Investment bank to face heat over climate commitments
Environmental group Market Forces plans to have a four-metre-tall mock gas flare outside Macquarie Group's new Martin Place offices in Sydney on Thursday morning, representing the bank's financing of climate pollution.
At the meeting Macquarie faces its first climate-focused shareholder resolution calling on the $86 billion company to outline how its financing for fossil fuel projects is aligned with its net-zero commitments.
Activists say they're concerned about Macquarie's commitment to global climate goals after the bank followed US peers JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America in exiting the Net Zero Banking Alliance in February, not long after President Donald Trump took office.
Macquarie has more than doubled its financing for oil and gas in the past two years, Market Forces says.
"Macquarie's reputation as a green financial institution is completely at odds with its investments in one of Australia's biggest new gas developments," said Market Forces policy analyst Morgan Pickett, referring to its financing of a $100 million gas fracking project in the Northern Territory's Beetaloo Basin.
Macquarie in late 2024 provided the funding for two of the gas companies most active in the Basin, Beetaloo Energy Australia and Tamboran Resources.
Australia's Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo has the potential to rival the world's best gas projects, and developing it could create thousands of jobs and drive significant economic growth in the territory.
Activists say moving ahead with another gas project is irresponsible as the planet tips further into a climate emergency.
"As a climate scientist, I'm appalled that Macquarie Group is claiming to be green yet is lending to companies blasting ahead with new gas projects adding to irreversible global warming," Lesley Hughes, climate change scientist and emerita professor of biology, said in a statement provided by Market Forces.
Macquarie is recommending shareholders reject the climate resolution, which asks the bank to disclose its exposure to fossil fuel companies and detail its approach for funding them in light of its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
Macquarie says the science behind climate change is "clear and unequivocal" but it believes in "a managed, orderly and just transition".
"This means supporting carbon-intensive industries and companies including those in the oil/gas, electricity, agriculture, mining, transport and waste sectors to decarbonise, while protecting the vital services and jobs that our communities rely on," Macquarie said.
Market Forces says four global investors have backed the shareholder resolution: the pension funds of New York City, the UK's Church of England and the largest private pension fund in Norway, as well as Melbourne-based fund manager ELM Responsible Investments.
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
It's the summer of Trump and the world can't look away
Returning to the US for the first time in four years, I found a country that didn't want to talk about politics, despite being in the eye of the Trump storm. When the seasons of Trumpism come to be revisited, the summer of 2025 will seem like an especially frenzied blur. History at its most haywire. During it, we witnessed President Donald J. Trump in full. The unpredictable commander-in-chief who ordered a quick, sharp strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The America Firster who browbeat NATO allies into stumping up more money for their self-defence, thereby ratcheting up pressure on Australia to make equivalent GDP-share spending commitments. The tough-talking protectionist, determined to up-end the terms of global commerce, who scored victories in the trade war by forcing the European Union and Japan to accept higher tariffs on their exports to America. The MAGA provocateur who imposed his policy of mass deportations on Los Angeles surely knowing it would spark a stand-off with California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, which is precisely what happened when he placed the California National Guard under his control and sent in US Marines. Summer brought his very own blockbuster, the passage of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" which rewarded the rich with tax cuts and punished the poor with cuts in Medicaid and what used to be called food stamps. Trump signed the centrepiece of his legislative agenda into law on July 4, the deadline he had set for lawmakers, and then delivered an address from the balcony of the White House, a pulpit his predecessors have generally not used for presidential addresses, partly because it seemed so kingly. There was a certain historical irony, then, in an Independence Day picnic on the White House lawn being transformed into a Trumpian pageant. US President Donald Trump presents the sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," after he signed it, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2025. ( Reuters: Leah Mills ) There have been dog days, too. When pressure from the MAGA base mounted for his Justice Department to release "the Epstein files", Trump the conspiracy mongerer became Trump the conspiracy denier as he implored his supporters to believe there had been no deep state cover-up after all around disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time close friend. When