Talking Politics

[eZyT]

Our court system isn’t perfect but it’s still a damn sight better than the court of public opinion. Lehman too deserved the right to a fair trial.

Our court system simply doesnt work for sex crimes oldy

Why? Sex crimes are one on one, in private.

forensics? are very rare because by the time the victim is in a state to report, there are none.

And the victims are traumatised women and children, and the perpetrators entitled men

Then you need 12 people to agree, beyond reasonable doubt, on whether to believe the victim or not. They dont have to decide whether to beleive the alleged perpetrator or not, because its an onus of proof. Defence just sows doubt.

Defending sex assaults, if you dont mind taking temazapam to sleep, is the easiest $10,000 a week going i reckon. A cherry tomato farmer might be easier, they grow like doubt in 1/12 of the randomly selected mind, but probably dont pay as well

I learned all this as chair of a jury on a very ugly rape case.

Its near impossible to convict. The stats support this.

The justice system fails sexual asssault victims.

I dont have a solution.

I dare say neither does Brittany, hence the suicide watch.

Its a horrendous outcome.

Its not worth a cold pie, but i believe her and hope she gets well and finds peace

I feel similar compassion for your mate. It would be horrendous, ive heard first hand vexatious accusations too

But without knowing the stats,

I reckon for every innocent bloke accused,

There'd be 100 guilty bloke laughing over a schooner.

Those odds need reform

 

[Sintiger]

Not really politics but there is something disturbing about an economy and system of government that seems to have as it’s only weapon against inflation reducing the income and wealth of people to the point where they stop spending because they can’t afford it.
As a society we were up in arms about lockdowns and the harm it did to individuals and to businesses and we are standing by watching interest rate increases starting to do similar things
I am actually quite uncomfortable with it but I am not sure I have an answer

 

[RoarEmotion]

It’s all good. A rusted on liberal friend of mine said this was normal as young people move to liberal later in life when they grow up ….
I said if that is what you and other liberal supporters think then the liberal party is *smile*

Well I went from left leaning to right leaning and now gone back the other way with what liberal leadership has looked like and lack of will on climate change. Yep I reckon a fair chance the LNP dead in a decade if it doesn’t change.

 

[tigerman]

Well I went from left leaning to right leaning and now gone back the other way with what liberal leadership has looked like and lack of will on climate change. Yep I reckon a fair chance the LNP dead in a decade if it doesn’t change.

If the Libs don’t get their act together it’s not going to be long before it’s the NLP.

 

[shad]

Not really politics but there is something disturbing about an economy and system of government that seems to have as it’s only weapon against inflation reducing the income and wealth of people to the point where they stop spending because they can’t afford it.
As a society we were up in arms about lockdowns and the harm it did to individuals and to businesses and we are standing by watching interest rate increases starting to do similar things
I am actually quite uncomfortable with it but I am not sure I have an answer

I find economics very difficult to understand. In answer to your question though-if inflation is higher than interest rates it undermines the economic system to some extent. Savings are devalued over time, as are asset values. And if you lend money the interest paid does not compensate for the value lost.

But if you have too much debt your *smile*-and you would not believe how much debt many Australians have. I have a friend who is a mortage broker and he goes through peoples' finances regularly and reckons you would not believe how much they owe. Cars, credit cards, furniture-pretty much everything they 'own'.

Personally, I have tried to live my life within my means. I have always thought of this quote by Charles Dickens.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expendiure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

 

[Sintiger]

I find economics very difficult to understand. In answer to your question though-if inflation is higher than interest rates it undermines the economic system to some extent. Savings are devalued over time, as are asset values. And if you lend money the interest paid does not compensate for the value lost.

But if you have too much debt your *smile*-and you would not believe how much debt many Australians have. I have a friend who is a mortage broker and he goes through peoples' finances regularly and reckons you would not believe how much they owe. Cars, credit cards, furniture-pretty much everything they 'own'.

Personally, I have tried to live my life within my means. I have always thought of this quote by Charles Dickens.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expendiure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

I know why too much inflation is bad for an economy. I am just not sure how sending John Smith in the suburbs bankrupt because he can’t pay the mortgage, or making someone homeless because a landlord has a big loan interest to service is the best way to solve it.
Evidently the average mortgage is about $700 k these days which means that a person or couple with that level of debt would have about $2000 a month less than they did before interest rates started rising or will have when their fixed rates become variable.
That’s a lot of money to most people.
The purpose is to curb spending but is that the real reason for inflation in Australia ? The increase in fuel and energy costs for instance has very little to do with consumer spending.

