Australian Economy

As noted many times, Australia enjoyed a few brief sane years of trade diversification when ScoMo stuck COVID up Beijing in 2020 and the nation responded by looking for other markets.

Following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) decision to lift the official cash rate (OCR) by 25 bps on Tuesday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers was quick to place the blame on the private sector, rather than his own government’s policies.

Over the past several years, Australia’s real inflation-adjusted wages have experienced their largest decline in modern history.

Over the last cycle of immigration-led growth, inflation was endemically weak.

As widely tipped by financial markets (~70% probability), the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) unanimously voted to lift the official cash rate by 25 bps to 3.85%: The increase will add roughly $110 to the monthly cost of servicing the average-sized $700,000 new mortgage.

ANZ job ads are in their strongest surge in three years. Labour demand often rises at the beginning of the year (the job advertisements series grew 6.2% m/m in January 2019 and 3.9% m/m in January 2017).

Jennie George is a former president of the ACTU and a former Labor federal MP who represented Throsby from 2001 to 2010.

Wednesday’s CPI inflation release for December was a shocker that, alongside the decline in the nation’s unemployment rate to 4.1%, suggests that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will hike the official cash rate at next month’s monetary policy meeting.

Australia’s energy demand will soar over the coming decades due to a combination of rapid population growth, the mass build-out of data centres, and the likely need for a fleet of energy-hungry water desalination plants.

Chris Joye, a portfolio manager with Coolabah Capital, recently wrote an article in the Australian Financial Review arguing that the expansion of government spending was placing upward pressure on inflation and, by extension, interest rates.

A previously undisclosed $57 billion deterioration in the federal budget outlook has emerged since the election, driven mainly by higher long‑term spending under the Albanese government.

Alex Joiner, chief economist at IFM Investors, posted the following chart on Twitter (X) showing how underlying (trimmed mean) inflation in Australia has accelerated, raising the prospect that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will lift the official cash rate (OCR) by 25 bps at next month’s monetary policy meeting.

Wednesday’s quarterly Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation print from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) printed hotter than expected, raising the likelihood that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will hike the official cash rate by 25 bps at next month’s monetary policy meeting.

Melbourne’s water storages have recorded their steepest annual decline since the Millennium Drought, driven by extreme dryness, record‑low inflows, and rising household demand.

In my experience, there is nothing worse than an academic with a business vision.

Slippage and emotional fatigue destroy more retail accounts than market direction.

In 2024, the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission warned that high housing costs were causing a “brain drain” among 30- to 40-year-olds in Sydney.