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1 week ago | 
theguardian.com | Nick Evershed |Josh Nicholas
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!In this week’s newsletter we have charts on the rental crisis in Australia, the decline in travellers to the US, how to stop the spread of measles, South Korean bushfires, and how to design a urinal that doesn’t splash. But first … some colourful correlationsThe Coalition has run a wave of ads claiming the teal independents – who are not a political party – “ally” with the Greens on votes in parliament.
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1 week ago | 
theguardian.com | Josh Nicholas
Housing construction is falling behind both on estimates of demand and the government’s target of building 1.2m homes in five years, according to figures released on Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Experts have cited a number of reasons for the shortfall, including labour and materials shortages, slow and complex planning processes and high interest rates.
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2 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Josh Nicholas |Luke Mansillo |Nick Evershed
As the 2025 Australian federal election approaches, political polls are coming thick and fast. This page will be regularly updated so you can track who is polling up, how the independents are faring and how the parties stand with different demographics. This first chart is based on a poll averaging model developed by political scientists at the University of Sydney. It factors in sample sizes, previous results and “house effects” (bias towards a party)of each pollster.
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2 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Josh Nicholas
Markets and economists are tipping a double interest rate cut at next month’s board meeting at the Reserve Bank of Australia, with inflation continuing to ease and the Trump tariffs roiling markets. But while prices are not rising as fast as they once were, Australians are still burdened with the increases over the past two years. And for many, the increases in the price of housing, food and healthcare have risen much more than their wages.
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2 weeks ago | 
msn.com | Nick Evershed |Josh Nicholas
Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
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3 weeks ago | 
msn.com | Nick Evershed |Josh Nicholas
Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Nick Evershed |Josh Nicholas
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!In this week’s newsletter we have charts on … the stock market under Trump, how inflation has raised prices on different grocery items, mapping the Myanmar earthquake, the meandering path of a tropical cyclone and a look at “music DNA”. But first … disaster strikes the disaster mapBoffins at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency spent years creating an extreme weather risk index down to the county level.
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4 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Andy Ball |Josh Nicholas |Nick Evershed
NotesIn the election there will be a total of 150 electorates. This is one fewer than at the 2022 election, as two electorates were abolished due to redistributions by the AEC, and one new one – Bullwinkel in Western Australia – was created. The list of candidates includes only those announced by the major parties and prominent minor parties to date. It will be updated with the full list of confirmed candidates when that becomes available.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Josh Nicholas
Federal budgets are about choices – what spending to prioritise, what to cut. With questions mounting over Australia’s nuclear submarine deal – Aukus – we took a look through the budget papers to see what one nuclear sub would buy us. There are a few caveats to make, including that we don’t know what the final figure will be for the nuclear subs for almost another two decades. We took the estimated figure when the deal was announced and divided it by the potential number of submarines: eight.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Josh Nicholas
In a city of trams, there’s one kind that’s really hard to ignore. They make a phenomenal racket as they rattle along down the street. You feel the shrieking brakes in your teeth every time they grind to a stop. And, unlike the sleek-spaceship-modern trams, they look exactly like how you would have drawn a tram when you were six years old. I moved to Melbourne about three years ago and, until recently, I hadn’t ever taken route 35 – a free vintagetram that circles the CBD.
