Consumer confidence edges higher as inflation worries ebb
Peter Hannam
The ANZ and Roy Morgan weekly survey of consumer sentiment is just another couple of data points but they do land around morning tea time as the Reserve Bank board ponders what to do with its key interest rate.
Retail sales have been generally poor for a while but there are modest signs that consumers are starting to think the cost-of-living crisis is abating. (We looked at the prospects that the “worst is over” a couple of weeks back.)
Anyway, consumer confidence is modestly on the up, rising 7.5 percentage points since July when the stage-three tax cuts kicked in, to just above 85 points.
The RBA board, though, will take more comfort in the gradual decline of expectations about where inflation is going.
The latest weekly ready was steady on a weekly basis but down on a rolling four-week average by 0.1 percentage points to 4.6%. That’s the lowest since September 2021, which, coincidently, is about the time when underlying inflation was as low as it presently is.
Still, there’s no reason in this data or recent ABS releases to think the RBA is sharpening its rate axe for a cut in the near term.
Ahead of today’s RBA meeting, the market was only fully pricing-in a 25 basis-point cut in the cash rate to 4.1% by next July – or the other side of the federal election.
My humble guess is the first cut will come in February after December quarter numbers give the RBA more confidence that inflation is on track to be “sustainably” within its 2%-3% target band.
But a lot can change between now and then.
Key events
Labor to set up commission to set cost of university degrees
Paul Karp
The education minister, Jason Clare, has revealed that Labor will set up a commission to set the cost of university degrees, in a move that could roll back the Coalition’s jobs ready graduate package that hiked the cost of arts degrees.
Clare told Labor caucus that university fees paid by MPs and senators in the past amounted to about a 30% contribution of the cost of a degree, but now it’s more like a 40% contribution. He said the 20% reduction in Help debt “fixes that for a generation”.
Anthony Albanese also spoke about the Help debt changes, lifting the repayment threshold from $54,000 to $67,000. He accused Scott Morrison of having “deliberately lowered the threshold” and said Labor’s changes would benefit people like young automotive apprentices he recently met.
Paul Karp
Albanese talks election strategy to Labor caucus
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told Labor caucus today that the next election will be framed around three ideas: what the government has done, what it will do, and the “risk” (of the Coalition alternative).
Albanese spoke about Labor achievements – which sounded similar to his Sunday rally speech – about inflation with a two in front of it (2.8%), 1m more jobs, increasing real wages, two budget surpluses and cost-of-living relief. New policies will be announced in coming months.
He also noted the Coalition were against both the income tax cuts (before they voted for them) and Labor’s plan to shave 20% of student debts.
Albanese said:
Like me, he [Paul Fletcher] got a free education but he’s now lecturing people that they can’t have their debt reduced. This is a fight we will win. They don’t see that lifting the number of people in Tafe and uni is an investment in the whole country. They still don’t have a single costed policy. [The Greens] just want to protest. We don’t want to just be in this room [in government] after the election, we want to be here with more members and more senators.
Albanese was apparently “confident” he could deliver that – an increased majority.
Donna Lu
2024 worst flu season on record
Australia has had a record flu season in 2024, with 352,782 confirmed cases of influenza reported to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System this year to date.
Flu cases in 2024 are up more than 20% compared with last year’s total of 289,133 cases, and the season has also surpassed the pre-pandemic record of 313,454 cases in 2019.
It comes amid declining flu vaccination rates, which have dropped to their lowest levels in five years for people aged five and older.
In a national survey of 25,000 people conducted by the Immunisation Coalition, 54% felt that influenza was a serious disease, while 55% reported not seeing vaccination as a benefit or being important.
In a statement, Dr Rodney Pearce, chairman of the Immunisation Coalition, called the 2024 record case numbers a “wake-up call”:
Influenza is not just a bad cold; it can have severe consequences, particularly for vulnerable populations. Yet, our surveys indicate that many Australians are disengaged and feel vaccination is unnecessary. This puts the whole community at risk.
