Last night, the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg handed down his third budget and this Government’s eighth. In a bold statement, the Treasurer placed an emphasis on using the twin pillars of rising employment and falling welfare dependency to drive the budget bottom line.

The funny thing about mowing the lawn is that you need to do it regularly. Every week in the summer. Fortnightly in the winter. Otherwise, it gets overgrown, quickly. The weeds take hold, leaves and bark from your garden end up on the grass and generally, it starts to look a bit of a mess.

I pulled up to a new set of traffic light on The Northern Road. It’s 8pm on a Saturday evening and I’m making my way back home after a day trip to Bathurst. Alongside me pulls up a Range Rover Velar. I wonder if he’s going to drag me off at the lights.

One of the best things about family business is the presence of family. One of the worst things about family business is the presence of family. Confused? You shouldn’t be.

Around six weeks ago, there was a horrific level crossing accident in Central Western New South Wales. Two men died when their B double truck, carting gypsum, collided with a freight train. It was late afternoon and investigations are still continuing as to the cause of this tragedy.

I’d finished a client meeting and as I piled into the car, I flicked my phone onto my Spotify playlist and hit shuffle. With more than 1800 songs on my list, there’s a wide variety to listen to, from the ‘50s to now.

As we finish up the first quarter of 2021, the news is overwhelmingly positive in Australia and a stark contrast to what we were all experiencing 12 months ago.

My wife and I recently took a nine day trip to Port Stephens, three hours north of Sydney. It’s an old family holiday stomping ground from the days when our sons were youngsters and Trish’s Mum, Peggy, would join us for a week by the beach. We made the decision to venture back to somewhere we’d not spent a lot of time at since 2007 as a combined result of:

Sadly, most people have no idea what parts of their business generate a profit and what parts generate a loss. Whilst monthly, quarterly or annual financial statements might report a Profit or Loss, all that tells you is the totality of the business performance for the period. It doesn’t actually show you how the profit is actually generated..

It had been a year since I’d visited clients, in person, in Melbourne. COVID 19 and the disruption it brought meant that, from late February, 2020, it was all on Zoom, pretty much like everyone else.