MacroBusiness

Australia’s economy narrowly avoids recession

Unconventional Economist — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:52:37 +0000

Various bank economists predicted that the economy would slide back into a per capita recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GDP per capita, ahead of Wednesday’s Q2 2026 national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). However, the result was slightly stronger than expected, with Australia’s real GDP

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Chinese solar capacity passes coal

Houses and Holes — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:30:50 +0000

To great fanfare. This is not quite as salubrious as it seems. This is installed capacity, not actual electricity produced. On that measure, solar and wind are still well behind coal. Be aware that 2026 H1 is annualised, so it may overstate the coal displacement. There are a few reasons to expect the transition to

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Australia’s productivity performance: “bad to worse”

Unconventional Economist — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 01:00:44 +0000

Australia’s productivity growth over the past decade has been among the poorest in the OECD, hampering economic and per capita growth and contributing to the nation’s inflationary pressures. Australia’s original “productivity tsar”, Professor Gary Banks, was the long-serving founding chair of the Productivity Commission (1998-2013). Back then, you could trust the PC to deliver sound

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Mortgage stress hits 18 year highs

Houses and Holes — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:30:23 +0000

Roy Morgan sees 18-year highs in mortgage stress. New research from Roy Morgan shows 32.5% of mortgage holders ‘At Risk’ of ‘mortgage stress’ in July 2026, up 2.2% points from June 2026 and after three interest rate increases from the Reserve Bank (RBA) during the first few months of this year. The 32.5% of mortgage

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Why One Nation leads on immigration and skills

Unconventional Economist — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:54 +0000

Australia has experienced the biggest migration boom in the nation’s history. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, 1,100 net migrants per day landed in the first 3.5 years of the Albanese government. As a result, there were nearly 300,000 more migrants in Australia as of Q4 2025 than if migration had

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When the heat is on, distrust gold

Houses and Holes — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 23:30:02 +0000

RBC says buy gold. We’ve stayed consistent this year, sticking with the forecasts we published back in December of last year, and for good reason. Repeatedly in our weekly “Commodity Comment, ” we have highlighted that while the underlying drivers for gold may have been on pause, they remained intact. Despite more than a lost

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Iran bombs AI bubble

Houses and Holes — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 23:00:58 +0000

War headlines today. US attacks southern Iran with a BB gun. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says if Iran can’t export oil, nobody can but admits some is getting through. Iran welcomed at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting. War intensifies in Yemen. Markets are freaking out just a little today as Brent rises strongly and

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Australia’s Evergrande moment as mega developer implodes

Tarric Brooker — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:00:02 +0000

Amid the collapse of mega Australian developer Bathla, administrators have revealed that the company owes $3.3 billion, plus the deposits of thousands of buyers of off-the-plan properties. An editorial in the Australian Financial Review called Bathla’s collapse: “Australian private credit’s cockroach moment” With the fall into voluntary administration of a developer that is currently building

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A housing market bloodbath awaits

Unconventional Economist — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:01:04 +0000

Cotality has revised its daily dwelling values index downward, making the current housing correction worse than previously thought. The quarterly rate of decline at the 5-city aggregate level is now 3.8%, up from 3.0%, with all major markets recording significant declines. The decline from the most recent peak is also now far worse than thought,

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Aussies brace for another per capita recession

Unconventional Economist — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:18:37 +0000

Leading up to Wednesday’s June quarter national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia had experienced 10 out of 15 quarters of negative per capita GDP growth, with the March quarter of 2026 printing at -0.1%: Following the release of the GDP partials by the ABS on Monday and Tuesday, economists are

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Labor’s housing gaslighting hits new low

Unconventional Economist — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:00:08 +0000

Just when you thought the Albanese government’s gaslighting over the housing crisis couldn’t get any lower, Anika Wells, the Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport, published the following videos on social media equating the housing crisis to the supply of Ooshies: Wells remarks that “the ushy market and the Australian housing market are dictated

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Let AI destroy university Luddites

Houses and Holes — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:30:02 +0000

This is a beauty of a union claim at Sydney University. The union is demanding “provisions to protect staff against any adverse effects of artificial intelligence systems in the workplace,” as well as a 20 per cent pay rise for all staff, and 17 per cent superannuation for casual workers, in a log of claims

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It’s official: Australia’s inflation woes are home grown

Unconventional Economist — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:00:05 +0000

I argued last week that Australia’s globally high inflation is homegrown, as illustrated by services inflation tracking at 4.1% in the year to July, well above the broader trimmed mean inflation rate of 3.6%. Housing inflation is posing a particular problem for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). It comprises nearly one quarter of the

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Lucky country returns as coal booms

Houses and Holes — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:30:58 +0000

I noted yesterday that Chinese steel output is going bust. This has failed to put a dent in inventories. What it is doing, nonetheless, is rocketing the steel price. This does not make much sense. For instance, rebar has enormous idle capacity. Radiant is still in its death throes. Radiant World’s head of China iron

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Bureaucrat bloat is crushing Australia’s productivity

Unconventional Economist — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:03 +0000

Luke Kinsella at The AFR has written a fantastic report on the rising number of federal public servants under the Albanese government. Australia’s federal public service has grown dramatically under the Albanese government—up 23% or around 36,700 staff since 2022. The APS is expanding by 28 new staff per day, reaching 195,847 employees by December