Paul Daley writes on US election
Various politicians are being all sanguine about the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency. Paul Daley, it’s fair to say, is very much not “chill” with the idea:
Consumer confidence edges higher as inflation worries ebb
Peter Hannam
The ANZ and Roy Morgan weekly survey of consumer sentiment is just another couple of data points but they do land around morning tea time as the Reserve Bank board ponders what to do with its key interest rate.
Retail sales have been generally poor for a while but there are modest signs that consumers are starting to think the cost-of-living crisis is abating. (We looked at the prospects that the “worst is over” a couple of weeks back.)
Anyway, consumer confidence is modestly on the up, rising 7.5 percentage points since July when the stage-three tax cuts kicked in, to just above 85 points.
The RBA board, though, will take more comfort in the gradual decline of expectations about where inflation is going.
The latest weekly ready was steady on a weekly basis but down on a rolling four-week average by 0.1 percentage points to 4.6%. That’s the lowest since September 2021, which, coincidently, is about the time when underlying inflation was as low as it presently is.
Still, there’s no reason in this data or recent ABS releases to think the RBA is sharpening its rate axe for a cut in the near term.
Ahead of today’s RBA meeting, the market was only fully pricing-in a 25 basis-point cut in the cash rate to 4.1% by next July – or the other side of the federal election.
My humble guess is the first cut will come in February after December quarter numbers give the RBA more confidence that inflation is on track to be “sustainably” within its 2%-3% target band.
But a lot can change between now and then.
Michaelia Cash clashes with officials from Attorney-General’s Department
Karen Middleton
The legal and constitutional affairs Senate estimates committee has reconvened on Tuesday morning with some friction emerging between shadow attorney general Michaelia Cash and officials from the Attorney-General’s Department over the department’s refusal to provide a list of ministerial submissions that the Coalition is demanding.
Cash and her Coalition colleagues had asked the department to provide a list of ministerial submissions created over 12 months and had separately lodged a freedom of information request.
The officials told Cash that the Coalition senators’ request was substantially the same as the FoI request, so it had been addressed through that process.
They indicated that the list had been compiled.
But they said that the FoI request had been refused because of the amount of work that would be required to put the list into a form that could be released publicly.
“It was extraordinarily onerous,” departmental secretary Katherine Jones told the committee.
The department’s chief operating officer, Cameron Gifford, said he had advised the attorney general’s office that the Coalition request “is unable to be fulfilled in its current form”. He said:
“The list of submissions is not in a form able to be provided to the senators,” Gifford said.
“That disappoints me,” Cash replied. She said the home affairs department had been able to fulfil a similar request:
The fact that there is an FoI request is quite frankly irrelevant to the Senate process and to the estimates committee.
She asked if the department was shielding the attorney-general.
“No, senator,” Gifford said:
As we have indicated it is a voluminous and complex request. It is a substantive and unreasonable diversion of resources for us to continue to progress that request. That is the sole basis on which we are unable to provide the information.
Photos from Wong’s meeting with India’s external affairs minister
Here are a couple of pics from that meeting between foreign affairs minister Penny Wong and India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, this morning.
Sarah Basford Canales
Jane Hume quizzes officials over stripping someone of an Order of Australia
Day two of Senate estimates has kicked off this morning and the Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General is up in one of the committees.
The Liberal senator, Jane Hume, is quizzing officials over the process for stripping someone of an Order of Australia appointment.
Of course, the questions are heading towards what happened in the case of former home affairs department secretary, Mike Pezzullo, whose honour was cancelled last month almost a year after he was sacked for breaching the code of conduct at least 14 times.
The secretary, Gerard Martin, said six appointees had been terminated in recent years by the governor general’s office on advice from the 19-member council. Martin said reviews were typically undertaken after public reporting, rather than referrals.
Hume has more questions but other senators are given their time so this likely won’t be the last we hear of it.
Nine terror cases in 2024 but no link to Middle East, says Asio chief
There have been nine “terror attacks, disruptions or incidents” in 2024 but no plots have been attributed to events in the Middle East, Australia’s spy chief says.
