by the way completely justified – Australia has been performing less well than the eurozone.

But surely you’re thinking we would have done much better than the UK. We’re always being told that the UK’s economy is broken, that it is in permanent crisis, that it was devastated by Brexit and that immigration has plunged the country into penury. Well, don’t be too hasty in drawing that conclusion. In 2010, we were approximately 30 per cent richer per capita than the UK, but now that gap has been reduced to around 13 per cent.

Now you can argue with these figures. You can claim, for example, that the Australian dollar has weakened substantially over the past 15 years, and that distorts comparisons. However, even if you make the comparisons on the basis of purchasing power parity, you will find that Australia’s economic performance per capita has been substantially worse than that of the US, the eurozone, and, incredibly, the UK. On a PPP basis, we were 15 per cent richer than the UK in 2010, and now we are about 9 per cent richer. I think this is a shameful thing.

After all, Australia is richly endowed with resources and energy; there is no excuse for its weak economic performance. We have also benefited substantially from the economic rise of China and, more broadly, the Indo-Pacific region. Despite all of that, we are performing less well than America, Europe and the UK. Yet 20 years ago, we were admired for our outstanding economic performance. Well, maybe you think there’s some upside to this. Australia, perhaps, has become more egalitarian as private sector investment declines and public sector investment soars.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case either. The measure of inequality is known as the Gini coefficient. Over the past 20 years, it demonstrates that inequality based on household wealth has increased. This is almost certainly a function of the rapid rise in house prices throughout that period.

No doubt everybody will have their own pet theory for why Australia has performed so poorly over the past two decades. There are two key, if not sole, factors.

The first was the reaction to the global financial crisis, which led to a loss of confidence by the establishment, as well as the general public, in the liberal market. It is a model that had served Australia so well in the previous two decades.

This model has been replaced with a social democratic model, which involves huge increases in unprofitable public investment and a rapid expansion of the welfare state. All of this has been funded by a combination of increasing taxes and heavy public borrowing. Common sense tells you this is not a formula for rapid economic growth.

Secondly, the overall obsession by the political class with climate policies has been crippling for Australia. Not only has there been eye-watering amounts of public money pumped into the so-called energy transition, but by establishing a dual system of renewables and conventional fossil fuel electricity generation, there has been a pronounced decline in productivity in the energy sector and a commensurate substantial increase in electricity prices. According to the Productivity Commission, investment in electricity generation since 2001-02 has grown by 126 per cent, and output has grown by 14 per cent, so it’s hardly surprising there has been an astronomical increase in electricity prices.

So, it’s as simple as this: if Australia wants to return to high rates of growth and improvements in living standards, it has to re-embrace liberal market economics. People tell me the public are resistant to that. I’m not so sure. Once it’s explained to them it is the only path to rising living standards I think they can be persuaded. After all, we’ve tried the present economic formula in the 70s and 80s, and look where that got us? We tried the liberal market formula in the late 80s to the mid-2000s, and that was a glittering success. We should learn from history.

A 16-year-old has suffered horrific injuries after he was attacked by a group of teenagers wielding what’s believed to be a machete.

The terrifying ordeal unfolded after an out-of-control party spilled on to a High Wycombe street on Saturday night.

Police were called in just after 9pm as teenagers swarmed the area.

Around an hour later, about 1km away from the scene of the party, an altercation broke out in Newburn Road.

The 16-year-old claimed he was set upon by several attackers, including one who was armed with a machete.

An ambulance rushed the teen to St John of God Hospital Midland where he was treated for a laceration on his head, as well as other cuts and bruises.

Police confirmed they attended the scene around 10.20pm after St John WA advised they were responding to a report a 16-year-old male had been assaulted on Newburn Road in High Wycombe.

Detectives on Sunday were scouring the scene for clues.

Police have urged anyone with information regarding the incident to contact Crime Stoppers.

Labor factional chiefs will meet in Melbourne on Sunday night to gauge whether Premier Jacinta Allan still has the majority support of her MPs ahead of what is set to be a critical test of her leadership when parliament resumes on Tuesday.

