On 7 December 2023, the Senate referred the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reserve Bank Reforms) Bill 2023 [Provisions] to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 21 March 2024.
The critical issue is that the Treasurer is walking back Government’s power to intervene with RBA decisions if they do not agree. This power was put into the constitution years ago but has never been used.
Without it, the Technocrats will be able to take over, and follow the lead of the Bank For International settlements, to the potential disadvantage of ordinary Australians and businesses.
Make a submission to make the case for this power to be retained! The closing date for submissions to this inquiry is 2 February 2024.
The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) update released on Wednesday estimates the Australian economy is expected to expand by a low 1.75% in 2023–24 before regaining momentum in 2024-25, when improved real incomes are expected to support a recovery in household consumption. It also notes inflation – although moderating – is still too high.
The outlook attributes that mainly to global oil prices and Treasury has not changed its forecast timetable for inflation’s return to the 2-3% target band, with 2.5% hit in mid 2025, so the Government is more optimistic than the RBA when it comes to expected progress on inflation. The RBA expects inflation to be at 3.0% by mid-2025.
Treasury’s analysis of the structural budget position suggests that the budget in 2023-24 is neutral with respect to inflation – it is neither adding nor reducing inflationary pressures.
Treasury continues to expect the economy will slow over the next few years to grow below trend with the unemployment rate drifting higher to 4.5% in 2025-26.
The migration intake has been a hot topic recently. As expected, the MYEFO forecasts upgrade the outlook for net overseas migration (NOM) in 2023-24 by 60k to 375k. We suspect that this will likely undershoot the eventual outcome. In 2024-25, forecasts for NOM have been marked down slightly to 250k, likely reflecting the expected impact of the Government’s recently announced migration strategy.
Gross debt is expected to peak at 35.4% of GDP in 2027-28, this is 0.2 percentage points lower than projected in the May Budget. While debt is expected to be lower, the expected cost of capital has also increased since the May Budget, reflecting the rise in government bond yields. Overall, these counteracting forces net out to a slight increase in interest payments as a share of GDP over the medium term.
Sadly, in a blow for budget transparency, there is still a line for decisions taken but not yet announced. We don’t know what decisions these are, but they are significant – the estimates start at $270 million in 2023-24 and rise to $1.8 billion in 2026-27. It is impossible to tell what this spending is for. If the government were to reverse those decisions between now and the next budget update, we will never know.
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You will recall that Australia’s October monthly CPI indicator from the Australian Bureau of Statistics came in below market expectations at 4.9%/yr (versus the consensus of 5.2%/yr). There were a number of factors which messed with the data, as I discussed in a previous show.
According to CBA, other surveys also suggest that trimmed mean CPI in Q4 23 is unlikely to be stronger than the RBA’s ~1.0%/qtr forecast.
But these monthly numbers are flaky, because the critical services price movements are not captured until the quarterly series which is due out in January.
As I discussed in my earlier show, the problem is the last mile problem – in that the last part of getting inflation down towards the target is the hardest, especially when then RBA now has a 2.5% central target, and as in the US data out yesterday, its services inflation which is driving the numbers as goods inflation eases back.
On this theme, Statistics New Zealand on Wednesday released its new monthly inflation gauge, which captures around 45% of the CPI basket.
The conclusion of all this, is the partial monthly numbers may well deceive, and should be taken with a truck load of salt. When the quarterly numbers land later then check out the services components. Goods price inflation may be coming under control, but services is not. And within that, watch the rental and housing sector in particular.
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The last mile of the journey in getting inflation back into its box, is the hardest and most intractable. So while US inflation is much lower than it was the latest release yesterday, ahead of the FED rate decision today shows it’s not declining quickly and remains above the Federal Reserve’s targets.
In summary, core inflation matched market expectations in November, increasing at a marginally faster rate of 0.3%. In annualised trend terms, core inflation is running at 3¼%, with rapid core goods disinflation of 3¾% broadly offsetting faster core services inflation of 5½%. But core services excluding housing inflation has picked up to 6% in annualised trend terms, while the trimmed mean CPI – which gives a sense of the breadth of price rises – has picked back up to 3¾%.