that strategy failed, he fabricated a new conspiracy, blaming Barack Obama, Joe Biden and "Radical Left Democrats" for conjuring up yet another plot to discredit him. "Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffery Epstein Hoax," he hurrumphed on social media, "and my PAST supporters have bought into this 'bullshit' hook, line, and sinker." Amidst the clammer to release the Epstein list, Trump had dusted off his enemies list. In the latest twist, Trump told reporters he fell out with Epstein because his Palm Beach neighbour 'stole' staff from his Mar-a-Lago country club, including Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April this year. Trump is skilled at the art of the distraction, more so than the art of the deal. Shifting the media's gaze has become something of a political superpower. The president who promised to pull back the curtain on the secrets on the deep state suddenly looked to many of his MAGA supporters like he was the deep state. As all this played out, I made my first trip back to the United States since leaving four years ago, the longest spell I have spent out of a country since adolescence. This three-week visit started with the new protocols of Trump era travel, such as being required as part of the visa application process to reveal social media handles and entering the immigration hall with the possibility that border officials would demand access to my phone and laptop. The thrill of entering America which I felt as a teenager was replaced by a sense of mild unease. Throughout the summer, the American melodrama brought tragedy and farce. There was heartbreak in Texas Hill Country, where flash floods took the lives of at least 135 victims, including 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic. Early July also brought the opening of "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Florida Everglades, a makeshift detention centre set up to help with the immigration crackdown. After touring its fenced-in bunk beds — facilities slammed as inhumane by immigration rights groups — Trump quickly proffered his presidential imprimatur. Then he offered advice to reporters on how to outrun an alligator, using zigzagging hand gestures to drive home his point. Trump visits a temporary migrant detention centre informally known as "Alligator Alcatraz" in Ochopee, Florida. ( Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein ) Then there was his latest attempt to profit from the presidency, a range of fragrances. "Victory 45-47", which comes in a bottle emblazoned with his signature and topped with a gold plastic statuette of the president, sells for $249 a pop. As well as perfume, there was poison. His feud with Elon Musk, the one-time "First Buddy", became more venomous, with the world's richest man announcing the formation of his own political party. There was a resumption of hostilities with the comedian Rosie O'Donnell, whose citizenship he threatened to revoke. To coincide with the release of the new Superman movie, the White House naturally created its own Superman meme, with Trump cast as the superhero, crimson cape and all. "THE SYMBOL OF HOPE. TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY. SUPERMAN TRUMP," read the official White House X account. June and July also brought two important MAGA milestones, both of them red letter days vested with near sacred meaning. June 16 marked the 10th anniversary of the start of his first bid for the presidency, when he came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower. July 13 was the first anniversary of the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet shaved his right ear. This near death experience has come to be regarded almost as a celestial event: proof in the president's mind that God spared his life so he could be restored to the White House. Trump and wife Melania watch fireworks during the celebration of the Army's 250th birthday on the National Mall. ( Reuters: Doug Mills ) On June 14, two birthdays coincided: Trump's 79th and the US Army's 250th. These events were twinned when the Pentagon staged a mammoth anniversary parade through the streets of Washington. It's "gonna be better and bigger than any parade we've ever had in this country," said the president with typical braggadocio, "a spectacular military parade in Washington, D.C., like no other." A Trump tattoo. So all consuming is the spectacle of Trump's second term that it is easy to underplay the substance. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" — it really is officially called that — has giant ramifications. Over the next decade, it will add at least $3.4 trillion to the US deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, an eye-watering figure roughly twice the size of Australia's entire GDP for 2024. As a result of his tax cuts, Americans in the top 20 per cent will see their incomes raised by 2.2 per cent, according to analysis from the Yale Budget Lab. Those in the bottom 20 per cent will see their incomes fall by 2.9 per cent. Put another way, that wealthy cohort will get a boost of about $5,700. The poor will be $700 worse off. Cuts to Medicaid, which provides health cover for low-income and vulnerable Americans, could result in more than 42,500 deaths annually, according to public health experts at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. Nearly 12 million Americans stand to lose their coverage. The inflationary