r/OpenAussie

The numbers are in, and experts say what happened on the weekend is only the beginning.

Sydney’s auction market has crashed to a six-year low as rising interest rates and sweeping tax changes in the federal budget turn would-be investors away from property.

Prices now falling, the “fear of missing out” had been replaced with a “fear of overpaying,” meaning buyers were “happy to be patient and seek out better deals”.

The volume of homes for sale in Sydney was also quite elevated, providing buyers with lots of choice and tilting the balance in their favour.

“Sydney is now a buyer’s market."

CSIRO is about to cut deep into one of the most important parts of Australia’s climate‑science capability, and researchers are warning the damage could last for years. As part of a plan to shed 300–350 research roles, around 100 scientists have been told their jobs are likely to go. Hidden inside that number is a much more serious hit: roughly a third of the tiny team that builds and maintains Australia’s national climate model.

That model — ACCESS — is the backbone of Australia’s climate projections. Governments, councils, planners, farmers, insurers, and industry all rely on it. It’s also the system Australia uses to contribute to the IPCC’s global climate assessments. Only about 12–15 people in the country actually know how to build and run it. Five of them have now been told they’re on the chopping block.

Climate scientists say this will leave Australia unable to contribute meaningfully to the next IPCC reports in 2028–29. It also means we’ll be leaning more heavily on overseas models that don’t capture southern‑hemisphere dynamics as well, especially around Antarctic ice melt and ocean behaviour — areas that matter hugely for Australia’s long‑term climate risk.

CSIRO says it’s “retaining capability” and simply refocusing, but researchers argue the real issue is long‑term underfunding. CSIRO has to source about 70% of its project money externally, and the recent $387m federal budget boost mostly goes to buildings, not people.

The bigger fear is that once this expertise disappears, it won’t come back. Rebuilding a world‑class climate‑modelling team takes years and costs far more than keeping one alive. Australia risks losing talent, losing credibility, and losing the ability to understand its own climate future — all because the core team behind a national scientific asset is being hollowed out.

By the time Australian lawyer Samuel Monkivitch was charged by Hong Kong police for a dine-and-dash spree across the city that targeted restaurants and five-star hotels, his reputation was well known among the city’s dining scene.

On social media site Threads, Hongkongers circulated footage of Monkivitch being pursued by restaurant staff into the city’s streets chasing the unpaid bills, being physically restrained by citizens outside a venue, and abusing a bystander who filmed him as he fled a Chinese restaurant.

Monkivitch is in jail in Hong Kong after being detained on May 7 on four charges of “making off without payment” and two counts of “criminal damage” charges. Police allege the spree occurred between April 25 and May 5.

So with these tax changes, I’m seeing a lot of chat about.

And, look - I worked in FinTech for a couple of decades, doing software used by accountants and lawyers. I made my money by helping certain people help other people with wealth shirk their obligations.

So much wealth, so much income, serviced by this huge apparatus designed for dodging tax. I’ve seen just incredible levels of effort put into byzantine arrangements to shave off a couple of points at the margins.

It’s rorting. We all know it. And sure, individually, I get why people do it. Novated lease? Family trust? Negative gearing? Don’t mind if I do.

But we’re the median 2nd wealthiest country in the world. 1 in 5 aussie kids grow up in poverty. Individual greed totals up to that result.

Pull your heads in ffs. Pigs at the trough

Why is not commonly understood that capital gains discounts & negative gearing are welfare handouts?

Particularly in the context of reducing competition between wages being used for housing purchases vs. buyers using government welfare through negative gearing. CG discounts are just a further uncompetitive handout when farming multiple houses.

I strongly suspect the removal of CGT Discount on Shares is simply extra fat and will become the sacrificial pawn of the budget during parliamentary negotiations.

It's a fairly classic government maneuver: package up what you actually want with additional reform, something a little spicy that gets people hotheaded. So when it comes to parliamentary negotiation and implementation, the government has something to cut away as a "compromise", whilst still delivering exactly what they want.

With the amount of discussion generated about CGT Discount reform on Shares/ETFs, I'd say its doing the job as intended. It was meant to stir a bit of outrage to dilute the property conversation, the actual core reform the government wants to deliver, making those changes more palatable.

Give your opponents plenty of targets and they might take down one or two, but the core remains intact.

Wtf is this garbage, skimmed the paper at work because we sell them, their trying to push that "these changes are for inter-generational equity, but trusts effect the young"

Does anybody in this sub even have a trust in their immediate family, let alone know someone?

Absolute garbage those papers shouldn't even be made...

I feel like they will just use my donation to get a better result on their own taxes but I don't really know how these work.

For those unsure what I'm referring to, the eftpos units at mcdonald's or woolworths self serve machines have a feature that asks if you'd like to round up to the next dollar when paying for your goods.

Great bipartisan humour. Goes in on both left and right leaders all in the name of a good laugh.

Never heard of this bloke before but gave me some good chuckles several times, pointing out the biggest difference between us and Americans, we dont (in general) fanboy over politicians.

Most of us could care less about them, as it should be.

They should always fear us.

Like many of us, my news content comes from places like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook… basically delivered to me to make me angry and interact with an algorithm. As someone who is politically middle to left, this means I either get extreme right wing propaganda targeted at me to try make me type mean comments or a suffocating left wing echo chamber. Either way, it’s not great.

So the question is - how are we accessing good quality news? Both local and global? Are there any news apps that aren’t social media, just actual objective news or at least if it has some bias that bias is acknowledged? Does this exist?