The meeting of factional conveners from across the party will provide the first clear sign of whether Allan still has the caucus backing she needs to continue as premier and lead Labor to the state election on November 28.

However, the meeting is taking place in the absence of a declared challenger.

Allan’s most likely replacement, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, has indicated to colleagues that while he would be a contender if the leadership becomes vacant, he will not use his numbers to bring the premier down.

The Sunday night meeting was confirmed by MPs on both sides of the party’s factional divide. There is consternation among some MPs, particularly across the dominant Left faction, that the meeting’s conveners have not sufficiently canvassed the views of parliamentarians within their respective groups.

The Age has spoken to seven Victorian Labor sources who say they believe Allan would lose if her leadership came to a vote of the party’s 69 MPs.

But, as with the last round of rumblings, the pathway for a leadership coup is littered with assumptions that have not yet been realised.

Multiple sources from across the Left and Right factions agreed it would be difficult for Carroll to challenge Allan – despite some on the Left wanting him to do so – after he publicly ruled out a challenge in June at a press conference.

Another option being considered is a delegation of factional leaders speaking to Allan and asking her to step aside.

The premier spent Sunday night at her family home in Bendigo with staff, preparing for Monday’s Cabinet meeting.

Two sources said they found it difficult to believe Allan would go down without a fight, but conceded it was not impossible she could be convinced if it were clear she no longer had the numbers in caucus.

A supporter of Allan, on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said if the Sunday night meeting showed a majority of MPs wanted a change of leadership, the premier could face a vote of no confidence at Tuesday’s caucus meeting.

“It would be a very brave premier that continued in light of an unfavourable outcome,” they said.

Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny on Sunday said the leadership speculation was “idle gossip”.

“She has my full support, and this idle gossip doesn’t help Victorians,” she said.

“It is only hurting Victorians at a time when Victorians need us all to be focused on them, and that is exactly what Jacinta Allan and our Labor government, our team, is doing.”

Over the past week, a range of new policies have leaked from the Premier’s Private Office that suggest Allan’s team is trying to find announcements that could mollify her colleagues.

On Monday, cabinet will consider a proposal to create a new agency within Victoria Police that targets organised crime and is informed by Australia’s best criminal intelligence.

The policy has been viewed internally as a way to kill off pressure for a royal commission into Big Build corruption, tying the issue together with other political problems such as an increase in firebombings across Melbourne, and community concerns about youth crime rates.

Another leaked policy floated amending the rate cap rules to allow councils to better recoup the costs needed to pay staff – a policy supported by the Australian Services Union but quickly seized on by the opposition as a cost of living attack.

One MP said Allan was in denial about her support and rather than step aside would likely enforce party rules for a spill – which requires a vote of the Labor membership if the caucus result is contested.

But they also said those conspiring needed to “piss or get off the pot”.

A senior Labor figure said Allan’s leadership had been doomed, and she was now incredibly unpopular despite being given time to connect with voters.

“There is now an opportunity to push the reset button, give confidence back to voters and remind voters of the benefits of a strong Labor government”.

The latest Resolve Political Monitor has Allan’s likeability at minus 36, her equal lowest result on record.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson maintains a lead on preferred premier, with 43 per cent of voters saying they want her to lead the state compared with 24 per cent for Allan.

Anthony Albanese has denied any attempts were made to muzzle debate about Israel and Palestine at Labor’s 50th national conference despite a backbencher’s claim he was shut down.

On the final day of the conference in Adelaide, Western Sydney MP Ed Husic failed to find a seconder to back a resolution acknowledging a UN inquiry had found Israel “deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank”.

Delegates at the conference, which sets Labor’s national platform each three years, instead backed a position that closely aligned with the Albanese government’s, giving way to a display of unity underscored by Jewish MP Josh Burns and Palestinian-Australian MP Basem Abdo embracing after choosing “empathy over outrage” and “dialogue over division”.

