The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has forecast that Australia’s net infrastructure investment will peak at $38 billion in 2019-20, before falling over the next three years. This is primarily due to expectations that the net debt of the state governments will blow out to around $156 billion by 2022, which would constitute the states’ highest
Just a week after The Australia Institute (TAI) released a report – funded by Industry Super Australia – backing an increase in the superannuation guarantee (compulsory superannuation) to 12%, the chief economist of TAI, Richard Denniss, has blasted Australia’s superannuation system for “stealing from the poor to give to the rich”: Welcome to the topsy-turvy
Labor has called for an urgent review of the temporary visa system after the latest report from the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI) revealed a high concentration of temporary migrant workers across large swathes of the economy (see below table). From The Australian: Labor has called for an urgent examination of the temporary visa regime
In the Q&A after Tuesday’s address to ACOSS, assistant RBA Governor, Guy Debelle, blamed higher participation from women and older Australians for adding to labour supply and lowering wages: “It’s ultimately fundamental economics that with demand and supply, if you run out of supply, then the price is going to go up. When demand exhausts
During the peak of the last housing cycle in 2017, MB coined the phrase “shrinkflation” to describe the peculiar situation whereby housing prices rise strongly alongside crashing sales volumes. Australia’s housing market is experiencing another round of shrinkflation with dwelling values surging at the same time as turnover remains anaemic. A new report from CoreLogic
In the week ended 28 November 2019, the CoreLogic 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, surged another 0.43%: The rise in values was broad-based, but again driven by Sydney and Melbourne: Quarterly dwelling values continue to rise strongly, driven by Sydney and Melbourne, where prices are rocketing: The
The NSW Office of State Revenue has released stamp duty data to October, which reveals a massive $1.47 billion (23%) decline over the past year and a $2.55 billion (34%) decline since stamp duty receipts peaked in September 2017: The slump in stamp duty receipts follows a sharp 20% decline in property transfers in the
Abul Rizvi, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and one of the architects of Australia’s faux ‘skilled’ migration program, has penned an article claiming that the $53,900 wage floor for regional skilled migrants is too high: On 16 November 2019, the Government’s much-touted regional migration visas took effect. One of these is a
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: US stock market record highs amid strong economic data – Yahoo 5 More Signs That The Global Economy Is Careening Toward A Recession – Most Important News How the IMF can battle gradual irrelevance – Jordan Times This digital currency could build a more sustainable global economy – European
In the lead-up to the September 2017 general election, the New Zealand Labour Party launched a plan to reduce immigration by around a third in a bid to relieve chronic housing and infrastructure pressures (especially around Auckland): …in recent years our population has been growing rapidly as record numbers of migrants arrive here. This has
Last weekend, CoreLogic released its preliminary auction clearance rates, which revealed the following results: Today, CoreLogic has released its final auction results, which reported a 4.4% decline in the final national auction clearance rate to 68.5% – well above the same weekend last year (41.9%) but below last week’s 70.1%: As you can see, Sydney’s
In a Q&A after Tuesday’s address to ACOSS, assistant RBA Governor, Guy Debelle, admitted point blank that lifting Newstart would provide the economy with stimulus: Guy Debelle: “Newstart has been constant in real terms for the past five or six years. Sorry, 25 years… If those people got higher income, would they spend it? Probably
Earlier this week, The Grattan Institute released research arguing that gouging by specialists at private hospitals is driving up private health insurance costs and premiums. Interestingly, this report claimed that private hospitals are actually less efficient than their public hospital counterparts: Private hospitals need to lift their game too. They are less efficient than public
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released data on capital expenditures (capex) for the September quarter, which registered a 0.2% seasonally adjusted fall in capex volumes over the quarter and a 1.3% decrease over the year (see below table). The 0.2% quarterly decline missed market expectations of 0.0%. The first chart below shows actual
Predictably, Australia’s towns are unhappy about the Morrison Government’s farcical deeming of Perth and the Gold Coast as “regional” despite being bonafide metropolitan areas: Small regional towns like Swan Hill in Victoria are now competing for migrant workers against cities like Perth and the Gold Coast… Jason King’s business needs workers with skills, but it’s
