AusFinance

The wool market has dropped 20 per cent from last year. Brokers say they are dumping low-value wool into landfill. Growers are urged to keep producing wool despite the gloomy outlook.

Article

The Queensland Government in Australia has introduced new subsidies to help families with the costs of kindergarten (kindy) and childcare expenses. The subsidies aim to make these services more affordable and accessible for families in the state. Under the new scheme, families with a household income of less than $80,000 will receive free kindy for their children. Families with a household income between $80,000 and $100,000 will receive a subsidy of $2,500 per child. Additionally, families earning up to $160,000 will receive a subsidy of $2,000 per child. The government hopes that these measures will ease the financial burden on families and encourage more children to attend kindy and childcare facilities.

Canada's foreign home-buying ban sparks Aussie interest, but can it fix our housing affordability? PRD Real Estate chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo said a ban for foreign buyers can potentially increase the supply of residential property.

VAS lowers management fee from 0.10% to 0.07%.

Discuss.

Rejoice!

When does ETF funds like Vanguard provide statement for tax filing? What fields should I look out for?

Another rate rise in the works? Or will they hold steady?

In his weekend market wrap, leading Sydney auctioneer and agent, Tom Panos, claimed “the exodus of real estate agents has begun”:

File this under "I'm got mine, the rest of you can sod off"!

Thank you

A sharp disparity has emerged between mortgage growth and Australian home values.

After April’s monthly inflation head fake, May has crashed back to earth. The expected was 6.1%, and we got 5.6%.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/189164

PwC has walked back a report used to claim the nature repair market could be worth $137bn, accepting it measures "Indirect spending towards biodiversity" but the amount spent on "Threatened species conservation, with clear outcomes, is likely much less".

The consultancy firm made that submission to a Senate inquiry examining the Albanese government's nature repair market bill in response to a critique of the report from the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute submitted to the Senate environmental legislation committee that the report was "Misleading on a number of fronts and is entirely unrelated to the nature repair market".

Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia that "There are questions as to whether this is part of a PwC strategy to get their foot in the door to win more work - it's a corporate strategy we know has been used elsewhere by PwC". A PwC spokesperson said: "PwC regularly authors thought leadership on important topics, and in this case saw an important opportunity to progress a conversation around the role of biodiversity markets and the role for the private sector in funding nature repair."

Plibersek said: "I've been clear that I expect the nature repair market will generate billions of dollars of investment in nature repair to better protect our environment for our kids and grandkids."

Ouch, 20% unemployment in China is rough. How tied to China's economic outlook do you think we're going to be in Oz?

PWC: Government business division for sale - $2 Allegro Funds: Tell 'em they're dreaming

Anyone using any open banking aggregators?

I've been using frollo to see all bank accounts in one place. The app in general feels way more like a tech demonstration for their APIs than actually trying to be a product itself though. Still it's nice to see that there are ways to expose the data without having to give full user/password access.

I was happy to see they are planning to use AI to assist call centre staff rather than replace them. It sound like they are planning to use AI in a helpful way, hopefully it works out that way.

The worry with AI is always when it is used to replace people with no oversight - like robodebt, or chatbots that block the ability of customers to get through to talk to a person.