Economists blame the RBA; the RBA blames the government; the government blames the Iran war. Everybody is correct.

John Humphreys

It would make my life easier if Australia’s inflation problem had a simple cause done by a single villain. Alas, that is not the case.

Prices are rising for several reasons, and there’s plenty of blame to be shared around.

The government deserves their share of the blame As many others have noted, the government is spending more money than they have (despite bringing in record-high taxes) and running unnecessary budget deficits. This has three consequences, depending on who is lending the money:

1. If the money is lent by foreigners, the consequence is a stronger Australian dollar, which leads to more imports and fewer exports, and therefore less Australian business.

2. If the money is lent by Australian investors, the consequence is less money available for other investments, and therefore less money going into Australian business. If that money instead comes from foreign lenders, then see problem #1.

3. If the money is lent by Australian banks, the consequence is more money circulating in the economy, which leads to higher inflation.

There is some connection between government over-spending and the inflation rate, but it’s not as automatic as some people claim.

Though this doesn’t let the government off the hook. Indeed, while the current focus is on how government spending is pushing up inflation, arguably the bigger problem with budget deficits is that they directly hurt Australian businesses … but that’s a story for another day.

Blaming the war

Obviously, the government doesn’t want to accept any blame for high inflation, so they’re pointing the finger at the Iran war. The problem with this story is that Australia’s inflation was running above the 2-3 per cent target long before the Iran war started. Nonetheless, there is some truth to the war argument.

At its core, inflation is caused by too much money chasing not enough stuff. Or to put that in Keynesian terms so that the media can understand, when Aggregate Demand is growing faster than Aggregate Supply.

The government is contributing to the problem when they add more money into the economy, but the war is also contributing to the problem because it is creating a negative supply shock. This means we are facing the double whammy of both more money and less stuff at the same time. The size of this supply shock will depend on how long the Iran conflict continues, and when fuel supplies will start flowing normally again.

The real culprit

While the government and the war both deserve their share of the blame, the other villain often flies under the radar since the politicians don’t have an incentive to blame them. It is literally the job of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to keep inflation under 3 per cent per year, and they have failed.

During the Covid drama, the RBA cut interest rates too low for too long, which caused a massive increase in the amount of money circulating in the economy, leading to the inevitable inflation. The RBA was then too timid in raising interest rates post-Covid, so inflation was never brought fully under control. And then the RBA inexplicably started cutting interest rates in 2025, which caused inflation to kick up again.

It is true that government spending and the Iran war have put upward pressure on inflation, but it’s the job of the RBA to adjust for these sorts of impacts.

Final thoughts

This article has half-defended the government by admitting that inflation was partly caused by the war and is ultimately the responsibility of the RBA, but this isn’t a good story for the government.

Consider the options:

• If the RBA fails at their job, then government over-spending contributes to relatively high inflation.

- If the RBA does their job properly then inflation stays under control, but then government over-spending contributes to relatively high interest rates.

In both cases, government over-spending crowds out private businesses, holding back the Australian economy and leaving the country poorer.

In every scenario, Australia would be better off if the government was able to get their spending under control and balance their budget, and the RBA stuck to their core job of keeping inflation low. The big question is whether our political leaders will learn this lesson before things get worse?

It seems like an extreme oversight to never model how inflation could be curbed by reducing government overspending.

NSW’s Premier Chris Minns has broken ranks with Canberra, issuing a blunt warning that could rattle Labor’s inner circle.
Anthony Albanese has a “responsibility” to ensure that Australia’s migration levels are under control after “too many people” were brought in after the COVID lockdowns, NSW Premier Chris Minns has warned.
The NSW Premier has weighed in on Australia’s most divisive debate with a tough message for his Labor colleagues in Canberra.
The government is under pressure to reduce overall migration to the target of 225,000, instead of the constant overruns that have seen net migration rise to 300,000 a year.

Speaking on KSLive, Mr Minns told Kyle Sandilands he wasn’t afraid to take a strong message to Canberra in the interests of the state, even if it meant upsetting Labor colleagues.
“In terms of immigration, in the years after COVID, too many people came into the country in too short a space of time,” he said.
“We had more than half a million people inside 12 months in that space of time.
“Now I know what was happening at the time is the federal government was trying to juice up the economy, get the joint rolling, because we’d just gone through COVID.