effects of the president's trade war, another signature policy, are also starting to have a hip pocket effect. Inflation rose to 2.7 per cent in June, up from 2.4 per cent in May. The price of eggs, which Trump famously promised to bring down, has risen by 27 per cent since this time last year. But the stock markets, which dipped sharply after Trump's Liberation Day tariff announcements, have soared in recent weeks. In late June, both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ reached record highs, and then continued breaking records. The markets seemed unperturbed by Trump's threats to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, another summertime storyline which bordered on the slapstick. In mid-July, Trump bizarrely expressed surprise that Joe Biden had appointed Powell in the first place, seemingly forgetting that he himself had hand-picked the Fed Chairman back in 2017. Then, in a photo-op which seemed to come straight from the satire Veep, the president found himself fact-checked by Powell in real-time after inflating claims of a cost blowout in the Federal Reserve's renovation program. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell fact checked Trump on the go. ( Reuters: Kent Nishimura ) With those B2 bomber raids and bunker buster bombs targeted at Iran's nuclear program, his boldest foreign policy move yet, Trump demonstrated the unmatched might of America's hard power. Simultaneously, he continued to erode his country's soft power. More than 1,500 staff at the US State Department were laid off in July, cuts which brought to mind the warning from General James Mattis, who served as Defence Secretary in Trump's first term: "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition." The Trump administration's cuts to US foreign aid, where 80 per cent of all programs have been cancelled, have been devastating. A report published in The Lancet medical journal at the start of July warned they could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Children are thought to be particularly vulnerable. The report projected that 4.5 million infants under the age of 5 could die as a result of these America First cuts. When it comes to strengthening America's borders, the Trump administration has been delivering on its promise. By mid-July, illegal border crossings had fallen to their lowest levels ever recorded, according to US Customs and Border Protection. Late June also saw the lowest number of apprehensions on a single day on record — just 136. In early June, an executive order came into effect banning travel from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and the Republic of Congo, with travellers from seven other nations, such as Cuba and Venezuela, facing tighter restrictions. Just over six months into his second term, this is fast turning into one of the most consequential presidencies of the past 70 years, on a par with the Reagan Revolution and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reform program. The Epstein scandal aside, supporters see a president delivering on border protection, restoring the fear factor to US foreign policy without embroiling the country in endless entanglements, and putting wokeism to the sword with his onslaught against diversity, equity and inclusion. Opponents see an unstable president on a narcissistic power trip: the head of a cult-like movement imperilling the modern-day norms of US democracy. In a country which next summer will mark its 250th birthday, Trump continues to personify and magnify American disunion. For my summer visit, rather than as a journalist, I was there as a visitor. But in a country where pretty much everything is politicised Trump's giant shadow hangs over the tourist trail. How can you peer across New York harbour at the Statue of Liberty and not wonder if democracy is under assault from a president who refused to accept the result of the 2020 election and sparked a rebellion on January 6, 2021, to overturn it? How can you drive through the civil war battlefields of the South, as I did in Tennessee, and not be reminded of the divisions he seems to delight in aggravating, and his decision to rename seven military bases in honour of Confederate leaders who fought to uphold slavery? How could you listen, as I did during a patriotic celebration on July 4, to a town elder recite words from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address — that there should be "government of the people, for the people, by the people" — without pondering the question posed at the end of that classic 272-word address: whether this nation "could long endure". Politics is always on tap. On my first morning in Manhattan, I stumbled across the Pride March heading down Broadway, and immediately came face to face with Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who had just pulled off a shock victory in the New York mayoral primary by beating the former governor, Andrew Cuomo. On the evening I touched down in Los Angeles, the Trump administration announced that about half of the California National Guard troops who had been deployed to police the protests against the ICE raids would be placed back under the control of Governor Newsom. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. ( Reuters: Kylie Cooper ) Yet despite the fact that Trump provided much of the background noise for my travels, I was struck by how few people brought him up in conversation. For all his omnipresence in the media, I did not see a single Make America Great Again cap, bumper sticker or T-shirt depicting him as The Terminator or Rambo. This was true even in the South. At a country music joint in Nashville, where singer-songwriters performed their greatest hits, there was not even the slightest hint of politics during the two-hour set. Likewise, at a mega-church the following morning, it would have been impossible to tell from the songs, prayers and liturgy who resided in the White House. Towards the end of her sermon, the preacher, a female African-American pastor, recited words from the bible that were echoed by Abraham Lincoln in his famed 1858 Springfield speech that "a house divided against itself cannot stand", but she was referring to divisions in the church rather than within the country. During my stay in Nashville, I visited one of the city's main visitor attractions, The Hermitage slave plantation owned by Andrew Jackson, the country's first populist president and a former general who often rode roughshod over Congress and the courts. But even though Trump regards Jackson as a presidential kindred spirit, and visited The Hermitage during his first term to pay homage to "Old Hickory", this also felt like a Trump-lite zone. For sure, the sight of Jackson's famed maxim in the museum's entrance hall — "I was born for the storm, the calm does not suit me" — evoked the present incumbent of the White House, but throughout our tour nobody made any reference towards this obvious connection. Nor in the gift shop did I see any merchandise connected to Andrew Jackson's 21st-century alter ego. During his first term, as I travelled through the American heartland listening to voter reaction to his presidency, I was constantly struck by how few Americans were aware of his latest tweet, insult, blow-up or scandalous imbroglio. This journey drove home that same simple but telling point. Though Trump dominates almost every waking hour of reporters and editors, he does not monopolise the lives of everyday Americans to anywhere near the same extent. Though the Trump White House is constantly on a political war footing, with outlets such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox News amplifying his battle cries, most American people do not regard themselves as full-time combatants. While Trump continually attempts to raise the temperature to boiling point, there is a large body of Americans keen to lower it. For sure, the United States remains chronically polarised with divisions over race, abortion, guns, the rules of democracy and how the country's history should be told and commemorated. But these are not conflicts fought at Trumpian intensity on an hourly or daily basis. Even when the Epstein scandal blew up, it did not feel as if the entire nation was following every twist and turn. At times I even wondered whether the watching world is paying closer attention than Americans themselves. The "No Kings" protest against Donald Trump in Philadelphia in June. ( ABC News: Matt Davis ) Not for one moment am I suggesting there has been a truce in America's cold civil war. There is resistance for sure. In mid-June, "No Kings" protests were held in 820 different locations. In mid-July, another mass mobilisation, the "Good Trouble Lives On" protests, unfolded in more than 1,600 places. Yet despite the large number of protesters who took to the streets, I did not observe the fierce anger of his first term. Many Democrats seemed prepared to wait him out. Some fear that strong resistance will only play into his hands, and provide him with a pretext to crack down on dissent. Many believe the lower courts will slow him down, if not completely restrain him, and that in next year's congressional mid-term elections the Democrats stand a strong chance of taking back control of the House of Representatives, where the party needs a net gain of just three seats to wrestle power from the Republicans. It is almost possible, among his critics, to detect a mood of melancholic resignation: the sense that abnormal is America's new normal; that the Trump genie will never be put back in the bottle. Noticeable over the American summer was how the term "lame duck" started creeping into reportage, the phrase used to describe a second-term president prevented by the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution from running again. Usually this hackneyed term suggests a waning of power, but Trump has succeeded to a large extent in consolidating and expanding his presidential writ. Though the Epstein controversy has exposed fissures in the MAGAverse, Republicans on Capitol Hill are more loyal and disciplined than they were during his first administration. Even with majorities in both houses of Congress, it was quite the legislative achievement to win enactment of the big beautiful bill ahead of his July 4 deadline, and one which demonstrated the control he exerts over a Republican party largely purged of dissenters. During the summer, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court also handed him major judicial victories. In a ruling which boosted Trump's power and also its own, the court decided, six votes to three, to limit the ability of individual judges in the lower federal courts from issuing injunctions to block his policies. What made this ruling doubly significant was that it pertained to his attempt to limit birthright citizenship