 

[IanG]

The purpose is to curb spending but is that the real reason for inflation in Australia ? The increase in fuel and energy costs for instance has very little to do with consumer spending.

Yep thats been teh argument all along about teh recent inflation spike and why the RBA is not handling it well.

 

[DavidSSS]

You don't have to understand economics to know that increasing interest rates (the cost of credit or money) to dampen demand when the issues with inflation revolve mainly around supply side problems, and the fact that there is a fair bit of profiteering going on, makes little sense.

Rather than making everything more difficult for the people who didn't have anything to do with inflation rising, how about we do something about the profiteering, say, higher taxes on large increases in profits. Even the Tories in the UK have imposed super-profits taxes, surely our labour party could do this?

DS

 

[shad]

I know why too much inflation is bad for an economy. I am just not sure how sending John Smith in the suburbs bankrupt because he can’t pay the mortgage, or making someone homeless because a landlord has a big loan interest to service is the best way to solve it.
Evidently the average mortgage is about $700 k these days which means that a person or couple with that level of debt would have about $2000 a month less than they did before interest rates started rising or will have when their fixed rates become variable.
That’s a lot of money to most people.
The purpose is to curb spending but is that the real reason for inflation in Australia ? The increase in fuel and energy costs for instance has very little to do with consumer spending.

Like I said, I don't really get it. But think about it from the other side of the equation. Inflation is costing everybody with assets money too. The only other option is state intervention in the economy which brings with it a whole new set of problems. The whole situation is a gigantic mess.

 

[DavidSSS]

Not a total mess, we all know that there is a hell of a lot of debt around, an unsustainable amount. Inflation erodes debt.

DS

 

[MD Jazz]

Well I went from left leaning to right leaning and now gone back the other way with what liberal leadership has looked like and lack of will on climate change. Yep I reckon a fair chance the LNP dead in a decade if it doesn’t change.

I reckon many are left on some issues and right on others. I think that's why independents appeal, they aren't necessarily tied to a single philosophy and forced to vote on party lines?

 

[Ian4]

I reckon many are left on some issues and right on others. I think that's why independents appeal, they aren't necessarily tied to a single philosophy and forced to vote on party lines?

Interesting to note that the teals failed to win a seat at the VIC election, and all former sitting independents lost. That surprised a few. None of the ALP, LNP or Greens will end up having a net loss of seats.

 

[MD Jazz]

But without knowing the stats,

I reckon for every innocent bloke accused,

There'd be 100 guilty bloke laughing over a schooner.

Those odds need reform

Those odds may be right.

IMO my initial take is problems about how women are percieved and treated start at a young age. I grew up in the country and as an early teen the coolest guys at school were the ones picking up girls. Girls were almost seen as trophies. Young men boasted of their conquests. Girls developed reputations - words like *smile*/*smile* were used. Labels stuck. Stick mags were like gold. Year 11 & 12 young men were often going out with younger girls. Guys were driving to school. They were the ones more likely to have a girlfriend. Young men who slept around and had multiple partners by the time they were 18 were seen as conquerers. Girls who did the same were not seen in the same light.

Turning 18 and being able to go to pubs/nightclubs and the same attitude prevailed. Going out and picking up was how you proved your status in your group. Most weekends involved partying. Go to a pub. Then the nightclub. Lots of drinks. And it's easier to "cull one form the herd" if they are drunk. Post weekend discussions were about conquests. I bet there was a lot of pressured and unwanted sex going on. You'd imagine consent was assumed as soon as a girls got in a cab with a guy.

And I think about the way life worked back in the 70's and 80's in the country. There were lots of social events.. And at all those the men cooked the BBQ, the women did the salads. The men stood around and drank, the women essentially waited on them. The women cleaned up/did the dishes etc. The groups were pretty separate. The women drove home (if they could stop their drunk partner from driving). I can't imagine how many times the dads got home and once the kids were in bed decided to proposition their wives. I'm sure they were very romantic proposals too.

Respect for women has improved IMO and hopefully the next generation will be better than the last.

 

[mrposhman]

You don't have to understand economics to know that increasing interest rates (the cost of credit or money) to dampen demand when the issues with inflation revolve mainly around supply side problems, and the fact that there is a fair bit of profiteering going on, makes little sense.

