Australian Economy

By Leith van Onselen Boston Consulting Group CEO, Andrew Clark, and Deloitte Digital head, Frank Farrall, have today urged Australian business to embrace the digital revolution to ensure that it maintains competitive with the world.

Aurizon CEO Lance Hockeridge needs a new speech writer: Aurizon chief executive Lance Hockridge has claimed the expansion of a coal export terminal at Queensland’s Abbot Point will be done in an “environmentally sensitive manner” as he reiterated confidence in Asian demand for Australian resources.

By Leith van Onselen As noted briefly by Houses & Holes, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for the June quarter 0f 2014, which registered a modest quarterly increase in prices, with the result also coming in line with economists’ expectations.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released the June quarter CPI and it’s about expected at 0.5 headline with slightly higher analytical measures.

The Department of Employment (DEEWR) job vacancies report for June is out and firmed 1.5%: The trend remains weakly up: Composition was unexciting (economically) with carers taking the gong: Skilled looks more encouraging: No change, really.

From Westpac comes the following Q2 CPI preview (released today): Our Q2 headline CPI forecast is 0.6%qtr/3.2%yr.

By Leith van Onselen Australia’s independent infrastructure umpire, Infrastructure Australia, has launched a scathing attack on road-based infrastructure investment undertaken by Australia’s governments, arguing that it has been “hideously inefficient” in a new leaked report.

“Mad” Adam Carr today launches a broadside at Professor Ross Garnaut: Australia does not have a debt problem.

With the solid bounce in Roy Morgan consumer confidence over the past two weeks, I thought I’d take a look at the BDO fast retail index, which tracks same store sales week-on-week.

By Leith van Onselen The inaugural Melbourne Economic Forum was held yesterday, which brought together a wide range of economists to discuss the Australian macroeconomic outlook and policy choices following the end of the mining boom.

From the AFR, Australian economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall, special advisor to the OECD’s Secretary-General on Financial Markets, and one smart cookie: “What people are doing when you have zero interest rates around the world is they go into higher risk assets and at the moment it’s basically corporate debt in Asia.

HSBC’s Paul Bloxham has nice report out today looking at the Asian integration trends that are a “key reason for our continued optimism about Australia’s growth prospects”: In the past six years, Australia’s economy has grown 16%.

By Leith van Onselen The mainstream media is slowly coming to the realisation that the pending huge growth in resource exports will provide the domestic economy with few economic benefits, since most of the profits will flow offshore and few workers will actually be employed.

By Leith van Onselen The Grattan Institute has published a new report entitled Mapping Australia’s economy: cities as engines of prosperity, which maps the Australian economy by the location of economic activity, defined as the dollar value of goods and services produced by workers within a particular area.

Cross-posted from The Conversation.

By Leith van Onselen CommSec has today released its Bank Business Sales Indicator for June, which tracks spending broadly across the economy by measuring the value of credit and debit card transactions processed through Commonwealth Bank merchant facilities.

By Leith van Onselen The Senate has been successful in its bid to tighten scrutiny of the Abbott Government’s “asset recycling” program, last night pushing through changes the bill that should improve project selection and accountability, and deliver taxpayers better value for money.

Paul Egan and Philip Soos [1] have a new book out. It available for free here (pdf), and it’s called Bubble Economics: Australian Land Speculation 1830-2013.

By Leith van Onselen The heads of Australia’s two biggest miners – Rio Tinto’s Sam Walsh and BHP’s Andrew Mackenzie – have urged business leaders at the B20 forum to push for a new round of free trade deals in order to turbo-charge growth and reduce unemployment.