through the signing of a presidential executive order, which critics blasted as a flagrant attempt to re-write with his famed Sharpie pen the 14th Amendment of the US constitution. Aided by an often pliant Supreme Court, Trump continues to alter the balance of power between the three branches of US government, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, so that more authority is concentrated in the White House. This, then, is becoming a most imperial presidency. From pressuring Coca Cola to use cane sugar rather than corn syrup to demanding that the Washington Commanders NFL team revert to its former name, the Redskins, he clearly believes that he can intervene in and alter virtually every facet of American life. Certainly, Trump is no lame duck. As if to drive home this point, sections of the US media are opting for appeasement over adversarialism. Paramount, the parent company of CBS, surrendered to Trump over one of his frivolous lawsuits, paying him $16 million to settle a case centring on the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount is trying to pull off a mega-merger with Skydance, which needs the approval of Trump's Federal Communications Commission. When CBS cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a host unafraid to voice on-air criticisms of his Paramount paymasters, the comedian was widely seen as a sacrificial offering. "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired," Trump rejoiced on social media. "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next," he added, referring to the late night talk show host on ABC, who the president has sparred with for years. In another MAGA victory, Trump also managed to starve federal funding from the public broadcasters PBS and NPR, a bete noire of Republicans for decades. Routinely now, he is trying to cow the media into submission. His response to an explosive Epstein-related story published by The Wall Street Journal, based on a lewd letter Trump allegedly wrote to his then friend more than 20 years ago which spoke of a "wonderful secret", was to sue Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the newspaper, and to ban the masthead from being part of the press pool covering his trip to Scotland. [#configsm4x3md4x3lg4x3anon [trump] Donald Trump is far more representative of America's past and present than detractors would concede. The kind of fanaticism, nativism, white male supremacy, Christian nationalism and conspiratorialism which he taps into have been through-lines of the American story. But that is not the same as saying Trump is successfully moulding America in his own image. Unlike Ronald Reagan, who won 49 out of 50 states in his landslide re-election victory in 1984, he has struggled to win over a simple majority of compatriots. At the 2024 election, even though he became the first Republican since George W Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote, he received only a 49.8 per cent share. His victory, though clear-cut, was historically speaking narrow. By just 233,000 votes did Kamala Harris lose the three crucial Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Had this trifecta of battlegrounds ended up in the Democratic column, she would have become America's first female president. At no time during his first or second term has Trump cracked the symbolically important 50 per cent presidential approval rating as measured by Gallup. Since this blue-ribbon polling organisation first started gauging presidential popularity in the late 1930s, he is the only president not to rise above this threshold. His average second term approval rating is 43 per cent. Despite what he presented as a string of victories in Iran, on Capitol Hill and at the Supreme Court — "has anyone ever had a better two weeks?" he boastfully asked during what he regarded as salad days for his presidency — an Economist/You Gov poll published in mid-July suggested his approval rating was just 41 per cent, the lowest of his second term. As for the Big Beautiful Bill, a CNN/SSRS poll found that 61 per cent of respondents opposed it. When I first visited the United States as a wide-eyed teenager, I got to experience the country's great summertime of resurgence. It was 1984, the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. Chants of "USA, USA" celebrated the gold rush achieved by the host nation's athletes. It was the first time this incantation had been heard coast to coast, and it helped exorcise some of the ghosts of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis. That year, as part of his bid for re-election, Ronald Reagan came up with the slogan "It's Morning Again in America," which perfectly encapsulated the optimistic mood of the times. From the White House comes the same triumphalism, albeit more nationalist than patriotic. But the first summertime of the Trump restoration, of which there is still a month left to run, has been an altogether darker and more schismatic time. Credits Words: Nick Bryant Editor: Leigh Tonkin Illustrations: Kylie Silvester Photographs: Reuters, Matt Davis
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Melbourne's smallest shops reveal shocking price per metre rates