Rather than making everything more difficult for the people who didn't have anything to do with inflation rising, how about we do something about the profiteering, say, higher taxes on large increases in profits. Even the Tories in the UK have imposed super-profits taxes, surely our labour party could do this?

DS

There's a whole heap of scenarios here and whats going on but in the main I agree with you. I posted something similar to your first paragraph months ago. It made little to no sense for supply side inflation to be challenged by going after demand driven services. What you will do is drive down demand for other items (that aren't causing inflation), resulting in businesses that are not flying high with inflation getting into financial trouble, whilst others are reaming it in. You can see this pretty clearly with the level of discounting we have seen in retail stores over the last 9 months particularly through the winter as they looked to liquidate stock during July / August (post EOFY sales) to have the available cash to see them through the Christmas period.

If you look at what prices have been spiking (below is the most recent CPI data from the ABS) the main ones are things like food (many due to flooding etc particularly in Australia), though this is easing (you can see this in the Oct21-22 data, the significant drop from August / September shows the easing impact of fruit and veg but it doesn't have enough power to impact the overall numbers.

Those that aren't easing are:
Housing, which if you read the commentary is primarily being caused by wage inflation in the building industry due to a lack of available labour (being seen in many industries right now). This is a clear policy failure of primarily the end of the Scomo government, but we are not necessarily seeing this ease under the Albanese government.

Automotive fuel (which is part of the overall Energy impact we have throughout the world right now). Partly this is a result of the Ukraine war and the removal of the Russian supply of fossil fuels to the market, but prices of most fossil fuels were rising before that. This is a bit of a mix of policy failures by governments, but also (and I'm fully supportive of green policies by the way) a result of the green agenda. A green economy is abolsutely the future, but only short sighted people believe we can do this without a transition period. For that transition period, we need transitional fuels but the hard edged greenies have been trying to deter investment in fossil fuels that will get us through that transition. As supply reduces and demand remains, that will only result in prices going up. Its not even related to companies profiteering as you say, its simple market dynamics. Now there are things that can be done with that, July 1st was when QLD brought in their new royalty rates for coal production that was a significant jump. This will rake in $millions for the QLD government in additional royalties. I prefer royalty increases over super profits taxes personally, but I want to see those additional funds be used to accelerate the move to a greener economy. I've yet to see where the QLD government plan to spend it.

Most other components are relatively static, but none are demand driven.

Household budgets are tightening due to 3 things IMO.
Food - addressed that above and it will probably ease over the coming months
Energy - Unlikely to ease any time soon. Even if the Ukraine war ends soon, European countries are already moving away from their over reliance on Russia so I expect them to be treated like a pariah economically for years over this
Property costs - Whether these are new dwellings (as a result of wage increases) or property values (as a direct result of the RBA's reluctance to actually do anything about house prices over the last 10 years

None of the above 3 are demand driven, and rising interest rates will do nothing but compound these issues. Year after year of government and RBA policy failings are at the root cause of the above 3 issues, whether thats on climate, energy transition or housing, and unfortunately the general public and weaker retailers / discretional businesses will be the ones to pay the cost of repeated years of policy failure.

 

[RoarEmotion]

I think a quantity type metric would be interested to lay on top of this as opposed to the $ metric. I.e. how many units of things are being purchased. I’d bet people have cut back on energy and food by basically spending the same amount but having less of it / or lower quality of it to use. I’d imagine in a consumption type of cpi it would be dropping.

We are a bit the victims of having extremely low energy prices for so long. Now we have an economy used to running on cheap energy - eg. terribly insulated homes because the payoff wouldn’t have made sense historically, large road vs public transport infrastructure because fuel was cheap etc etc. the transition to a green economy is going to mean QOL suffers in some way. Not sure people have wrapped their heads around it because it’s not really a vote winner.

 

[DavidSSS]

There's a whole heap of scenarios here and whats going on but in the main I agree with you. I posted something similar to your first paragraph months ago. It made little to no sense for supply side inflation to be challenged by going after demand driven services. What you will do is drive down demand for other items (that aren't causing inflation), resulting in businesses that are not flying high with inflation getting into financial trouble, whilst others are reaming it in. You can see this pretty clearly with the level of discounting we have seen in retail stores over the last 9 months particularly through the winter as they looked to liquidate stock during July / August (post EOFY sales) to have the available cash to see them through the Christmas period.