AAP reports that Asia director-general Mike Burgess said Hamas’ terror attack against Israel and Israel’s subsequent retaliation “raised the temperature of the security environment and made the climate more permissive of violence, making acts of terrorism more likely”.
Religiously motivated violent extremism makes up the majority of Asio’s work but there has been no link between the conflict in the Gaza Strip and terror incidents in Australia, Burgess said, adding:
To be clear, I’m talking about individuals who follow a perverse interpretation of Islam, not people of Islamic faith.
One-third of the nine cases involved religiously motivated violent extremism, while the majority were motivated by racist or nationalist ideologies or a mix of ideologies.
All involve young people, alone or in small groups and with simple weapons.
People radicalised quickly and with little warning, which made it harder for the intelligence organisation to track, Burgess said.
The director-general expressed concern about the re-emergence of capabilities from terrorist groups Islamic State and al-Qaida.
People flying the flag of Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah at pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia may indicate a violent ideology, Burgess said.
However, “it might just be the actions of a misdirected individual who doesn’t really know what they’re doing”.
“As a security agency, I welcome when individuals fly the flag so to speak and indicate they’re someone we should have an interest in,” he quipped:
If people are silly enough to do that … I personally welcome people declaring their hand.
A person simply “liking” a provocative social media post or supporting a Palestinian homeland wouldn’t trigger an automatic adverse security assessment for people on or applying for visas.
But those who support or promote violence or the destruction of Israel could be a direct or indirect threat to security, Burgess said.
His comments came after the spotlight was refocused on Palestinians being granted visas as the Coalition maintained people coming from Gaza could pose a security threat.
The opposition is fighting for a pause on people arriving in Australia from Gaza, arguing appropriate vetting processes aren’t in place, which Labor denies, saying all visas are appropriately screened.
More than 3,040 Palestinians were granted a visa between 7 October 2023 and 15 October 2024 while just over 7,250 were refused.
Four visas were refused onshore, with three of those people still having a valid visa of another class.
One had their visa cancelled on “character grounds”.
Questioned whether the federal government should have referred visas to Asio before they were granted and people arrived in Australia, Burgess said intelligence was ongoing whereas a visa approval was a static point in time:
We have seen cases where we’ve checked and they’re good and then we learn something that says that is no longer the right decision.
Greens want plan to reduce student debt rolled out before election
The Greens have written to the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, about the government’s plans to reduce student debt by 20% and change the repayment thresholds. The letter from leader Adam Bandt and deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi says the Greens welcome “the government adopting the Greens policy” but want it rolled out before the election:
We will continue to campaign to wipe student debt entirely and make university and Tafe free, but we are keen to see the government’s measure passed as quickly as possible.
We don’t consider it fair to make this change dependent on the next election result. People need debt relief and certainty now.
Even though we would like it to go much further, the Greens commit to working with the government to pass this legislation through the parliament by the end of this year. Accordingly, we request that you introduce legislation as soon as possible so that it can pass the Senate with the Greens’ support in the final sitting fortnight in November.
Government travellers can’t collect frequent flyer points, but they can hoard precious status credits. Is that why they keep flying Qantas? Karen Middleton and Elias Visontay have had a look:
Mark Butler says ‘virtually all the nation’s health professions face restrictions and barriers in working to their fullest’
Earlier, health minister Mark Butler referred to a report on the potential of allied health professionals. I glossed over what the report was because, frankly, I wasn’t sure. But Butler has now released a “landmark independent review”, which has found that “virtually all the nation’s health professions face restrictions and barriers in working to their fullest”.
Butler says the Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce Review found that:
Removing these barriers would make it easier for Australians to get high-quality care, when and where they need it, without waiting weeks for an appointment.
This is particularly the case in regional and remote areas, where a health professional may be available and yet the regulatory and legislative settings may not authorise or enable them to provide care that is within their skills, training and experience – or what’s known as their “scope of practice”.
Fewer needless barriers would mean health teams work better together across disciplines and health professionals have greater job satisfaction, making it more likely they stay in the workforce for longer.