Forget Toorak and the towers at the Paris end of Collins St, Melbourne's priciest piece of real estate is probably a 2sq m cupboard in a CBD laneway worth more than $190,000 a metre. It's more than ten times as valuable on a square metre rate than the more than $100m Coonac mansion that smashed the city's house price record earlier this year — and business owners are even taking on the cost of filling in disused elevator shafts to get something similar. But they're facing mixed fortunes with one of the city's most expensive properties sitting empty, despite the 14sq m shopfront at 97 Swanston St being bought at an incredible $184,000 a metre in 2012. Meanwhile an 8sq m kiosk in Northcote plaza has hit the market with a $450,000 price tag that would make it among the most expensive pieces of suburban real estate ever sold in the city. Fitzroys division director James Lockwood's firm handled the sale of what is thought to be the city's priciest property, a 2sq m premises at Shop 3, Causeway House, which set an incredible $190,000 a metre price benchmark in 2013. While such sales have tapered off, Mr Lockwood noted demand was still there for similar premises. A disused lift shaft offered for lease in the depths of Melbourne's lockdowns attracted five interested parties, before ultimately being rented by local sweet tooths Mork Chocolate – who have turned it into a contender for the smallest chocolate shop in the world. 'It went bananas,' Mr Lockwood said. Today, he estimated the 6.5sq m premises would be worth as much as $350,000. 'And if there were 20 of them today in the city, they would lease in a month,' Mr Lockwood said. Mork co-founder Kiril Shaginov has added a floor, a roof and designed a modest shop front to be run out of a window cut into the back wall in an effort to make it a popular destination. 'It was crazy, but in my head it was perfect,' Mr Shaginov said. It now contains a cake fridge, a small coffee machine, two bar fridges and some elevated cupboards for storage — leaving room for two people inside of it, at a maximum. While expensive by a square metre rate, Mr Shaginov said it didn't feel that way for the returns it brought in. 'It's about four years it's been there now and we get a lot of regular trade, and it's an iconic laneway so we get a lot of tourists who do chocolate or a streets of Melbourne tour,' he said. Real Estate Institute of Victoria acting chief executive Jacob Caine said the tiny commercial spaces 'surpass anything in the residential space by a gazillion miles'. 'This is indisputable evidence that great value can come in small packages,' Mr Caine said. 'And that's testament to the value and the opportunity that those kind of micro-retail spaces can offer.' Committee for Melbourne chief executive Scott Veenker said the government needed to do what it could to ensure business conditions continued to encourage 'unique Melbourne icons to thrive'. 'Melbourne as a laneway city is renowned for its hospitality and retail,' Mr Veenker said. 'We want consumers, tourists and businesses to continue to choose Melbourne and Victoria as a destination to visit and a place to do business.' Industry consultant and Property 28 founder Clinton Baxter said the values were historically the highest per square metre along Swanston St, due to the high foot traffic walking — but despite working on some of the highest priced deals per metre in the past, said they were less likely today. 'It's less likely at the moment, after Covid had such a detrimental impact on the CBD and the market,' Mr Baxter said. 'But they will come back. With population growth, that will lead to a return and a catch up.' It's a different story in the suburbs, with a tiny kiosk measuring just 8sq m in the middle of Northcote shopping plaza hitting the market. Despite being just over half the size of a typical Victorian carpark's about 13sq m size, if sold in line with its $450,000 asking price the 97/ 25-143 Separation St would come out to a hefty $56,250 a metre, making it one of the priciest properties ever sold in the suburb. It would even likely eclipse the likely price per metre cost of a $1m bathing box sale in Portsea. Hudson Bond's Josh Schache said the 'unique' listing offered a lot of value, and even at the $450,000 asking price would return about 5.6 per cent a year — better than any high interest rate bank account today. With the rent already locked in for future rises, Mr Schache is expecting strong interest in the property – particularly with the plaza set for a $500m redevelopment. 'So, in terms of an investment opportunity, it stacks up,' he said. 'In terms of what we're seeing at the moment, you'd be pretty happy to get 5 per cent. And with the rent to go up, that will only increase.' In Footscray, Trimson Partners' John Verducci sold a Barkly St premises measuring just 27sq m for $420,000 in 2020 — more than $15,500 a metre. In a further positive sign for the suburban market for minuscule real estate offerings, Mr Verducci estimated it would be worth $450,000-$500,000 today — even factoring in a slowdown from the Covid period. While it suits the travel agent currently located there, he said it was really about the size of a few ATMs. However, it's a tiny store currently home to a Fromagerie across the road that stands out as the most impressive effort to squeeze more retail space into the suburb. It used to be a laneway, before someone bought it and turned it into a three-storey shop on a plot of land measuring barely 20sq m. 'It was surprising to see them pull it off,' Mr Verducci said. 'Who would have thought of sticking three shoeboxes on top of an old laneway and renting them out?'