If you look at what prices have been spiking (below is the most recent CPI data from the ABS) the main ones are things like food (many due to flooding etc particularly in Australia), though this is easing (you can see this in the Oct21-22 data, the significant drop from August / September shows the easing impact of fruit and veg but it doesn't have enough power to impact the overall numbers.

Those that aren't easing are:
Housing, which if you read the commentary is primarily being caused by wage inflation in the building industry due to a lack of available labour (being seen in many industries right now). This is a clear policy failure of primarily the end of the Scomo government, but we are not necessarily seeing this ease under the Albanese government.

Automotive fuel (which is part of the overall Energy impact we have throughout the world right now). Partly this is a result of the Ukraine war and the removal of the Russian supply of fossil fuels to the market, but prices of most fossil fuels were rising before that. This is a bit of a mix of policy failures by governments, but also (and I'm fully supportive of green policies by the way) a result of the green agenda. A green economy is abolsutely the future, but only short sighted people believe we can do this without a transition period. For that transition period, we need transitional fuels but the hard edged greenies have been trying to deter investment in fossil fuels that will get us through that transition. As supply reduces and demand remains, that will only result in prices going up. Its not even related to companies profiteering as you say, its simple market dynamics. Now there are things that can be done with that, July 1st was when QLD brought in their new royalty rates for coal production that was a significant jump. This will rake in $millions for the QLD government in additional royalties. I prefer royalty increases over super profits taxes personally, but I want to see those additional funds be used to accelerate the move to a greener economy. I've yet to see where the QLD government plan to spend it.

Most other components are relatively static, but none are demand driven.

Household budgets are tightening due to 3 things IMO.
Food - addressed that above and it will probably ease over the coming months
Energy - Unlikely to ease any time soon. Even if the Ukraine war ends soon, European countries are already moving away from their over reliance on Russia so I expect them to be treated like a pariah economically for years over this
Property costs - Whether these are new dwellings (as a result of wage increases) or property values (as a direct result of the RBA's reluctance to actually do anything about house prices over the last 10 years

None of the above 3 are demand driven, and rising interest rates will do nothing but compound these issues. Year after year of government and RBA policy failings are at the root cause of the above 3 issues, whether thats on climate, energy transition or housing, and unfortunately the general public and weaker retailers / discretional businesses will be the ones to pay the cost of repeated years of policy failure.



View attachment 17624

You call this economics?

You're doing it all wrong.

What you need to do is to ignore the facts but come up with an ideologically driven theory which has internal logic and little or no relationship to reality. Then, and only then, can you claim to be talking about economics.

But seriously, we do need to be looking at the specifics and what we can do about it. The point on royalties is particularly pertinent. We charge miniscule royalties, for the mineral wealth we allow to be exported. Countries like Qatar charge much more and the gas exporters aren't scared off. Need to rake it in while we can.

I would somewhat disagree on the transition fuels, we are in the situation now where I reckon we are too late to have a smooth transition and really need to drive renewables where we can. Electricity, urban transport and the like need to go green now. This will buy time to sort out solutions for things which are really hard like air travel.

DS

 

[Sintiger]

There's a whole heap of scenarios here and whats going on but in the main I agree with you. I posted something similar to your first paragraph months ago. It made little to no sense for supply side inflation to be challenged by going after demand driven services. What you will do is drive down demand for other items (that aren't causing inflation), resulting in businesses that are not flying high with inflation getting into financial trouble, whilst others are reaming it in. You can see this pretty clearly with the level of discounting we have seen in retail stores over the last 9 months particularly through the winter as they looked to liquidate stock during July / August (post EOFY sales) to have the available cash to see them through the Christmas period.

If you look at what prices have been spiking (below is the most recent CPI data from the ABS) the main ones are things like food (many due to flooding etc particularly in Australia), though this is easing (you can see this in the Oct21-22 data, the significant drop from August / September shows the easing impact of fruit and veg but it doesn't have enough power to impact the overall numbers.

Those that aren't easing are:
Housing, which if you read the commentary is primarily being caused by wage inflation in the building industry due to a lack of available labour (being seen in many industries right now). This is a clear policy failure of primarily the end of the Scomo government, but we are not necessarily seeing this ease under the Albanese government.