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Sydney house price crash goes global

Houses and Holes — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:30:16 +0000

It has been the miracle on the harbour for far too long. It has been nearly twenty years since the GFC, which reset major global city prices, and Sydney has only gone up. No longer. House prices in Australia’s biggest property market are plummeting at a rate on track to deliver the largest annual decline

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Diesel shock forever now

Houses and Holes — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:00:53 +0000

Today’s war headlines: US bombs two mine-laying rocket launchers on Larak Island, which could, and may have, landed mines in the Gulf of Oman. Iran bombs Jordan in response. US President Donald Trump says “we’re going to hit them hard,” which sounds like TACO to me. In short, the US made a tiny strike, and

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The negative gearing rent bomb fails to ignite

Tarric Brooker — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:00:41 +0000

As the debate over the impact of the changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount on existing residential property continues, claims keep spreading that the Albanese government’s budget marked a tipping point for rising rents. This claim is made daily on social media, with these narratives frequently permeating the mainstream as quotes

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Finally, some respite for Australian renters

Unconventional Economist — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 14:01:33 +0000

The claim that property rents would spike in response to the federal budget’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax has aged like milk, with new data from Cotality instead showing that rental growth is moderating amid rising vacancy rates. National rents grew by 5.7% in August, according to Cotality, down from 5.9% over

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Property investor credit growth crashes after budget tax changes

Unconventional Economist — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 03:23:56 +0000

Changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax in the federal budget have driven a sharp decline in investor credit growth. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) credit aggregates data for July, illustrated below by Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro, shows that investor housing credit growth slowed sharply to 0.46%, down from the recent peak

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Why is Scotty from Marketing attacking gas reservation?

Houses and Holes — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:30:26 +0000

Australia has long had a problem with what to do with former prime ministers, but it appears Scotty from Marketing takes the cake. Former prime minister Scott Morrison says Labor’s plans for a domestic gas reservation scheme pose a threat to the country’s long-standing and close energy supply partnership with Japan. Morrison, who is vice

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Mega-Melbourne is a parasite on Australia

Unconventional Economist — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:00:57 +0000

I reported last week on The Age newspaper’s interactive tool showing what Melbourne will look like when its population soars beyond 10 million. The modelling suggests that six activity centres will be denser than anything that exists in Melbourne today: The number of dwellings across the top 15 centres is projected to massively increase under each

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Trump readies election steal

Houses and Holes — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:30:07 +0000

Bloomberg describes Trump’s emerging strategy for wrecking the midterms. The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a temporary win this week by lifting a ruling that was holding back his plan to restrict voting by mail. But the decision was narrow: The court ruled only that the states challenging the push sued too soon,

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Automation eliminates the need for mass immigration

Unconventional Economist — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:46 +0000

The business lobby, policymakers, and the federal government have long argued that Australia needs to run a mass immigration program to overcome future skills shortages. The argument generally goes something like this: Australia’s population is ageing fast, and with the large baby boomer cohort heading into retirement, Australia faces an acute shortage of workers. Australia

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Iron ore roaches seeth

Houses and Holes — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:30:30 +0000

The ferrous complex is trading like Chinese stimulus is flowing like the good old days. But it’s not, even if it’s trying. It’s still crushed by realty with no end in sight. Turning to steel, demand is down a meaty 5.6% yoy. While production has all but collapsed. Yet inventories are not coming down. And

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Who is controlling Hormuz?

Houses and Holes — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:00:45 +0000

The war headlines. Iran declares it will stand against US sanctions and rely equally on defence and diplomacy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC) asserts that it has complete control over the Strait of Hormuz . Al Jazeera was informed by the White House that the US naval blockade is still in full

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Labor’s vote collapses in vital by-election

Tarric Brooker — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 22:00:47 +0000

Shortly prior to the recent by-election which took place in the Western Australian state parliament seat of Secret Harbour, Labor were the heavy favourites to retain what was a safe seat held on a two-party preferred margin of 11.5%. On the 25th of August, 4 days prior to the by-election, odds makers had Labor at

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Australian home values decline sharply in August

Unconventional Economist — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:59:54 +0000

Australia’s house price correction steepened in August. According to Cotality’s daily dwelling values index, which tracks value changes across Australia’s five major capital city markets, home prices declined by a hefty 1.2% at the 5-city aggregate level in August. As illustrated in the chart above, declines were broad-based, with significant losses reported across the five

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Aussie interest rate expectations rocket

Unconventional Economist — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 14:01:17 +0000

Last week’s economic data shook Australia’s interest rate markets. To recap, the policy-relevant trimmed mean inflation printed at 3.6% in the year to July, above forecasts of 3.5%. The monthly and quarterly pace of trimmed mean inflation also accelerated. Australia’s inflation is also primarily domestically driven, with market services inflation rising by 4.1% in the year

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Auction market crunched lower amid deteriorating sentiment

Unconventional Economist — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 23:46:17 +0000

Australia’s auction market has taken another turn for the worse, with the national preliminary auction clearance rate falling again to only 52.4%, down from 56.5% the previous weekend (revised lower to 48.9% on final numbers): At the same time last year, 70.0% of auctions reported a successful result. Auction numbers also remain well below last

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