Signal watch: September 2026

Australia's growth keeps landing in the same few places

Australia has added 8.3 million people since 2001. Six million of them live in a small group of council areas.¹ Meanwhile, some old mining and farming towns have fewer people than they used to.

Growth is landing on cheap land at the city fringes, where new roads, train lines and housing releases open up space fast. Melton near Melbourne's west is Australia's fastest-growing council with almost 12,700 new residents last year.² These growth councils have grown 34% in a decade, more than double the national rate, but get no dedicated funding for the roads, schools and hospitals they need to keep up.³

Mining and farming need fewer workers than they used to, so young people leave for the cities. Fewer people means fewer services, and closed schools and clinics push even more people out.^4,5

If you're trying to grow your business, make sure you're following your customers into growth areas. If your business sits in a shrinking town, plan for fewer customers and workers ahead.

Type: established | Strength: strong | Rationale: one detailed data analysis on the concentration figure, backed by National Growth Areas Alliance data on funding gaps and Australian Bureau of Statistics-based analysis on regional decline. None of it is contested.

AI is the latest excuse for offshoring

Telstra cut 650 jobs this year and moved hundreds more to India.⁹ NAB is cutting around 170 jobs in its Australian business team while adding 237 in India and Vietnam. Woolworths, Officeworks, Qantas and Coles have all made similar moves within months of each other.^{10,11,12,13,14}

Offshoring used to mean call centres and data entry jobs. The supposedly simple jobs, where customers wouldn't notice the difference. But we all know that's not true. The latest offshoring wave is the white-collar enabling professions, like finance, HR, marketing and IT. The jobs that were considered too skilled to send overseas.

Officeworks blamed rising costs and changing customers.¹² Woolworths said it needed to compete with international companies entering Australia.¹¹ But every company paired its offshoring news with a promise to use more AI. A University of Sydney business professor says the jobs moving now sit higher up the ladder than before.¹¹

Type: emerging | Strength: strong | Rationale: six separate, unconnected companies made the same move within months of each other, each confirmed on the record rather than reported anonymously.

Is it Christian values to run a smear campaign? Apparently.

The Exclusive Brethren, a wealthy Christian sect, secretly paid far-right activists and known neo-Nazis to track and heckle Labor, Greens and independent candidates during last year's federal election.²⁰ The campaign backed former opposition leader Peter Dutton, by slinging mud at his rivals. Leaked messages and insider accounts describe a "duffel bag of cash" changing hands to organise the stunts.

The church denies any institutional involvement. Its position is that individual members acted on their own, not the organisation. Its director gave evidence to the parliamentary inquiry on 21 August.²¹

Days after the neo-Nazi link became public, current Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Tony Abbott were pictured at a charity event linked to the Brethren.²² Sources say the Brethren have also approached One Nation and other smaller parties about paying for future campaigns.²⁰

Religious groups have lobbied Australian governments for decades, arguing publicly for their positions on marriage, school funding and abortion law. The Brethren campaign was secret and anonymous. It paid activists to look like ordinary voters expressing their own anger.

Type: emerging | Strength: strong | Rationale: The Age's original investigation is now corroborated by a second masthead identifying the same neo-Nazi links, and tested by parliamentary inquiry. The church's on-the-record denial means this isn't yet settled fact.

What we're monitoring

The Exclusive Brethren inquiry isn't finished, so we'll watch and see what else comes out of the woodwork. The ACCC is still investigating Aldi, Coles and Leggo's over tomato paste country of origin labelling. One Nation is on a run after winning a WA byelection. And we'll keep an eye on whether ambulance ramping keeps rising in other states.