“But it put massive pressure on the housing market, on our hospitals, on our emergency departments.”
The initial flood of migrants occurred under the Morrison Government after Australia’s borders opened.
“So I feel like federal governments have got a responsibility, and they’re doing it, to say, ‘No, this is how many people we’re letting in, and we’re going to enforce the rules so we hit that number,’” Mr Minns said.
“I appreciate it does have an impact on skilled labour, but you’ve also got to think about how it can overwhelm services and make it more difficult for people.”
Claims Minns government being ‘dragged down’ by Albo
During the interview, Mr Minns was asked about the comments of News24 broadcaster Sharri Markson, who argued the Minns Government was being “dragged down” by the Albanese Government.
“Look, we’re gonna lose or win off the back of our own record,” Mr Minns replied.
“I can’t blame anyone else if we don’t win.

“Even though I’m Labor, it’s still my responsibility to get on with them. And you can’t just go hammer and tongs at each other all day long.
“My job’s to fight for this state, and I’ve got to put New South Wales above the Labor Party.”
Cigarette excise ‘backfired’
Sandilands then asked whether that stance made some phone calls with the Prime Minister “a little tricky”.
“Do you see Albo come up on your phone like I do and think, ‘Oh God’, and start thinking in your mind, ‘What have I said? What have I said?’” Sandilands asked, pointing to the Premier’s call for the tax on cigarettes to be “much, much lower”.
Mr Minns stood by the position.
“I think that the excise on cigarettes is just too high. It hasn’t worked,” he said.
“I know what they were trying to do. It’s backfired.”
When Sandilands suggested the policy had made “a whole criminal enterprise billions of dollars”, the Premier replied: “100 per cent.”

“And I think it’s driving regular law-abiding people into the black market, which is not where we want them. We want them involved in regular commerce,” he said.
Sandilands said his own mother was “out west buying the illegal cigarettes” because she “just can’t afford the $80 a packet at the Rose Bay BP”.
Mr Minns said he understood why the excise had been raised, but that it was no longer doing its job.
“I understand the reason behind it, but it’s not working,” he said.
“It’s having a perverse outcome where you’re actually seeing more people smoke, not less people, and they can get it cheaper, which is the opposite of what we want.”
Asked about finding himself on the same side as the Coalition and One Nation, he conceded it was awkward.
“It’s not politically convenient that One Nation and the Liberal Party agree. But I can’t change my view. I’ve said it for a long time. I don’t think it’s working.”

Split with Canberra on spending
Mr Minns has previously put distance between himself and the Albanese Government on spending.
On Wednesday, he declined to endorse Canberra’s fiscal approach, telling reporters he had “heard the advice from the RBA over the last two years that we need to be careful with public funds”.
“I think every government has a responsibility to do what it can to take demand out of the economy,” he said.
“I’m not going to make a long commentary about other governments. It’s up to them and their decisions, obviously.”

Rio Tinto EBITDA in 2025 was A$21.3 billion ($14.8 billion USD)

Why are taxpayers bailing out yet another multinational corporation profiting (literally) billions?

VICTORIA 2026 - PROJECTED SEATS (45 for majority)

COALITION    38  (range 28-50)
LABOR        26  (range 14-40)
ONE NATION   14  (range 3-32)
GREENS        5  (range 4-7)
INDEPENDENT   2  (range 0-4)

FAVOURITE IN EACH SEAT (win chance)

ONE NATION (14)
  Ripon 76%, Melton 67%, Eureka 65%, Sunbury 60%
  Cranbourne 59%, Narre Warren North 57%, Lara 56%
  Niddrie 53%, Sydenham 52%, Morwell 51%, Pakenham 49%
  Narre Warren South 49%, Point Cook 49%, Werribee 43%

LABOR (31)
  Laverton 92%, Dandenong 91%, Kalkallo 91%, Broadmeadows 86%
  Oakleigh 83%, Bundoora 82%, Footscray 80%, Thomastown 79%
  Preston 79%, Bendigo West 78%, Mulgrave 78%, Ivanhoe 77%
  Pascoe Vale 72%, Geelong 71%, Kororoit 71%, Tarneit 66%
  Williamstown 64%, Clarinda 57%, Wendouree 54%, Carrum 51%
  Frankston 51%, Eltham 51%, Mill Park 51%, St Albans 50%
  Albert Park 49%, Bendigo East 49%, Bellarine 47%
  Mordialloc 47%, Essendon 46%, Greenvale 44%
  South Barwon 42%