Automotive fuel (which is part of the overall Energy impact we have throughout the world right now). Partly this is a result of the Ukraine war and the removal of the Russian supply of fossil fuels to the market, but prices of most fossil fuels were rising before that. This is a bit of a mix of policy failures by governments, but also (and I'm fully supportive of green policies by the way) a result of the green agenda. A green economy is abolsutely the future, but only short sighted people believe we can do this without a transition period. For that transition period, we need transitional fuels but the hard edged greenies have been trying to deter investment in fossil fuels that will get us through that transition. As supply reduces and demand remains, that will only result in prices going up. Its not even related to companies profiteering as you say, its simple market dynamics. Now there are things that can be done with that, July 1st was when QLD brought in their new royalty rates for coal production that was a significant jump. This will rake in $millions for the QLD government in additional royalties. I prefer royalty increases over super profits taxes personally, but I want to see those additional funds be used to accelerate the move to a greener economy. I've yet to see where the QLD government plan to spend it.

Most other components are relatively static, but none are demand driven.

Household budgets are tightening due to 3 things IMO.
Food - addressed that above and it will probably ease over the coming months
Energy - Unlikely to ease any time soon. Even if the Ukraine war ends soon, European countries are already moving away from their over reliance on Russia so I expect them to be treated like a pariah economically for years over this
Property costs - Whether these are new dwellings (as a result of wage increases) or property values (as a direct result of the RBA's reluctance to actually do anything about house prices over the last 10 years

None of the above 3 are demand driven, and rising interest rates will do nothing but compound these issues. Year after year of government and RBA policy failings are at the root cause of the above 3 issues, whether thats on climate, energy transition or housing, and unfortunately the general public and weaker retailers / discretional businesses will be the ones to pay the cost of repeated years of policy failure.



View attachment 17624

There is a lot of truth in this Mr P. Building costs is not really about labour IMO but materials like concrete, timber etc have skyrocketed in price.
We may see some builders with inflexible contracts get into trouble soon I think

 

[mrposhman]

There is a lot of truth in this Mr P. Building costs is not really about labour IMO but materials like concrete, timber etc have skyrocketed in price.
We may see some builders with inflexible contracts get into trouble soon I think

I think its a bit of both. Concrete etc has increased with a large part due to the shipment of concrete from China and freight rates being so high. Freight raised have been normalising over the last 3 months, so I suspect these costs are getting better.

Employment is certainly an increase in cost. I work in Logistics and we have had people being offered $20-25k to go to competitors, and these are people on like $60-65k, so huge increases in salaries.

Agree on the building industry, I reckon there is more pain to come as most companies do fix their rates ahead of time, whether they are residential or commercial buildings.

 

[mrposhman]

I would somewhat disagree on the transition fuels, we are in the situation now where I reckon we are too late to have a smooth transition and really need to drive renewables where we can. Electricity, urban transport and the like need to go green now. This will buy time to sort out solutions for things which are really hard like air travel.

DS

Transitional fuels are needed for sure, and needed a lot more in some areas of the world than others. It depends on what industries you look at whether the speed of transition is quick or slow.

You mention urban transport, this is actually probably 1 of the slowest industries capable of switching to a green future. If you look at the number of vehicles in the world, and current capacity availability, even if ALL vehicle facilities immediately changed to electric vehicle production, then it will take around 25 years to replace every vehicle on the planet. Its juts not possible to speed this up, without significant growth in capacity which won't happen.

Another one that is slow, is gas in homes. Most people in Australia have gas fired central heating, many now with a single solar panel to heat water up. Quite frankly, IMO solar powered heating at this stage is a gimmick (and I have a solar panel on my house for my gas central heating). The reason is because your water tank loses most of its heat during the night, you then want a shower in the morning when solar won't have had anytime to heat the water (it would be mid afternoon in the summer you'd think before solar has heated that water) so gas kicks in to warm your water. It will take decades to transition away from gas central heating to moving towards heat pumps. It also doesn't help this transition that the government is still subsidising solar powered gas central heating systems to a higher degree than heat pumps, it just results in more new build properties going the solar route, instead of the better long term environmental solution of heat pumps, that are dug into the ground, and using the heat absorbed by the ground. In this instance, whilst again the ground loses heat during the night, it retains it at a higher level than your water tank would do. On the back of that, if it requires additional heating, a heat pump would be interconnected to the electricity grid (not gas) and therefore the quicker transition in electricity is better long term from a heating component. The other side of gas in the home, is our hobs. Gas hobs at this stage are better and more efficient than electric ones. How we transition towards electric hobs, I'm not sure. Maybe again it needs to be subsidised to reflect the poorer efficiency.

