The Reserve Bank GDP nowcast, released last Friday, forecast that New Zealand’s GDP contracted by 0.4% in Q2 2025. The Reserve Bank’s nowcast was revised lower following the final partial GDP indicators released last week, showing a sharp contraction in the manufacturing sector in Q2 and negligible growth in a range of services industries. On
As the debate over the right level of migration into the nation continues, I thought it would be interesting to look at some assessments of Australia’s migration system. There are plenty of reports that are scathing of the system’s failures, from its vulnerability to exploitation to its lack of focus on the skilled migrants most
Santos runs two LNG export trains out of Gladstone, Queensland, which siphons up East Coast gas and ships it to Asia (mostly China). Since Santos’ LNG export trains came online in 2015 (alongside others), the volume of gas produced on the East Coast has doubled, while 25% less gas has been supplied to domestic users.
Earlier this week, Roy Morgan Research released its shadow labour force report, which posted a large 0.8% jump in unemployment in August to 11.1%. Roy Morgan’s unemployment measure was also up a hefty 2.0% year-on-year: Roy Morgan effectively counts someone as unemployed if they want a job but are unable to get one. Therefore, it
Australia’s governments want to ‘solve’ the housing crisis by pushing Australians into high-rise apartments. They ignore that the 2010s decade saw the biggest boom in high-rise apartment construction in Australia’s history, concentrated in the nation’s major capital cities: This unprecedented boom in high-rise apartment complexes resulted in a spike in construction faults and quality issues,
After this month’s stronger-than-expected June quarter national accounts release, which saw the economy grow by 0.6% over the quarter (faster than consensus and the RBA’s forecasts), Westpac’s leading index, which indicates the likely pace of economic activity relative to trend three to nine months into the future, has stalled. The six-month annualised growth rate in
Cotality has released alarming data showing that Australia’s rental market is tightening fast. The following chart from Cotality shows that the total number of rental listings has fallen back to a historic low across the combined capital cities, tracking at about half the level of the early pandemic peak: The following chart from Cotality shows
On Monday, Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie threatened to quit the opposition front bench unless Coalition leader Sussan Ley abandons the party’s commitment to a net zero emissions target. For more than two decades, the Coalition has been engaging in internal battles over the issue of climate change action. Back in 2003, several prominent
As the debate over migration continues both on social media and in the halls of power, myths surrounding its impact on housing continue to propagate. This is despite the fact that the issue can often be easily disproven with a quick review of the data and a brief reading of commentary from one of the
The number of international enrolments in Australia hit a record high of 839,200 in the year to June 2025. This was up around 13,400 (1.6%) from the 825,800 enrolments in 2024, around 130,440 (18%) higher than the same time in 2019 before the pandemic, and more than triple the 266,100 enrolments 20 years earlier in