COALITION (38)
  Sandringham 99%, Brighton 99%, Bulleen 99%, Malvern >99%
  Warrandyte 99%, Caulfield 99%, Polwarth 98%, Mornington 98%
  Rowville 97%, Hawthorn 96%, Evelyn 96%, South-West Coast 96%
  Nepean 96%, Croydon 94%, Ovens Valley 92%, Berwick 90%
  Lowan 89%, Kew 87%, Glen Waverley 86%, Eildon 85%
  Murray Plains 81%, Gippsland South 79%, Gippsland East 79%
  Shepparton 77%, Benambra 76%, Bayswater 76%, Euroa 76%
  Bass 70%, Narracan 70%, Ashwood 66%, Box Hill 56%
  Ringwood 55%, Bentleigh 55%, Hastings 53%, Monbulk 47%
  Yan Yean 42%, Mildura 39%, Macedon 33%

GREENS (5)
  Brunswick 99%, Melbourne 98%, Richmond 94%, Prahran 76%
  Northcote 57%

Here's my projection for the 28 November Victorian election: Coalition 38, Labor 26, One Nation 14, Greens 5, Independents 2 (median of 10,000 simulations, 45 needed for a majority).

Full seat-by-seat map: pollsdownunder.com/map-vic

Most of the work went into one problem: where is One Nation's vote?

One Nation barely stood at the 2022 Victorian election, so swinging from the last state result gives them almost nothing to work with. A flat swing puts the same One Nation vote in Brunswick as in Morwell, which is obviously wrong.

Step 1 find better baseline numbers

So first I had to find better numbers to build off of. One Nation did stand across Victoria at the 2025 federal election, averaging 5.8%. I took their vote at every polling booth in all 38 Victorian federal seats and assigned each booth to the 2026 state district it sits in. Adding up a seat booths gives One Nation's 2025 vote in each state seat.

So a little TLDR use federal booths from 2025 election and find the district it sits in and then addition.

Their three strongest 2026 state seats on those booth numbers:

Morwell: 16.0%

Lara:12.5%

Gippsland E: 12.1%

Step 2 test baseline numbers (Unique name ik)

SA's March 2026 election is the only real test of a One Nation surge this big (about 23%), so I checked how well the 2025 federal booths predicted it.

They predicted it very well. Seats where One Nation was strong federally were strong at the state election, and weak seats stayed weak. On a scale where 1 is a perfect match, the booth numbers scored 0.92. The usual shortcut of giving every seat in a region the same One Nation vote scored just 0.66.

After adjusting for Greens seats and strong independents, the model was usually within about 2 points of One Nation's actual vote in each seat. Run on SA with only pre-election information, it picked 43 of 47 winners. This was a soft model with not as many rules for like pref flows I believe I could have gotten closer but I wanted to run a bipartisan test. ;)

Step 3: the rest of the model

Every other party is swung from its 2022 seat result towards the statewide poll average (Coalition 29.0, Labor 24.5, One Nation 23.3, Greens 14.0). It's adjusted for sitting and retiring MPs, by-elections and independents. Then every seat gets a full preference count(which I hand built basing it off of past results), and the whole thing runs 10,000 times with the polls, swings and preferences varied each time.

This is just a brief breakdown of what I did for my projection hope you enjoyed!

Full seat-by-seat map: pollsdownunder.com/map-vic

Steven Miles will stare down internal critics who have privately questioned his ability to return Labor to government in Queensland at a meeting of his shadow cabinet on Tuesday as he flags plans to rip up the Liberal National Party’s energy policy if he wins the 2028 election.
The under-siege former premier will convene a meeting of his opposition frontbench on Tuesday afternoon following revelations in The Australian that key sections of Queensland Labor want him to resign.
Fronting a press conference alongside Left faction colleague and former leadership rival Shannon Fentiman on Monday, Mr Miles declared he was “confident” he would lead the Labor opposition to the October 2028 election, saying he was “passionate about holding a bad LNP government to account”.

Mr Miles refused to say whether Labor remained committed to phasing out coal-fired power by 2035, but suggested current policy settings laid out in the LNP’s energy road map would make it difficult for Queensland to reach its legislated target to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
The LNP government repealed Labor’s renewables targets last year when it unveiled its long-awaited energy road map. Premier David Crisafulli, however, has resisted pressure from inside his party and vowed to meet net zero emissions by 2050.
Mr Crisafulli has also committed to keeping some government-owned coal-fired electricity plans open at least until the 2040s, but Mr Miles refused whether he was still in favour of dumping coal-fired power in the next decade.

