menu_open Columnists
The Afr View

The Afr View

Financial Review

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Wilson can win Victoria but can she fix it?

Wilson can win Victoria but can she fix it?

With victory seemingly in sight, Wilson could be forgiven for believing a small-target strategy is enough to carry the Coalition across the line.

latest 10

Financial Review

The Afr View

Independent umpire needs to adjudicate on Sandpapergate

Independent umpire needs to adjudicate on Sandpapergate

As the cracks in the official version widen, it’s difficult to see how Cricket Australia can keep playing a straight bat to growing calls for an...

yesterday 10

Financial Review

The Afr View

Australia wants to build big. It needs to learn how

Australia wants to build big. It needs to learn how

The failure by Snowy Hydro and the federal government to conduct proper due diligence symbolises Australia’s increasingly chequered infrastructure...

monday 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

Coalition comeback at Labor’s cost-of-living expense

Coalition comeback at Labor’s cost-of-living expense

Time will tell whether One Nation’s grievance-based appeal remains an existential threat to the Liberal and National parties.

monday 10

Financial Review

The Afr View

US midterms hold two warnings for Albanese

US midterms hold two warnings for Albanese

The Labor government should take stock as it confronts a declining primary vote, higher inflation and community backlash to AI data centres.

06.11.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

RBA tensions are a feature, not a bug

RBA tensions are a feature, not a bug

There was always a risk that encouraging board members to be candid in their views would send mixed messages

06.11.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

Will AI boom bust Canva?

Will AI boom bust Canva?

The company’s challenge is to find profitable and compelling ways to incorporate the technology into its products to attract users.

04.11.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

Chalmers must cut spending to solve inflation problem

Chalmers must cut spending to solve inflation problem

Unless the treasurer and the expenditure review committee get serious about real savings in the MYEFO, the central bank could be forced to raise rates...

04.11.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

One Nation could stumble on its own sword

One Nation could stumble on its own sword

One Nation has thrived by railing against the “uniparty”, but trying to resonate with middle-ground voters risks dimming its anti-establishment...

03.11.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

Labor’s failure to control spending has added to inflation

Labor’s failure to control spending has added to inflation

Attempts to deflect the blame for higher prices and interest rates on Donald Trump’s war on Iran have worn thin with the electorate.

02.11.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Uneasy bedfellows Albanese and Chalmers need a budget fix

The December budget update will test Labor’s appetite to confront its spending addiction and the PM’s willingness to give Chalmers the political...

31.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Firmus flop puts investment bankers in the firing line

ASIC’s inquiries could reinforce to the market that transparency in deal marketing are non-negotiable for maintaining public faith in the financial...

29.10.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

The federal Labor brand has lost its star power

While the PM still has time on his side to wait for global inflation pressures to subside, Labor state premiers facing imminent electoral tests...

28.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Could super funds make the next financial crash worse?

As funds grapple with the broader challenge of maintaining financial stability, their efforts risk being undermined by Canberra’s constant...

26.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

NAB must come clean on the role of AI in its job losses

The bank says there is no link between its redundancies and artificial intelligence. But we need more transparency about how roles are changing to...

25.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

France’s unrest shows Labor the cost of the handout state

Weaning voters off the public purse requires honesty about the trade-offs of fiscal repair and demands political courage rarely seen in Canberra.

23.10.2026 20

Financial Review

The Afr View

Snowy Hydro 2.0 shows Australia dreams big, but fails to build

The troubled renewable energy scheme’s rising costs and delays show that Australia needs political discipline, planning and competence to build...

23.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Investor anxiety turns data centre gold rush into fire sale

Data centre operators have vastly overestimated their social licence to build and underestimated the immense leverage ordinary citizens have over land...

21.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Where there’s smoke, are there Greens factional fires?

Allegations of mistreatment of women should be above all forms of political point-scoring. That includes being weaponised for internal factional...

19.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Wilson has no excuses as business exposes Victoria’s debt black hole

What happens in Victoria over the next five weeks matters for the nation, both economically and politically.

19.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Is Frydenberg the white knight the Liberals need?

Labor assumes the Coalition is too diminished and divided to mount a serious comeback. But an ailing economy has turned the Liberal Party into a wild...

17.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Trust tax betrays Labor’s forgotten small business voters

Ironically, the Greens’ obstructionism might save the government from crashing on the rushed, poorly thought-out crackdown on investment tax...

15.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

AirTrunk, Firmus stumbles test investors’ faith in the AI boom

We must take a clear-eyed view of the potential fallout if the technology fails to live up to the hype, or is knocked off course by changing market...

14.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Realism about old and new energy at climate summit

Australia needs to maintain supplies of legacy fuels while developing new sources of power to shore up the nation’s energy security.

