Only a month ago, Australia’s universities and international education lobby groups were demanding Australia lift its travel ban on China. For example: The head of Australia’s peak foreign student body [the Council of International Students Australia]… Ahmed Ademoglu, who represents 700,000 international tertiary students in Australia, said they felt “exploited” and would discourage future students
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: Dow falls 2,200 points, trading halted, as rate cut fails to calm markets – NBC News Gold’s worst week since 1983 strips metal of safe-haven status – Mining Weekly Wall Street set to crash again after Fed slashes rates – Reuters Dow drops 2,999 points on word coronavirus crisis
Last night’s crash in the S&P 500 was one for the ages and saw the index plunge by nearly 12%: The S&P 500 has now plunged 30% from its 19 February peak and has erased all of 2019’s gains, which were the second best over the 11-year bull run. The next chart shows how yesterday’s
Over recent days I have argued that Australia’s hospital system is poorly placed to deal with the coronavirus outbreak given it has only 3.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people – only slightly better than Italy and less than one-third Korea and Japan: This morning it was revealed that NSW’s hospital system was already under acute
The Grattan Institute has called for more Budget help to assist the 4.2 million casual or self-employed workers without leave entitlements: Over a third – around 37 per cent – of Australian workers do not have paid leave entitlements. There are about 11.5 million Australian workers. About 2.2 million of them are casual employees –
A speech by Alexandra Heath, the RBA’s head of economic analysis, has revealed that full-time job prospects for recent university graduates has fallen to the lowest level since the early-1990s recession, whereas many are also underemployed: The risks of higher education not working out have risen over the past few years. Almost one-quarter of students
This site has gone to great lengths to expose the critical flaws in Australia’s system of compulsory superannuation and to explain why superannuation is not a genuine retirement pillar. These problems can be broken down into five key areas. First, superannuation is voluntary for those that are self-employed, casually employed, or homemakers. Therefore, it misses
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) yesterday visitor arrivals and departures statistics for the month of January, which revealed that the number of permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia remains turbo-charged, but has softened slightly. In the year to January 2020, there were 843,340 permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia, up 1% from December 2018,
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its property price indices for the December quarter – incorporating both detached houses and units – which registered a strong 3.9% quarterly rise in home values driven by massive gains in Sydney (+4.7%) and Melbourne (+5.2%): The other capitals were mostly positive but grew more slowly, with
As we know, Australia’s consumption growth was already in the gutter in the December quarter, with household final consumption spending growing at its lowest rate since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC): Blind Freddy can see that the January bush fires alongside the coronavirus will smash consumption over subsequent quarters. But alongside these stiff headwinds, we
The New South Wales Government is set to announce tax cuts and spending on government property to the value of $1.6 billion to help stimulate the NSW economy in the wake of the coronavirus. It will also allocate an additional $700 million to help the state’s medical response to the coronavirus crisis. The $1.6 billion
Qantas has slashed its international capacity by 90% until at least the end of May, up from the 23% reduction announced only last week: Forced into action by the federal government’s new plan to self-isolate all new arrivals into the country for 14-days, the airline said the change “largely reflects the demand impact of severe
The ASX has rallied in early trade with the All Ordinaries Index (tracking the 500 biggest companies) rising 1.2%: The ASX 200 is up 1.4%: With the gains driven by a 2.4% rebound in financials: However, the consumer discretionary sector remains in the toilet, down 0.2%: Based on current levels, the All Ordinaries Index is
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) yesterday released its short-term visitor arrivals and departures data for January. The number of short-term arrivals rose by 4.9% in the year to January, whereas short-term resident departures rose by 4.3%. The ratio of annual arrivals to departures was flat at 81.5%: Net short-term arrivals also remained heavily in
Concerns over the coronavirus have yet to infect Australia’s property market, with pre-auction sales reaching a 10-year high in Melbourne: In February alone, 16.7 per cent of properties up for sale in Melbourne — or 587 properties — sold prior to auction, Domain data shows, and the proportion hovered between 16.6 per cent and 16.8