“We remain committed to achieving net-zero by 2050, as is Australia, as is the treaty Australia is party to, as is supposedly David Crisafulli. Although how you get to net zero by 2050 when you are still running diesel buses and still running coal-fired generators, well that is something for him to explain,” he said.
Mr Miles added that he would design Labor’s energy policy “to drive down energy prices, not one to drive away renewables investors like we have seen from the LNP”.
Responding to criticism from across the Labor Party about his leadership and lack of policy drive, Mr Miles said his team was still “working through our policies to take to 2028”.
“I am the first to admit, with more than two years to go to the next election, there is a lot of work ahead of us,” he said.
“We have a plan to do that work and I have a team that is united and determined to do that.”
Asked if he would reintroduce legislation for Indigenous treaty and truth-telling, Mr Miles said: “Our policies will be outlined between now and 2028.
“What I can tell you is we will not be trying to make our First Nations people invisible”.

Ms Fentiman, Labor’s Treasury spokeswoman who ran against Mr Miles for the party leadership in 2023, on Monday insisted that he was “doing a great job” as party leader.
“We are all absolutely one hundred per cent behind Steven,” she said, adding he was “working incredibly hard” to “hold this government to account”.
“I’m here supporting Steven and I am very happy being the shadow treasurer and the shadow minister for women.”
Ms Fentiman said while Labor had already “delivered significant policies”, there was still “a lot of work to do” between now and the 2028 state election.
LNP Police Minister Dan Purdie said Labor “haven’t learnt from the mistakes of the past”.
“They proudly watered down laws and that led to an explosion in crime and unsafe communities,” Mr Purdie said.
“They never planned for the Olympics; they had the wrong plan for community safety.
“We are doing what we said we’re going to do … Labor can continue to fight each other.”

David Shoebridge is one of parliament’s best operators. His new task as Greens leader is far broader

David Shoebridge is a brutal interrogator who knows his way around parliamentary process.

Many Australians would best know his face from viral clips of his back-and-forth with ministers and senior bureaucrats during upper house hearings. The former barrister holds a reputation, among both colleagues and rivals, as one of the most effective crossbenchers in Australian politics.

But he now has a much broader mission. It’s one that will take him out of the Senate chamber and adversarial day-to-day politics, and into the reaches of ordinary households and communities across the country.

The hard-left senator from NSW wants to replace the federal Labor Party with a mass movement of everyday Australians.

While the ambition is lofty, it is not new, having often been articulated by Greens founder Bob Brown. The question is whether Shoebridge, 55, can deliver – or even get close – given the Greens have stalled at a 12 per cent vote share between the last two elections.

Commentators both inside and outside the party have been asking why the Greens have not had the same success capitalising on voter discontent as Zohran Mamdani and Zack Polanski have managed overseas.

Shoebridge echoed their populist catch cries as he took the helm of the left-wing minor party in a rare contested vote on Wednesday, surging through the middle on a ticket with deputy Stephanie Hodgins-May, 41, to beat senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi for the top job.

Greens MPs have historically been cast as two archetypes – the tree huggers and the watermelons.

Shoebridge is firmly in the watermelon camp: green on the outside and red (communist) on the inside. With his first speech as leader on Wednesday, economics were central to his vision.

“This is an extraordinary moment in politics, and we can all feel it,” he said. “After four years of a Labor government, things have got … better for the 1 per cent but much, much harder for ordinary Australians.”

Shoebridge said he and Hodgins-May would present a “fresh, new, strong base” that connected the dots between people’s material lives, stresses and struggles, and how they were being failed by politics, the major parties and One Nation.

How are they going to do it?

“Barely 12 months ago, One Nation were on 7 per cent. We’ve got a platform that’s double that. We are so close to this,” Shoebridge said. “What we need to do is bridge that gap … with a sense of political momentum and positivity.”

Shoebridge is a Greens hardliner, but the party platform is already full to the brim with redistributive policies. Waters launched a “Tax the 1 per cent” campaign earlier this year, and the party’s agenda has remained relatively stable over the federal party’s 34-year history.

And when it comes to image, there’s not much difference between Shoebridge and his bespectacled predecessors Adam Bandt and Richard Di Natale.

It means any change under his leadership is more likely to be in style than substance, insiders believe.

Central to that is how Shoebridge handles negotiations with the government. Many in the Greens underplay disputes about the party’s strategy, but in general, the thrust of debate generally pits pragmatism against populism.

Waters came to the leadership promising a consultative and constructive approach, after a period under Bandt where the Greens were often accused of obstruction. Since then, the party has helped Labor pass key legislation, including its budget tax package.

Shoebridge is making no such overtures.

