Australian Economy

Via Shane Oliver today: 2019 is likely to be an interesting year for the Australian economy.

By Leith van Onselen Professor Peter McDonald’s immigration propaganda swept yesterday’s COAG meeting on managing Australia’s population growth.

By Leith van Onselen Today’s Lending Finance data for October, released by the ABS, revealed that personal and renovation finance continues to collapse.

More Gotti rent seeking today: Fear is suddenly driving the actions of a large rump of Australians.

By Leith van Onselen The Labor state governments will reportedly use the Morrison Government’s new found concerns about excessive immigration as an opportunity to demand greater funding from the federal government at the upcoming COAG meeting.

Westpac consumer sentiment holds on: • The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment rose 0.1% to 104.4 in December from 104.3 in November.

Via Domain: …In a speech to be delivered ahead of ALP national conference this weekend, Mr O’Conner [Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations] will focus on how the market is “not delivering, particularly for low and middle income earners”.

By Leith van Onselen Yesterday, Infrastructure Australia released a new report, entitled Planning Liveable Cities, which lambasted our governments’ intractable failure to cope with the last 15 years of extreme population growth.

This is not a picture of economic strength, via the ABS: The number of jobs that where filled in Australia increased by 0.3 per cent in the September quarter of 2018, with around half of the increase being secondary jobs, according to new labour market insights released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Via The Australian: Fair Work inspectors are conducting surprise visits at dozens of restaurants and cafes in popular Melbourne city dining strips today following concern about the widespread underpayment of workers.

Via NAB: • How confident are businesses? The business confidence index fell 2pts to +3 (from an upwardly revised October print).

By Leith van Onselen Like bees to honey, the Pied Pipers of low cost human imports – Australia’s coalition of business lobbies – have jointly rejected calls to cut Australia’s immigration intake in a new policy paper to be issued on Tuesday.

Via Martin North today: DFA has released the final dimension from our household surveys to end November 2018, zeroing in on financial confidence.

This morning I spoke to Radio 2GB’s Luke Grant on Australia’s per capita economy and immigration’s impact, tearing apart the Property Council’s latest dodgy modelling claiming that NSW’s economy would be smashed if immigration into the state was halved.

Yes, you read that right, from The Australian: British billionaire industrialist Sanjeev Gupta, backed by heavyweight Chinese investors, plans to build one of the world’s largest steel plants in Whyalla, 380km north of Adelaide.

By Leith van Onselen The Property Council has commissioned modelling which shows that lowering immigration into NSW would boost real wages.

Oddly enough it’s coal, from Clyde Russell: It’s not shaping up as a merry Christmas for coal exporters to Asia as the region’s top buyers, China and India, pull back from the recent trend of strong imports.

Because the Smart Country always gets more stupid.