For years, Chinese international students have proven pay dirt for Australia’s education industry, accounting for 27% of total international enrolments in calendar year 2019, according to the Department of Education: China has been an even bigger driver of Australia’s education exports, accounting for 32% of Australia’s $37.3 billion total education exports in 2019: With Chinese
Global Macro / Markets / Investing: Investing in a falling market – Interest.co.nz Coronavirus the ‘Catalyst’ for Popping the ‘Mother of All Bond Bubbles’ – YouTube Will the coronavirus trigger a corporate debt crisis? – LA Times Andrew Yang Warns Coronavirus Fallout Could ‘Be Worse’ Than 2008 Financial Crisis – NewsWeek Americas: At ‘Shock Doctrine
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has announced various measures to assist businesses that are experiencing financial problems as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. They include deferring by as much as four months the payment date for amounts through the business activity statement, and enabling companies to vary pay-as-you-go instalment amounts to zero for the
On Friday I wrote an article claiming that Australia’s hospital system is poorly equipped to cope with COVID-19, given it has only 3.8 hospital beds per 1000, compared to more than 3-times that number in Korea and Japan: Now our partners at Nucleus Wealth have provided the below chart showing that Australia’s hospital beds per
According to the ABS, older Australians are working longer than ever and their share of the Australian labour market doubled in the decade to 2016: Nearly a fifth of Australians aged 65 and over and working in 2006 were working ten years later, according to new analysis released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics
Mass immigration continues to squeeze the life out of Sydney, with 70% of the city experiencing a blowout in commute times over the past five years: People living in 70 per cent of Sydney suburbs have experienced a blowout in commute times over the past five years despite billions of dollars being spent on roads
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher will convene a meeting of executives from NBN Co, Telstra, Optus and other telcos later today. The meeting will discuss how the national broadband network (NBN) will cope with the expected rise in usage due to the coronavirus outbreak. The NBN is seeing large numbers of Australians being directed to work
Master Grocers Australia has urged the Fair Work Commission to freeze award pay rates in the retail sector for 12 months in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The MGA warns in its submission to the FWC’s annual review of the minimum wage that the impact of the coronavirus is likely to be felt for at
Flight Centre CEO Graham Turner does not expect that self-quarantining people who arrive in Australia will be effective in stopping the coronavirus from spreading, while he warns that it will have a major impact on airlines, tourism and the domestic economy: Graham Turner said it was an unprecedented decision by the Federal Government to impose
After 17 years of extreme immigration-driven population growth: The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has belatedly agreed to establish a National Population and Planning Framework to “to improve Commonwealth, States and Territories and local governments’ understanding of populations, population change and its implications, and set-out a plan for government collaboration on the challenges and opportunities
The Australia Institute (TAI) has has attacked the Morrison Government’s economic stimulus package as being the right size but poorly targeted: The Prime Minister announced a $17.6 billion coronavirus economic stimulus package in order to try and stave off a recession. Looking at the specifics of the stimulus announcement, one thing stands out: the size
Friday’s dead cat bounce hasn’t lasted long with the ASX 200 plunging 6.9% on the open: The falls have been driven by financials, which have been smashed 7.7%: Consumer discretionaries have also been slaughtered, down 8.3%: The bloodbath resumes.
From CBA Economics Key Points: The Commonwealth government last week delivered a fiscal stimulus of $A17.6bn to boost demand in the economy. The government also announced measures that while important to support the health of Australians, will have a contractionary impact on spending in the economy.■ Monetary policy still has a big role to play
The preliminary auction clearance rate softened over the weekend. At the national level, the preliminary rate was 70.6%, down from 74.8% last weekend, but still way above the 51.4% recorded in the same weekend last year: Sydney’s preliminary clearance rate was 74.6, well below the 82.6% last weekend but way above the 54.2% recorded in
As we know, Australia last month implemented a travel ban on China, which at the time left more than 106,000 Chinese students unable to enter Australia to commence their studies. Last week, it was revealed that 32,000 Chinese students had circumvented this ban, at a rate of around 1,000 arrivals a day, via travelling to
