Justin Pyvis

Justin has a PhD in economics and 20+ years of experience in policy and investment analysis from working at the WA Treasury and AECOM in Perth, and Aletheia Capital in Hong Kong.

Posts by Justin Pyvis

Australia still has an inflation problem

Australia's domestic inflation, the poor incentives behind green energy transitions, Australia's new oil refinery, and Argentina's ongoing recovery.

1 August 2026

Where is Australia's Zohran Mamdani?

Australia's institutions work to prevent people like Zohran Mamdani from achieving similar political power.

29 July 2026

How to build a moat

Banning open-weight AI is just rent-seeking dressed up as national security.

28 July 2026

Vibe coding and token prices

28 July 2026

The latest AI scare campaign

The Hugging Face hack, how to value AI firms, the Australian media's shaky legs, and who is Andy Burnham?

24 July 2026

There is no moat

Chinese AI models are really good and the LLM space looks set to be commoditised, with consequences for the owners of the leading closed models.

20 July 2026

The PBO's bitter truth

Canberra's budgeting is industrial strength gaslighting, Westpac stands up for Superannuation, and Australia leads the world in occupational licensing, the productivity killer.

17 July 2026

The Office of AI

The opportunity costs of Australia's rush to establish 'AI standards' will be measured in the unseen innovations, jobs, and productivity gains that a committee in Canberra thwarts.

15 July 2026

Why falling house prices aren't always a win

Whether a fall in house prices is 'good news' depends entirely on why they are falling.

13 July 2026

Balancing the pain

Labor wants to meddle with interest rates, investing will have to change, and meeting the new Grok.

10 July 2026

Protecting jobs by killing growth

Australia won't build the next OpenAI, but could be its most sophisticated adopter... unless Labor ties the sector in regulatory knots first.

8 July 2026

Vibes vs. data at the World Cup

The most successful South American team actually plays a highly optimised, European style of football.

6 July 2026

Cold comfort

The wrong kind of housing cooling, the ACCC loses its way, and OpenAI proposes the friendliest shakedown in tech.

3 July 2026

A new direction

Why proprietary AI is losing its edge, local policy has hit a wall, and where this newsletter is heading next.

29 June 2026

The next reform victim

The Albanese government has found its next target, don't bank on a rate cut in 2026, and no matter how bad it gets there's always the UK.

26 June 2026

Labor's poison pill

The Greens got their concessions, Labor got its tax hike, and the rest of Australia got a revenue grab dressed as neutral reform.

24 June 2026

Caveat emptor

Pauline's big day, Hormuz is open (or is it?), and the biggest meme stock of all-time.

18 June 2026

A nation divided

The rise of One Nation, Oil and the Strait of Hormuz, and the SpaceX IPO.

12 June 2026

Treasury's imaginary gift

Indexing for inflation isn't a concession, and deferring tax until you sell isn't a loan.

10 June 2026

Is Australia a high-taxing nation?

No, but tax-to-GDP is a highly misleading measure of the true tax burden.

8 June 2026

When is a recession a recession?

Canada's technical recession, Australia's non-technical recession, and the worst public policy error in recent history.

5 June 2026

Killing with kindness

The minimum wage increases that are a boon for some may eventually lead to lost jobs for others.

3 June 2026

There will be no AI jobpocalypse

The economy's built-in roadblocks are bad news for anyone expecting an AI productivity miracle or an employment bloodbath.

1 June 2026

Efficiency or revenue?

Treasury defends the tax hikes; Australia's economy might be slowing down; and Budget fun across the ditch.

29 May 2026

It's not about the water

The arguments against data centres are a classic Gish Gallop designed to rile up emotions and obstruct investment.

28 May 2026

A tax on capital is a tax on wages

Australia's capital per worker hasn't grown in a decade, yet Labor's response is to tax it harder.

25 May 2026

Nth-best

Treasury shows its work; The term premium returns... or does it; and Time to dust off your paper air-plane skills.

22 May 2026

Is there a crisis facing men?

The data on young men is genuinely mixed. You wouldn't know it from the commentary.

20 May 2026

Why markets didn't react to Australia's budget

The most controversial budget since 1993, and the bond market didn't bat an eye.

18 May 2026

Chiefs of the salary cap

How Australian taxpayers are buying PNG an NRL premiership.

16 May 2026

Did Labor just jump the shark?

The next Australian election just went from a sure thing to wide open.

13 May 2026

The one line that matters in Australia's Budget

If you want to know whether a government is leaving the next generation better off, watch what it spends, not what it taxes.

12 May 2026

Why Western Australia is squandering generational wealth

And how to fix it for the future.

10 May 2026

Call it Jimflation

Australia's inflation is home brewed.