The initial spike in 2021 was driven by goods prices, which had been stable for years. That was mainly thanks to the pandemic’s effect on supply chains. That shock is over. At this point, inflation is almost entirely about core services, which include shelter.
The FOMC won’t change rates this week, but it does get to revise the “dot plot” which shows its projected course of interest rates ahead. That would be a way to assure the market that rates are coming down swiftly, but for now the Fed could be reluctant to do anything that encourages more speculation.
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The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the June quarter National Accounts, which were an unmitigated disaster and confirmed that Australia is in a deep per capita recession.
The economy as measured by real GDP grew by only 0.2% in the September quarter, driven by increased government consumption and capital investment over the quarter and badly missing economists’ expectations of a 0.4% print: Growth over the year was 2.1%, less than population growth over the same period. While the population surge earlier in the year has supported demand overall, it is now rolling over and will not provide the same support in 2024. Or as Luci Ellis, at Westpac put it The Australian economy limped along in the September quarter.
Real per capita GDP has fallen for three of the past five quarters, with the March quarter revised up to flat. Accordingly, GDP per capita fell 0.3% over the year. Expenditure by households was dead flat over the September quarter and would have fallen by around 0.7% per capita. By contrast, growth in both household consumption and GDP over 2023 slowed due to sustained cost of living pressures and higher interest rates. Household consumption would have fallen even further had the savings rate not fallen to just 1.1%, which is the lowest level since December 2007.
The savings rate is now well below the ‘par’ of 6.5% and notionally implies a draw-down on the ‘additional savings’ accumulated during the pandemic – estimated at around $260bn – running at about $12bn a quarter. In total, about $43bn, or 16.5% of this reserve now looks to have been drawn down. Of course these are not equally spread across households, with many now having no buffers at all.
As Westpac put it. the policy drag on Australian households is clearly biting.
I caught up with Robbie Barwick from the Australian Citizens Party to review the recent hearings into Regional Bank Branch closures, and more broadly about the progress made this year.
We look at the underlying issues which have been brought to the surface through the inquiry, and consider what happens next.
And here is the link to the paper which was discussed in the hearings: https://citizensparty.org.au/sites/default/files/2022-06/aust-hamiltonian-credit.pdf
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On Friday 1st December 2023 the Senate took evidence in Canberra relating to bank branch closures. This a series of posts which presents some of the important evidence, as the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee heard from the Licenced Post Office Group (LPO).
This is the second in a series of posts following the recent hearings in Canberra as the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee heard from Robbie Barwick and co who presented the case for a public bank.
This is the third in a series of posts following the recent hearings in Canberra as the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee heard from Dale Webster, from The Regional. She and I wrote to the Committee to get this inquiry up and running.
The Centrals Bankers’ love in in Hong Kong this week was full of contradictions. Indeed, yesterday I featured the RBA’s new Governors comments, centered around her view households were largely coping ok with the 4.25% hike in rates. My reaction was how out of touch with real households she sounded.
The International Monetary Fund this month said the Australian economy was running above capacity, with low unemployment, “sticky” inflation and rising house prices and so forecast a delay in local inflation returning to the 2 per cent to 3 per cent target range until early 2026, slower than most other advanced countries. They also warned federal government that the nation’s infrastructure spending boom has helped push the economy beyond full capacity, requiring the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates further to tame inflation.
But also attending the conference, and a speaker later in the Day was Ex Governor Philip Lowe. He is worried central banks may not have increased interest rates high enough to control inflation and that cost of living help from governments adds to inflation.
The ABS, said: “The 4.9 per cent increase in CPI is down from 5.6 per cent in September and below the peak of 8.4 per cent in December 2022.” But as we will see, the number was lower, thanks partly to Government intervention, which of course means higher spending.
So perhaps the truth is, while inflation was down a little, it may be Central Banks still have more to do, so the game of political chicken on the inflation front is actually far from over. We will see.
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More from Edwin, our property insider, as the trends in Sydney and Melbourne property diverge further. We also look at the latest news and political positioning around property and we update the WeChat news as well.
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