In late 2017, the Victorian Labor Government completed a shady $6.7 billion deal with Transurban to build the West Gate Tunnel Project, which will see Transurban contribute $4.4 billion towards the cost in exchange motorists paying $15 billion in additional tolls on CityLink until 2045. Former Premier Jeff Kennett described the deal as “absurd” and
With Melbourne’s population having soared by around 600,000 people over the past five years: And the city turning into one giant construction site, a Victorian parliamentary committee is trying to pin the blame for Melbourne’s growing congestion on ride sharing services like Uber: The growth of ride-share vehicles since Victoria’s taxi industry was deregulated two
Victoria’s building industry has called for an amnesty from prosecution for building dodgy high-rises with flammable cladding: The Master Builders Association says the Andrews government’s get-tough approach, including “litigious posturing” and rhetoric on dodgy builders, is damaging the effort to tackle the [flammable cladding] crisis. More than 1200 buildings with risky levels of flammable cladding
The NSW Government plans to overhaul state planning laws next year in a bid to turn Sydney into a 30-minute city: In a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) on Wednesday, Ms Berejiklian will outline a vision for the state’s planning system, which will be her focus next year. Her State
Over the past five years, Indian international student enrolments across Australia’s educational institutions has skyrocketed by 138% to 126,000 as at August 2019: The number of Indian student visa applications granted has also soared by 125% over the past three years alone, signalling a further lift in enrolments: This explosion in Indian student enrolments is
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: WeWork shows that real profit still matters more than “growth” – The Drum Audi To Cut 9,500 Jobs To Fund Shift To Electric Vehicles – Forbes Decentralised finance in developing countries: it’s potential and constraints – Medium Americas: The great American labor paradox: Plentiful jobs, most of them bad
A research project led by the University of New South Wales in 2018 concluded that a lack of reliable information about building defects has been a key factor in the crisis that has affected the apartment market. Problems such as structural defects in apartment towers and the use of flammable cladding can result in property
Last month, the Federal Court struck down the Coalition’s controversial ‘backpacker tax’, introduced in 2016, ruling that it is unlawful to charge non-residents higher taxes than Australian residents. Now, the ATO has appealed the case: The tax on working holiday makers meant foreign travellers on 417 or 462 visas, who earned less than $18,200, were
The 2019 National Shelter Rental Affordability Index has been released, which shows that rental affordability across Hobart has crashed and is now the worst in the nation: Greater Hobart continues to be the least affordable capital city in Australia. Rental affordability in Hobart has dropped considerably over recent quarters and it is now the only
The CEO of ASX-listed accountancy software company Xero believes 80% of accountancy jobs will be automated: According to data from asset manager Schroders, there’s an 80 per cent probability that a given accountancy job will be automated within 20 years. So if the profession is to survive, it will have to evolve, warns Steve Vamos.
Ross Gittins has done a great job covering Sustainable Population Australia’s (SPAs) new discussion paper entitled “Population growth and Infrastructure in Australia: the catch-up illusion”, of which I was the lead author: …despite the growth in the economy, on average our material standard of living is stagnant. All that immigration isn’t making the rest of
The ABS has released data on the value of construction work done for the September quarter of 2019, which registered another 0.4% seasonally-adjusted decline in total construction activity over the quarter – the fifth consecutive quarterly decline – and a 7.9% decrease over the year: However, the result beat analysts’ expectations of a 1.0% decline
Shadow housing minister Jason Clare has warned that the housing affordability crisis has not eased since Labor lost the 18 May election, adding that it may get worse. He has raised the prospect that Labor could go into the next federal election with a modified version of its proposed changes to the capital gains and
Last month, property lobbies met with the Western Australian Government to demand a housing stimulus package: Major property industry players met senior McGowan Government ministers yesterday to plead their case for a sweeping stimulus package aimed at breathing life into the WA’s stagnant housing market. Removing stamp duty on the purchase of apartments, raising the
Dr Bob Birrell and David McCloskey have released a an excellent report, entitled Australia’s ‘Jobs and growth’ strategy: pathway to a low productivity economy, which argues that surging low-skilled migration is undermining wage growth and creating a low-productivity economy. Below are key extracts: Attempts to kick start growth in the Australian economy have so far