7 May 2026

The intergenerational ruse

The coming budget isn't really about helping young Australians.

5 May 2026

Australia should legalise nuclear

Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Japan are reversing course. Yet Australia is still pretending it has a choice.

4 May 2026

Canada's borrowed wealth

Canada might be getting a sovereign wealth fund. Whether Canadians ever get any wealth out of it is a different question.

30 April 2026

Australia's coming inflation

The Strait of Hormuz delivered the price shock. Whether it becomes inflation is up to Canberra and Martin Place.

27 April 2026

Gas, taxes, and wishful thinking

Comparing Australia's gas tax to Norway's is a masterclass in false equivalence that ignores physical and economic reality.

24 April 2026

Low debt buys you optionality

Australia has been burning its fiscal buffers in the good times, leaving it with little in the tank for the next real crisis.

17 April 2026

Australia's two fuel crises

How Canberra's response to the first is making the second worse.

14 April 2026

The housing wealth illusion

Australia's $12.3 trillion housing stock isn't a pool of misallocated capital, but a mark-to-market valuation of a policy-induced supply constraint.

12 April 2026

The economists who cried wolf

Argentina under Milei is a case study in how easily economists' politics can override the lessons of their own discipline.

9 April 2026

Just another TACO Tuesday

Trump chickened out, markets rallied, and global consumers are left footing the bill for a new toll in the Strait of Hormuz.

8 April 2026

Free public transport and a puppy

If you wanted to ease pressure on fuel prices, free public transport would be near the bottom of the list.

7 April 2026

Albanese's convenient crisis

Albanese is framing a foundational principle of prosperity as a policy failure because it makes a convenient origin story for the intervention he already wanted.

2 April 2026

The GST windfall that isn't

State Premiers are performing generosity with a GST windfall that doesn't exist, adding to debt and stoking inflation at the worst possible time.

31 March 2026

How much fuel does Australia really have?

Australia's fuel reserves are thin, but they aren't the reason you're paying more at the pump.

30 March 2026

There's no shortage of bad ideas in Australia

Almost every proposed response to Australia's fuel crisis would make it worse.

26 March 2026

The RBA is losing the war on credibility

The RBA spent 2025 fuelling a fire it now lacks the credibility to extinguish.

25 March 2026

The economics of a Liberal bloodbath

When your political strategy relies on a version of the economy that hasn't existed since 1960, a historic bloodbath is the only logical outcome.

24 March 2026

Oil is already being rationed

The biggest risk for Australia isn't the oil shock itself but that the urge to "do something" worsens the situation before the crisis is resolved.

22 March 2026

The oil shock in context

Australia's current oil crisis is a race between a rapid global supply response and the domestic urge to 'do something' that inevitably makes the situation worse.

20 March 2026

The capital gains tax discount is a red herring

The CGT debate is a distraction from a much harder truth: Australia's tax and transfer system is no longer fit for an aging population.

18 March 2026

Australia's inflation problem is home-grown

Australia's underlying inflation problem was made in Canberra and Martin Place, not Tehran.

16 March 2026

Paul O'Malley's misunderstandings about AI and trade

The risk to Australia isn't using AI built elsewhere but letting domestic incumbents like CBA use 'sovereignty' as a shield for protectionism.

12 March 2026

Australia's labour market is becoming like its housing market

By treating labour like a durable capital stock, Australia is legislating its workforce into the same rigid corner as its housing market.

11 March 2026

How not to respond to a supply shock

Allegra Spender's windfall tax idea would blunt price signals at exactly the moment you need them the most.

9 March 2026

Oil shocks don't cause inflation

The Iran war won't cause inflation unless central banks let it.

6 March 2026

Australia's cockroach problem

Domestic inflation never came close to target during the RBA's easing cycle, and just like cockroaches, it's back again.

4 March 2026

Housing's favourite villain

Australia is obsessed with taxing the supposed villains of the housing market while ignoring the restrictive zoning laws that actually lock people out.

2 March 2026

Going nowhere, fast

Australia's latest high-speed rail dream is a fast track to fiscal ruin.

26 February 2026

Nobody "trains" a human

Sam Altman's analogy comparing training AI to raising a child tells you more about his business strategy than OpenAI's energy use.

24 February 2026

Another bump on the tariff rollercoaster

The US Supreme court may have struck down Trump's tariffs, but don't expect them to go away.

22 February 2026

The RBA keeps making the same mistake

From running too tight to cutting too early, the Reserve Bank of Australia keeps making the same monetary mistake.

10 February 2026

Japan's risky bet

Japan's ruling party won a supermajority promising massive stimulus and tax cuts, but the yen's slide to near all-time lows suggests markets are sceptical the debt math works.

8 February 2026