Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen Paul Kerin, an adjunct professor at Adelaide University’s School of Economics, has penned a ridiculous article in The Australian arguing that “immigration is the golden goose our economy needs”.

Cross-posted from The Conversation: Eight years into the Australian government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) project, the nation has an average internet speed – 50th in the global rankings – that lags well behind many advanced economy countries.

ANZ job ads came in in May at 0.4% with a rolling annual total at 6.7%: As you can see, versus previous cycles this remains luke warm at best.

So much for rising inflation!

By Leith van Onselen The Turnbull Government’s Black Economy Taskforce is expected to release its final report in October 2017.

Ross Gittins and The Pascometer are suddenly worried about wages: It’s too early to be sure, but not too early to suspect that, if we and the other developed economies keep travelling the way we are, conventional wisdom about what constitutes good economic policy may soon need to be turned on its head.

For what it’s worth, from the AIG:  The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Services Index (Australian PSI®) dropped by 1.5 points to 51.5 points in May (seasonally adjusted) marking the eighth month of expansion or stable conditions for the sector.

It’s time to halve immigration.

By Leith van Onselen The Turnbull Government is reportedly set to water-down its already weak changes to Australia’s over-used and abused temporary ‘skilled’ visa system.

There’s a lot of eminent macro managers with invisible egg on their faces today.

From The West: The State Government is facing a $350 million blow to its already struggling Budget as the price of iron ore plummets, forcing Treasurer Ben Wyatt to look for even more savings.

By Leith van Onselen Mark Brayan, chief executive of recently-listed ASX tech company Appen, is the latest business representative to have a full blown whinge over the Turnbull Government’s modest changes to Australia’s temporary ‘skilled’ visa system.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released retail sales figures for the month of April, which registered a 1.0% bounce in seasonally-adjusted sales over the month with annual sales rebounding to 3.1% growth: In trend terms, annual retail sales growth was steady at 2.7%.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released data on capital expenditures (capex) for the March quarter, which registered a 0.3% seasonally adjusted rebound in capex volumes over the quarter but a 9.3% decrease over the year (see below table).

The ABS has released private capex intentions for the March quarter and the outlook remains luke warm at best: Estimate 6 for total capital expenditure in 2016-17 is $112,629m. This is 11.4% lower than Estimate 6 for 2015-16. The main contributor to this decrease is Mining (-29.6%).

By Leith van Onselen Mark Latham and Corey Bernardi did an interesting segment on Mark Latham’s Outsiders calling for the Federal Government to halve Australia’s permanent migrant intake in order to relieve pressure on housing and infrastructure.

From Citi legend Willem Buiter in Sydney yesterday: You have to recover from a quite spectacular housing bubble.

From the AIG: The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index (Australian PMI® ) stayed in expansionary territory at 54.8 points in May, but it eased by 4.4 points and indicated a slower rate of growth (results above 50 indicate expansion with the distance from 50 points indicating the strength of expansion).