The Advertiser
6 hours ago
- The Advertiser
US appeals court keeps ban on LA immigration arrests
A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court's decision temporarily barring US government agents from making immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. Rejecting the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's order, the three-judge appeals panel ruled the plaintiffs would likely be able to prove that federal agents had carried out arrests based on people's appearance, language and where they lived or worked. President Donald Trump called National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities joined a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration. A California judge in July blocked the Trump administration from racially profiling immigrants as it seeks deportation targets and from denying immigrants' right to access to lawyers during their detention. In Friday's unsigned decision, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely rejected the administration's appeal of the temporary restraining order. The judges agreed with the lower court in blocking federal officials from detaining people based solely on "apparent race or ethnicity", speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as a "bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day labourer pick up site, agricultural site, etc". The Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the order a victory for the city. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now," she said in a statement. Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff lawyer at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, also welcomed the ruling. "This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," he said in a statement. A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court's decision temporarily barring US government agents from making immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. Rejecting the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's order, the three-judge appeals panel ruled the plaintiffs would likely be able to prove that federal agents had carried out arrests based on people's appearance, language and where they lived or worked. President Donald Trump called National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities joined a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration. A California judge in July blocked the Trump administration from racially profiling immigrants as it seeks deportation targets and from denying immigrants' right to access to lawyers during their detention. In Friday's unsigned decision, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely rejected the administration's appeal of the temporary restraining order. The judges agreed with the lower court in blocking federal officials from detaining people based solely on "apparent race or ethnicity", speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as a "bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day labourer pick up site, agricultural site, etc". The Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the order a victory for the city. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now," she said in a statement. Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff lawyer at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, also welcomed the ruling. "This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," he said in a statement. A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court's decision temporarily barring US government agents from making immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. Rejecting the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's order, the three-judge appeals panel ruled the plaintiffs would likely be able to prove that federal agents had carried out arrests based on people's appearance, language and where they lived or worked. President Donald Trump called National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities joined a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration. A California judge in July blocked the Trump administration from racially profiling immigrants as it seeks deportation targets and from denying immigrants' right to access to lawyers during their detention. In Friday's unsigned decision, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely rejected the administration's appeal of the temporary restraining order. The judges agreed with the lower court in blocking federal officials from detaining people based solely on "apparent race or ethnicity", speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as a "bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day labourer pick up site, agricultural site, etc". The Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the order a victory for the city. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now," she said in a statement. Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff lawyer at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, also welcomed the ruling. "This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," he said in a statement. A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court's decision temporarily barring US government agents from making immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. Rejecting the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's order, the three-judge appeals panel ruled the plaintiffs would likely be able to prove that federal agents had carried out arrests based on people's appearance, language and where they lived or worked. President Donald Trump called National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities joined a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration. A California judge in July blocked the Trump administration from racially profiling immigrants as it seeks deportation targets and from denying immigrants' right to access to lawyers during their detention. In Friday's unsigned decision, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely rejected the administration's appeal of the temporary restraining order. The judges agreed with the lower court in blocking federal officials from detaining people based solely on "apparent race or ethnicity", speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as a "bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day labourer pick up site, agricultural site, etc". The Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the order a victory for the city. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now," she said in a statement. Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff lawyer at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, also welcomed the ruling. "This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," he said in a statement.