Those are just examples, where we need transitional fuels. These will take time, add to the the shipping industry, heavy haulage, airlines etc and there are a lot of transitional fuels required. Oil for example is also needed for a lot of chemicals, unless we change the manufacturing of these chemicals, oil will be needed for a very long time.

Electricity though, I'm 100% with you, especially in a country such as Australia. I think I've made this point on here several times, but there was a huge policy failure of the Morrison government around this hence we now live with much higher electricity prices, but I don't believe Albaneses plan is actually any more beneficial. Australia now has the highest rate of rooftop solar in the world, but I don't believe Albos plan is good. "Rewiring the Nation" sounds good, but its not what it says it is. Its $20bn of finance to connect new renewable power to the grid. These are already underway.

Rewiring the Nation supports its first two transmission projects | energy.gov.au

The Prime Minister and Minister for Climate Change and Energy have jointly announced Rewiring the Nation’s first two transmission projects: Victoria’s VNI West KerangLink and offshore renewables, and Tasmania’s Marinus Link.

www.energy.gov.au

The above article is an example of what Rewiring the Nation is doing. So we are spending money offering cheap loans to firms to connect up large scale renewables, whilst at the same time, threatening householders who have spent money (and taxpayers at the same time that have subsidised the cost) on rooftop solar, that their feed in to the grid will be turned off, due to having excess capacity coming back into the network (QLD have actually changed their agreements with businesses adding rooftop solar from Feb next year, where the government essentially gets a "kill switch" to turn off power generation from rooftop solar.

Whats the point of having already subsidised rooftop solar, to then spend additional money essentially providing cheap capital (again a subsidy) to bring large scale renewables onto the grid when we are allowing current rooftop solar generation go to waste. Its actually one of the most ridiculous scenarios that we find ourselves in. BTW the Albo government is also subsidising solar for apartment buildings so those in apartments can get some respite from power bills. Whats the point when half the power generated will be lost because we haven't addressed the urgent need to dealing with excess generation from rooftops.

The Albo government clearly knows how to fix this, as they have proposed another policy, which is around installing community batteries. They have proposed $200m (yes thats just 1% of their Rewiring the Nation policy) to install 400 community batteries (aimed at rural areas) to store excess capacity from solar generation, so that those same homes can then redraw that energy back when they actually require it. We have at least 1 in 3 homes now with rooftop solar, we need to get that to around 1/2 to provide enough power generation to all homes. Then you look at businesses, similar numbers (probably a bit less as they have much bigger rooftops), so lets say 40% of businesses and we would then have no real need for "Rewiring the Nation". The only time you would need it is in the winter period when less generation from solar occurs, so maybe some sort of longer term battery storage from facilities such as Snowy Hydro.

Just as a guide, if you got enough community batteries to support all homes in Australia you would need to spend around $20bn, going off the ALP's own policy guides for costs of these policies, which would then generate the best return on subsidies already paid out on rooftop solar, either in the form of state subsidies or in the Feds STC subsidy. Again, shouldn't we be getting the best value out of subsidies already given out, rather than offering more to connect more power to the network that might not even be required if we just utilised rooftop solar in the most efficient manner that we can?

 

[MD Jazz]

I think its a bit of both. Concrete etc has increased with a large part due to the shipment of concrete from China and freight rates being so high. Freight raised have been normalising over the last 3 months, so I suspect these costs are getting better.

Employment is certainly an increase in cost. I work in Logistics and we have had people being offered $20-25k to go to competitors, and these are people on like $60-65k, so huge increases in salaries.

Agree on the building industry, I reckon there is more pain to come as most companies do fix their rates ahead of time, whether they are residential or commercial buildings.

Importing costs at this time last year were at record highs. A 40' container from China was costing up to $10,000 USD (our average for the month was $9500). Costs declined to about $7500 In June this year. Traditionally June/July is the cheapest period of the year. Well the price has gone down every month since. We are now getting quotes for $1300 USD for a 40' from China. It's incredibly hard to predict although this may be the first year in history that the "peak" season cost is 15% of what it was 12 months ago.

Our raw material costs have also reduced over the last 6 months.

I have also heard anecdotally that building costs have reduced a bit.