Australian Economy

From Westpac: The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment rose by 0.1% in March from 99.6 in February to 99.7 in March.

From The Australian’s “environmental editor” today: South Australia’s emergency power plan proves that battery storage is a fringe response rather than a durable solution to the state’s electricity woes.

From Credit Suisse: The wolf pack meets the PM In perhaps Aesop’s most renowned of fables, The boy who cried wolf, a lonely shepherd boy devised a plan to get more company by falsely claiming to his fellow villagers that a wolf was close to where his flock of sheep were.

Specufestor Cash appears today in an op-ed at The Australian: Recently, the independent Fair Work Commission made a decision to make moderate changes to Sunday and public holiday penalty rates.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday released its overseas short-term arrivals and departures figures for January, which continued to show a trend rise in the number of inbound tourists, with Chinese arrivals continuing to boom.

From Westpac: • The NAB business survey reported a pull-back in conditions in February, reversing the surprising spike in January.

From the SA Government comes a six point plan: BUILDING a State Government-owned, fast start gas-fired power station that can come on when the market does not provide enough energy to keep the lights on.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of January, which registered another small decrease in annual immigration; although it remains at turbo-charged levels.

The Australian: Arrow Energy, the joint venture between Shell and PetroChina that is sitting on the east coast’s biggest undeveloped gas resource, is spending up to $850 million boosting supply into the tight gas market as shortages loom.

By Leith van Onselen If you get a chance today, make sure that you watch the above debate on immigration aired on Sky News’ Politics HQ.

By Leith van Onselen Australian industry groups have today united to lobby the federal government to boost trade and apprenticeships following the number of apprenticeships falling to their lowest level in a decade.

By Leith van Onselen The latest round of data on incomes was a sobering experience for Australian workers.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian’s Angela Shanahan penned a spurious article over the weekend repeating the oft-used myth that Australia needs to persist with mass immigration in order counter population ageing: We need immigrants because we can’t replace ourselves.

From Morgan Stanley on the US market but a handy primer: Key takeaways from our analysis of the energy storage market: 1.

From The Australian: US tech magnate Elon Musk is so confident he can fix South Australia’s energy woes he declared Tesla will get a statewide system installed and working 100 days from signing a contract, or it’s free.

I’ve lost count of how many folks that have complained about various solutions to the east coast gas crisis triggering the dreaded “sovereign risk” for the companies involved.

Hmm: The answer is nothing unless they’re forced.

There is no relief today for gas or power prices with east coast average of the former still at $10.33Gj while in Japan exactly the same gas is available for $8.01Gj.