14.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Mergers on higher education agenda as foreign student trade falls

It is significant that a second state government is now considering university amalgamations to engineer consolidation of the sector.

12.10.2026 100

Financial Review

The Afr View

Wilson yet to pass the campaign or budget test

The Coalition will need to level with Victorians about the deeper budget cuts required and seek the election mandate needed to repair Victoria’s...

12.10.2026 150

Financial Review

The Afr View

Card surcharge ban shows inflation makes everything harder

The institutional failure to restore low, stable prices and ease pressure on rates has come back to bite both the government and the RBA over the...

09.10.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Turning tide of investor sentiment becalms Firmus float

Investors’ data centre FOMO has clearly cooled, replaced by hesitancy to finance the huge capex costs of massive hardware fit-out required to train...

09.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Pre-COP flop not all Australia’s fault

The event falling flat is also very much another sign of wavering global support for concerted international action to achieve a carbon-neutral world...

07.10.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

Coalition takes the beaten path to immigration middle ground

Angus Taylor has gone big on headline cuts to try to play catch-up with One Nation while promising to do this in what he says is an economically smart...

06.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

KPMG Australia might have a case for a bailout from global HQ

There may be a legitimate argument that innocent KPMG Australia partners should not be financially squeezed for misdeeds they had no part in or...

05.10.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

One Nation populist insurgency spreads to cost-of-living pressures

Our latest poll shows that fewer people are buying the idea that more of the same from Labor will make a difference to key economic issues.

04.10.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Don’t let big tech write all the rules of AI

Allowing the tech giants to self-police the most consequential technology of our era requires blind trust that they will exercise fair judgment over...

03.10.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

It’s now or never for the Libs on the economy

All things being equal, Labor messing up on the economy plays right into the Coalition’s traditional strength as a superior economic manager.

01.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

Easy money made private credit look safer than it was

Private credit’s golden era was built on cheap money, soaring property values and abundant liquidity. That safety net has evaporated

01.10.2026 30

Financial Review

The Afr View

RBA must finally do whatever it takes

Tuesday’s unanimous decision by the Reserve Bank to lift the cash rate for the fourth time this year confirms the double failure on interest rates...

30.09.2026 60

Financial Review

The Afr View

Labor is gaslighting us on its part in the RBA rate rise

Labor should belatedly commit to demand-side budget discipline and the supply-side pro-productivity agenda needed to help the RBA finally get...

28.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Like AI, budget risks are a global threat too

To truly prepare the nation to withstand all the possible sources of instability, the government’s priority should be to control the known...

28.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Trump can’t charm away America’s China problem

For all the pomp, pageantry and claims of stronger ties, the two nations’ deeper foreign policy divides remain largely unaddressed.

25.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Medicare hack reveals the AI threat Australia can’t see coming

The breach lays bare our brittle IT defences and how Australia’s national security is paying the price of foreign tech giants’ trial-and-error...

24.09.2026 100

Financial Review

The Afr View

Labor wants to save you from doomscrolling. But the fix could be worse

The PM wins easy praise for appearing to tackle the dark side of the internet while delivering a draft bill that is either defunct or promoting...

23.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

ASIC is right to litigate to clean up private credit markets

The shakeout in the $200 billion ‘shadow banking’ sector goes far beyond the cyclical headwinds of the property downturn.

22.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Australia should demand early access to America’s frontier AI

It is reasonable for Australia to request early-stage access, when models are still in the testing phase, to guard against AI models running amok.

21.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

P for productivity is Chalmers’ intergenerational problem

Boosting Australia’s stagnant productivity as a matter of urgency is far more important than making the IRG modelling add up.

21.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

The AI boom can’t be built on stolen content

For too long, the road to AI riches has been paved by pirated content. Forcing big tech to account for the costs on creators is necessary.

18.09.2026 40

Financial Review

The Afr View

Immigration cuts add to economic headwinds for Labor

The government should not just mechanically limit temporary migration, but retarget the program to bring in the most needed and most qualified...

17.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

Beware Chinese loans with strings attached

If Australian companies can borrow more cheaply from Chinese lenders, there is a case for being realistic about the benefits – while managing the...

16.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

Can a changed China agree to an AI pause with America?

The stakes for the great power competition may be too high to slow down artificial intelligence development, strange as this may sound, given the...

16.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

One Nation raises stakes for Labor’s migration plan

Copying Canada’s approach suggests the once-fringe party’s proposals aren’t necessarily extreme and that some recalibration of migration...

15.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View

Hastie right to fire back against One Nation’s ‘traitor’ troll

Criticising Pauline Hanson risks generating more sympathy for her. But there can be no pandering to populism when fundamental legal and military...

14.09.2026 50

Financial Review

The Afr View