The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Monday released the Q4 2024 Business Indicators, which showed that non-mining company profits have never been higher (excluding the pandemic spike). Despite the stellar profits, Australian Industry Group (AIG) CEO, Innes Willox, attacked what he labelled a “wages blowout”, which is placing “mounting pressure on business balance sheets”:
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot described Victoria as “one of the toughest” places to do business. It is easy to see why. The Victorian government introduced a payroll tax surcharge in the 2021-22 State Budget as part of a mental health and wellness levy, but only for businesses with a payroll of $10 million or more.
Last month, Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro posted the following chart tracking labour productivity across major advanced nations. As you can see, Australia’s labour productivity growth has been among the worst in the advanced world after recording zero improvement since 2016. Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) Michael Plumb delivered a speech to a
Asian share markets are seeing generally positive results across the board but have been overshadowed by the spike in cryptocurrencies on the latest Trump spewing of verbal diarrhea that continues to evaporate confidence in the USD. Indeed King Dollar is falling against most of the majors with the Australian dollar coming back with a reprieve
Here are some sensible words. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to repair his relationship with US counterpart Donald Trump after a public spat at the White House on Friday. …Qualifying the incident as “very unfortunate,” Mark Rutte said in an interview with the BBC that he’s spoken to Zelenskiy twice
This is how catastrophic the East Coast gas cartel will become if left to its own devices. Competition cop Gina Cass-Gottlieb has picked a fight with Australia’s top energy companies over data she says shows they are planning to increasingly use gas produced for domestic purposes to meet commitments to foreign buyers. Queensland’s three major
Australians have experienced the longest recession in modern history, with real per capita GDP falling for seven consecutive quarters as of Q3 2024. This reduction in per capita GDP has been driven by the household sector, where spending fell in six of the last seven quarters. The latest quarterly retail sales data from the ABS
A very busy end of month session on Friday night saw a drop in US consumer spending but Wall Street played the short covering game while Chinese volatility spiked earlier in the session, causing European shares to make no advances. The USD is coming back against the undollars with new daily lows in Euro due
Goldman on the currency fantasy. We remain skeptical of a centrally-planned currency accord, but open to the possibility that shifting government policies around the globe could bring about the right conditions to weaken the Dollar. The market and macro set-up heading into either the Plaza Accord or the Smithsonian Agreement was very different than it
CoreLogic’s results for February show that Melbourne is now the cheapest major capital city housing market in the nation. Melbourne’s median dwelling value was $772,561 at the end of February 2024, $124,052 (14%) below the national capital city median. The improved affordability of Melbourne’s housing market follows subdued growth over the past five years. As