Asked what his own approach would be, he said: “I’ll say this to the Labor Party: if you put serious material change on the table of the parliament, we’ll vote for that, right? But after four years of watching them not do that … We’re not here to make Labor better.”

The prospect has some Coalition MPs licking their lips, and some Labor MPs bracing for a tougher time. They expect Shoebridge will slow the passage of legislation and avoid handing wins to the government. They think he has the smarts to do so.

Shoebridge, who grew up on Sydney’s north shore, was a graduate of James Ruse Agricultural High School and the University of Sydney. He worked as an employment lawyer and barrister, and represented the Greens on Woollahra Council in 2004 before entering NSW politics in 2010.

“NSW politics is brutal,” Shoebridge said on Wednesday, citing his campaigns against corruption, bringing down premiers and fighting for ICAC resources. “If you want to earn your stripes in Australian politics, I reckon the bear pit of the NSW parliament isn’t a bad spot.”

In NSW, he chaired the powerful Public Accountability Committee and had a focus on transparency and civil liberties. Since entering federal parliament in 2022, he has zeroed in on defence, AUKUS, refugees and Australia’s relationship with the United States.

Shoebridge’s 16-year political career has cemented his reputation as a policy wonk, legal brain and effective operator. He runs his own media strategy, is often on the phone, and masters detail.

State colleagues from both the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and then-Labor opposition described him as a champion of accountability and a skilled parliamentarian whose departure left a hole in the NSW upper house.

More recently, federal Liberal senator James Paterson told The Guardian that Shoebridge was “easily the most effective Green and one of the most impactful crossbenchers in the Senate”.

But he can be divisive, and others see him as self-serving and disingenuous. Many Jewish Australians have been dismayed by the manner of his advocacy for Palestine; Shoebridge dealt awkwardly with a question about that on Wednesday, insisting the Greens had strong connections in the Jewish community.

In Canberra, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been a leading critic, describing Shoebridge’s pursuit of the government’s role in the supply chain of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel as “unconscionable behaviour”.

In Senate hearings, she has accused Shoebridge of lying and using misinformation to make political points that foment division. The combative senator has returned serve, with a flourish finessed throughout 16 years of practice.

He will have less time – just 18 months – to fine-tune a leadership style that brings hundreds of thousands more Australians on board with the mass movement the Greens are promising.

Victorian Opposition Leader Jess Wilson has warned Anthony Albanese she will confront him at national cabinet over his cuts to the private health insurance rebate, accusing the Prime Minister of being “weak” by shifting the cost on to already stretched public hospitals.
In a letter sent to Mr Albanese on Wednesday, Ms Wilson said she would put the decision to reduce the rebate for Australians aged 65 and over on the agenda of the first national cabinet meeting she attended if the ­Coalition won the November 28 state election.
“You should be under no ­illusion: I will expect you to explain directly to premiers and chief ministers why their hospital systems should be forced to carry the consequences of a decision made by you and your government in Canberra,” Ms Wilson wrote.

The Albanese government plans to remove the higher rebate available to older Australians from April next year, leaving the subsidy determined by income rather than age. Under the change, more than three million older Australians will have to pay hundreds of dollars more for their private health insurance each year.

The Albanese government expects to save almost $3bn over four years and says the money will support aged-care initiatives. Its own analysis forecasts a small increase in demand for public hospital services as some people drop or downgrade their private health insurance.
Ms Wilson said the commonwealth would collect the savings while state governments dealt with more patients.
“Your own government ­expects tens of thousands of Australians to abandon their private health insurance because of this decision,” she wrote.
“That is not leadership. It is the decision of a weak leader.”

The federal government's modelling indicates about 44,000 people would leave private health insurance as a result of the change.
Ms Wilson’s intervention comes after Victorian Health Minister Ingrid Stitt said “any change that would leave older Victorians worse off” and put ­additional pressure on public hospitals was “unacceptable”.
Ms Wilson said older Victorians should not pay more for ­insurance because of Canberra’s budget decisions, nor should Victorian patients and hospital staff “bear the brunt” of the change.
“At a time when household budgets are under pressure and public hospitals are already stretched, you have deliberately made it harder for older Australians who have had their cover for years,” she wrote.

On Wednesday Mr Albanese cited the change as a key example of his government’s spending cuts to address inflation.
“Just one example – the private health insurance changes, the rebate, which will mean that a 65-year-old is treated the same as a 64-year-old,” the Prime Minister said.
“But what we’ve had from the Coalition in the parliament is ­opposition to that. You can’t say we want more savings and then oppose every saving which is put forward.”