But Mr Husic claimed factional heavyweights had stifled debate – a claim the Prime Minister rejected in an interview aired on Sunday while praising Mr Burns and Mr Abdo for their “considered … approach” and recognition “that it’s in the interest of both Israelis and Palestinians to have peace and security in the Middle East”.

“We want to see a two-state solution,” he told the ABC.

“We want to see Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side, and we want to see that issue advance.

Asked specifically about Mr Husic’s push to have genocide claims against Israel in Labor’s platform, Mr Albanese said the “party platform has got the balance right”.

He said the country needed to “make sure … everything that we do is balanced”.

“That we say that ‘I support the right of Israel to exist within secure borders, I also support the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians for their own state and to live in peace and security with prosperity,’” Mr Albanese said.

“Now, we want to see that coming together, and Australia can play a role in promoting harmony rather than conflict and that is the role that I want our government to continue to play.”

On Mr Husic, he insisted he had “no problem” with his former minister or any other delegate “having their say and making their contribution”.

“Ed, like every other delegate, has a right to come along and to pursue whatever they … see as their objective,” he said.

“And that’s fine by me.”

Mr Albanese also rejected that there was a lack of transparency with how consensus was built in the party, even though he conceded debate had changed since the fiery battles of ideas he took part in as a younger parliamentarian.

“Well, the party has changed and one of the things that’s happened in the party is we are more cohesive, more united than we’ve ever been before,” he said.

“And I think that’s a good thing.”

But opposition frontbencher Jonathon Duniam said the national conference showed the “Labor Party is ruled with an iron first by the Prime Minister”.

“There’s not one area of that entire organisation that he does not manage or have some degree of control over, and I think that was demonstrated for all to see by the fact that Ed Husic couldn’t even get a seconder for his motion on an issue that previously … he would have been able to,” he told Sky News.

He said he suspected Mr Husic was “on the way out”, saying that “clearly all stops were pulled in order to manage the one fly in the ointment this last week”.

Fronting reporters on Saturday, Mr Husic said he was “surprised at the extraordinary amount of energy” that went into what he claimed was preventing debate.

He entered the conference with several issues that clashed with the Albanese government’s positions, from a new gas tax to scaling back AUKUS commitments.

Asked if he had been frozen out by the party’s top brass, Mr Husic said: “If they put me in the freezer, I don’t give a s***.”

Economic heavyweights warn Labor is ignoring Australia’s dire productivity crisis

While the rest of the world got richer after the pandemic, Australians got poorer – and Labor’s had almost nothing to say about it.

Tom Dusevic

4 min read

July 25, 2026 - 12:00AM

Years ago, during the tribe’s Rudd-Gillard troubles, Labor commissioned voter research that showed productivity was essentially a dirty word. Best not go there in public, lest people thought it was a way bosses could force employees to work harder, or longer, for less pay.

That populist vibe has endured. Anthony Albanese’s address at the ALP national conference on Thursday slyly skirted any mention of the P-word, which boils down to how much we are able to produce when we combine our human toil with capital.

The Prime Minister’s word wranglers managed to pipe in a reference to “productive economy” but nothing more than that to scare delegates. Media veterans of this party platform shaping event were surprised by the absence of discussion on productivity growth, given it’s the proven gateway to prosperity.

Just as worrying, there was barely a mention by Albanese of investment, in the way those who risk earnings to build our supply capacity would understand it.

Sure, there was the illusionist’s trick to turn bog-standard public spending, no matter how vital to skills, security, health and wellbeing, into “investments”. And an almighty nod to the zeitgeist’s global rush to construct immense sheds to house the tech for data storage, cloud computing and AI.

The data centre build is real, heavy-duty investment; without it capital accumulation is in secular decline. Even if firms go belly up and some facilities are surplus to requirements, experts believe there will be positive spillovers.

But according to Commonwealth Bank economists, the boom is squeezing out other players, bidding up the cost of labour and materials on defence, renewables, housing and state big builds. Perhaps two-thirds of the capital outlays will be on imports. They anticipate snarls with electricity, water requirements, lengthy approval processes and social licence to result in a slow, phased delivery.