Penny Wong to meet with India’s external affairs minister
Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong will meet India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, this morning. She says they will “discuss how we can advance our cooperation in important sectors – including science and technology, clean energy, trade and investment – and how we can deepen our defence and maritime security engagement”.
They will also attend Raisina Down Under, the Australian version of an annual event held in India to discuss the region, and issues facing the international community.
Rural NSW’s underground abortion networks
A small but influential number of medical practitioners who either actively obstruct abortion care or who are uninterested in providing it are leaving women unable to access abortion in many parts of rural NSW.
These are the findings of a study of 16 healthcare providers, including GP registrars, GP obstetricians, nurses and midwives, revealing the existence of often underground networks of health workers providing access to abortion care to patients.
Melissa Davey has this full report:
Some more from the independents on that call for emissions reduction clarity:
Kylea Tink (North Sydney) said:
With a potential Trump presidency showing just how vulnerable climate change policies are to political ideology, our major parties owe it to Australians to be completely transparent on their emission reductions targets and how they plan to meet them.
Zoe Daniel (Goldstein) said:
Voters deserve to be provided with the full information they need to make an informed decision on climate policy at the next election. I repeat my call for the government to up their ambition and adopt a climate target of at least 75% by 2035.
Sophie Scamps (Mackellar) said:
I particularly have grave concerns that the nuclear aspirations of the Coalition means that we will remain heavily reliant on coal up until 2050 which means Australia will continue to be a high-emitting country throughout the 2030s and well into the 2040s.
Zali Steggall (Warringah) said:
We cannot insure our way out of the climate crisis so we must mitigate it and prepare. All sectors are clear: the markets needs strong clear long-term target commitments and policy certainty.
Teals to call on major parties to release 2035 emissions reduction targets
Ryan and other independent MPs (Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniel, Sophie Scamps and Zali Steggall) will hold a press conference later this morning to call on the major parties to release their 2035 emissions reduction targets before the next election.
Ryan told ABC Radio that Australians want to know “what the major parties think about climate change and how they plan to act on it”.
Industry wants certainty, she says, adding that people want to understand the timelines and the economic benefits. In a press release, she said:
Australians want the major parties to demonstrate a strong commitment to action on climate change. Emissions reduction targets give industry certainty and will help guide the energy transition. Voters deserve to know exactly where the parties stand, before the next federal election.
Monique Ryan speaks about giving up Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership
Independent MP Monique Ryan is talking about giving up her Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership. She said it initially seemed like it “came with the job”, that it “was going to be a good opportunity to catch ministers in the lounge and also to work while in transit”. She says after she was elected she became aware of “the insidious activities of lobbyists”:
It just began to sit poorly with me to be a member of those lounges.
Asked whether there should be a ban on free flight upgrades, Ryan says “it’s up to politicians and public servants to decide how to act, and that it was a “poor look” to solicit upgrades.
“I wouldn’t be accepting flight upgrades,” she says. On corporate events, she says transparency is key, that people should know who politicians are meeting with and why. She says the most important thing is more formal meetings:
We don’t have transparency around ministerial diaries, who ministers are meeting, why and when in the most important building in this country.
Keough responds to question about royal commission into defence and veteran suicide
Keough is also veterans’ affairs minister. Asked if people in the ADF feel like they’re not being looked after in the wake of the royal commission into defence and veteran suicide, he says there are people within the forces who have concerns about the commission’s revelations but that today’s workforce plan also talks about the culture within the defence force.
The government will respond to the commission’s recommendations before the end of the year.
The US alliance ‘in good shape’ regardless of who becomes president, Marles says
Some more from Richard Marles earlier – a meeting with US presidential contender Donald Trump’s former top diplomat Mike Pompeo went well, he said (foreign affairs minister Penny Wong was also there). He said:
Firstly, the meeting did go well and the answer to [whether Australia would have a good relationship with a potential Trump administration] is yes.
Whoever is elected as the president of the United States is a matter for the American people but be it president Harris or president Trump, we are really confident that, firstly, the alliance will be in good shape … and that includes Aukus, Australia’s procurement of our future submarines.
