The Productivity Commission has condemned government plans for an “effects test” that would make it easier to stop large businesses exploiting their market power against small businesses and farmers.
It has also criticised the Coalition’s toughening of foreign investment rules for the agriculture sector and said they should be liberalised again.
Poverty in Australia has declined, welfare reliance has stabilised and long-term poverty is becoming rare – but overall economic wellbeing is no longer improving, and households’ wealth has remained static, despite rising property prices, according to Australia’s most respected longitudinal study of economic wellbeing.
And there is a rapidly growing wealth divide between generations, with median wealth increasing by 61% among people aged 65 and over, compared to just 3.2% among people aged 25 to 34, since 2001.
The Australian dollar recorded a key downside reversal last Friday (July 15) and had seen follow through selling this week. It is off 1.25% over the past three sessions, which makes it the worst performing major currency behind the Japanese yen.
As this Great Graphic, composed on Bloomberg shows, the recent losses have pushed to Australian dollar close to the uptrend line drawn off the late-May low near $0.7150 and the spike low from Brexit (~$0.7300). The trendline is found near $0.7450 today.
Chinese tourism around the world is experiencing a boom: the numbers of tourists are increasing and the types of tourism diversifying. However, Australia will need a more culturally sensitive approach than the catchy advertising of old to capitalise on this emerging market.
Australia received a warning from Standard & Poor’s (S&P) this week that it is on downgrade watch. Although the nation presently enjoys a AAA rating, the downgrade warning signals that Australia will likely soon receive a reduced rating.
Australia’s AAA credit rating was under pressure even before the election and is now looking decidedly shaky.
What happened to the innovation debate in our lengthy election campaign? This was supposed to be the centrepiece of Australia’s transition to a more balanced and diversified economy. Instead the debate is once again about who can return the budget to surplus and when.
Public debate over how best to manage the interests of foreign investors and host states has resurfaced in Australia. Most of Australia’s free trade agreements (FTAs), like those of many other Asia-Pacific economies, follow a US approach to drafting substantive provisions that liberalise and protect cross-border investment. This includes increasingly detailed provisions for investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS), whereby investors and host states appoint arbitrators on a case-by-case basis.
In the current housing tax debate a number of studies have come out arguing that while prices will fall (by varying amounts) rents will not be affected. That rents will be unaffected is surprising and (in my view) wrong.
Outside of the heat of an election, the Henry Tax Review’s comprehensive review of the tax system argued for lower taxes on savings, a proposition that most economists would regard as unexceptional. (There is now a (small) school of thought arguing for higher taxes on savings but this author for one does not subscribe to that.)
Australians will go to a federal election on 2 July 2016. At first glance the 19 seats in the House of Representatives that the Labor Party — the current Opposition — needs to win to take government seems a heroic undertaking. Yet, if the early polls are any indication, this may not be too far beyond its reach.