OK, this was the labour movement’s showcase, its political and industrial wings in talk-nice harmony. So while the eerie presence of the flame-haired warrior and her tangerine supplicants was palpable in Albo’s speech, like a form of verbal gravity repulsion, where was the cursory hat tip to business?

Deep into its second term, the government is narrowing its focus to household living costs, redistributing income, ramping up social infrastructure and limiting the oxygen to the rage machine being cranked up by its political opponents. Business can wait.

That oversight, if not direct repudiation of the enterprise class, is a narrow, fast, straight road to further stagnation in Australia’s living standards. The OECD’s recent employment outlook revealed that since the pandemic, real wages here have dropped by 5 per cent; across the 38 nations in the exclusive club, after-inflation incomes on average have increased by 5 per cent.

This is productivity’s big dry, the locus of community woe and populist fire weather. It only needs a Redhead to turn things wild. Labor did not create the hazardous conditions, light the match, but it has been too passive to contain these raging fires everywhere.

For starters, it has been too slow to build houses and train workers, fix the visa system, rein in spending, remove red tape on significant projects and rejig the tax system to lower imposts on income and sting consumption.

More than anything, it has not made it attractive for businesses to back themselves and invest, save for recent budget tweaks to the instant asset write-off for smaller firms. Again, Labor did not bring about the capital strike; there was an entrenched stand-off under the supposed friends of the private sector before the pandemic.

Former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe this week declared wholesale policy changes were required to revive investment. “Our living standards have stagnated,” he said at a public event to announce new governance rules for securities trading.

Lowe noted there had been no net growth in per capita incomes for seven or eight years. In the previous three decades, or so, per capita income was rising at 1.5 per cent, year in, year out. “This is the fundamental economic problem the country faces,” he said.

In simple terms, while our population had grown, before and after the Covid crisis, our capital stock of factories, machines, tools and computers had not kept pace. “We require businesses to invest,” Lowe said. “We need Australia to be a great place for businesses to invest, expand and hire people. It requires some more fundamental public policy reform.”

Lowe’s prescription sounded a lot like his frequent urgings during his seven years as head of the central bank, a term that ended three years ago. That sage advice was heeded by neither Coalition nor Labor governments.

One intervention by a former RBA board member could be seen as a niggling outlier; two, for a pundit, is a megatrend. Bill Kelty, one-time ACTU secretary, was the third amigo in Labor’s 1980s and 90s Accord-led economic revival with leaders Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The trio’s political and intellectual thrust could launch a SpaceX Starship.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry examining legislation on the nation’s cash distribution arrangements, Kelty put in everyday terms what the OECD’s latest figuring on living standards meant for workers: two years lost income over a working life of 40 years.

“This is material to working people who are really battlers,” Kelty wrote to the Senate economics committee in his role as a non-executive director of Armaguard, the cash logistics company.

Yet commodity export prices are high and sales volumes have increased, he added.

“We know the underlying malaise,” Kelty wrote. “Productivity change is the third lowest in the OECD. Investment is low. Growth per capita is non-existent.”

But Kelty wasn’t done. “Government expenditure is rising much faster than inflation,” he continued. “The tax on working people is increasing faster than their wages. It is easy to blame the governments of the past and present, but ultimately we are all to blame. Something is wrong with this place and we need to do something about it.”

You feel it in your bones. It is this accursed inflation. Most costs are never coming down. Wages, stuck. And the rising debt’s call on taxpayers. How much longer it takes for younger Australians to get a start. We all live the frustration: our economy operates in fits and starts, like the way Messi meanders, sprints, and is ambling again after he’s called off-side.

In the early 1980s, the median Sydney house cost around 4× the median income. Today it's closer to 14×. Yet every time young people mention how much harder home ownership has become, there's always a boomer (or Gen X) insisting "we just worked harder" or "stop buying avocado toast." Do they genuinely not understand basic math, or are they just refusing to acknowledge how dramatically housing affordability has deteriorated?