RBA governor says rising incomes should boost household spending
Patrick Commins
Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank’s governor, says rising incomes should boost household spending and support the economy over the year ahead, even as she warned that the outlook was “clouded by uncertainty”.
In the lead-up to the RBA’s monetary policy board meeting in a week’s time – where board members are expected to back keeping the cash rate at 3.6% – Bullock painted a fairly upbeat picture for Australia at a parliamentary committee hearing in Canberra this morning.
In her opening statement, she said inflation had come down from its peak and back within the 2% to 3% target, and that unemployment remained low:
But forecasts are just that – forecasts. And the economic outlook continues to be clouded by uncertainty. This is especially so the further into the future we look.
Key events
A man has been charged with the alleged murder of 49-year-old Crystal Beale earlier this year, Queensland Police have said.
Beale’s body was found in the Brisbane River by a member of the public on 22 February.
Police allege at 8.30pm on Friday 21 February, Beale left a family dinner at a Sunnybank restaurant and travelled with a 49-year-old West End man, who was known to her, in a car to West End.
The 49-year-old West End man was the last to see her when she left the car at 9.30pm on Ryan Street, West End, police said.
They allege the 49-year-old West End man murdered Beale and moved her body into the Brisbane River where it was later found. The man has been charged with one count each of murder (domestic violence offence) and misconduct with a corpse.
He will face Brisbane Magistrates Court today.
Detective Inspector Wayne Francis said:
It is reprehensible what happened to Crystal. Over the past seven months detectives have been tirelessly investigating every avenue possible to find answers for her family.
We were not going to give up until we could provide these answers and get justice for Crystal.
Patrick Commins
RBA chief points to ‘tariff-related inflation in US
There are early signs that Donald Trump’s trade war is leading to higher prices for Americans, the RBA’s governor, Michele Bullock, says.
Answering questions at a regular appearance at a parliamentary committee in Canberra, Bullock said overall it was a “mixed bag” for inflation among peer countries, which showed “we can’t be complacent” about the outlook for inflation overseas:
Some countries are continuing to see inflation coming down, but some are observing continued price pressures – and I think the United Kingdom probably falls into this category.
And the United States, as well, you’re starting to see some signs that there’s tariff-related inflation there, but even abstracting from that, there is some strength in services inflation there.
So I think everyone is comfortable they’ve got inflation back down closer to their targets but I think there are signs that we can’t be complacent.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian government fast-tracks approval of the state’s largest battery storage project
The minister for planning, Sonya Kilkenny, on Monday announced Pacific Green’s $1.3bn Portland Energy Park, in the state’s south-west, has been fast-tracked via the government’s development facilitation program.
The program was designed to speed up housing approvals but was extended last year to include renewable energy projects. At the time, the government said one in five renewable energy project applications were getting caught up in the Victorian civil and administrative tribunal despite eventually being approved, leading to long delays.
Since then, 20 projects totalling more than $6bn have been fast-tracked by the government. These projects no longer have to go through the planning panel process, including third-party appeals at Vcat.
The Portland project includes four 250-megawatt battery ‘parks’ – enough to power 345,000 homes during peak demand – making it the state’s biggest battery and an on-site terminal station to connect the facility to the grid via existing transmission lines.
As part of its application, Pacific Green was required to show the development will be “compliant with conditions regarding biodiversity impacts, bushfire safety, and noise” the government said, while also committing to upgrading nearby roads as part of the works.
Patrick Commins
Higher prices have affected ‘everyone’, Bullock says
“The global environment is particularly uncertain and unpredictable,” Bullock said, adding that the economy and labour market could prove hotter or cooler than expected – which would change the prospect of future rate moves.
She noted that while inflation had come back down from its 2022 peak, prices hadn’t come down and Australia remained a substantially more expensive place to live than a few years ago:
The higher price level has affected everyone – whether you’re paying a mortgage, renting, running a business, or just trying to make ends meet. It’s been especially tough on people with lower incomes and those in more vulnerable situations.
This is why … it’s so important that inflation remains low and stable.
RBA governor says rising incomes should boost household spending
Patrick Commins
Michele Bullock, the Reserve Bank’s governor, says rising incomes should boost household spending and support the economy over the year ahead, even as she warned that the outlook was “clouded by uncertainty”.
In the lead-up to the RBA’s monetary policy board meeting in a week’s time – where board members are expected to back keeping the cash rate at 3.6% – Bullock painted a fairly upbeat picture for Australia at a parliamentary committee hearing in Canberra this morning.
In her opening statement, she said inflation had come down from its peak and back within the 2% to 3% target, and that unemployment remained low:
But forecasts are just that – forecasts. And the economic outlook continues to be clouded by uncertainty. This is especially so the further into the future we look.
Michele Bullock, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, is speaking before the House of Representatives’ standing committee on economics.
She called the hearings an “important part of the accountability process for the Reserve Bank”.
We’ll bring you more from her remarks shortly.
Measles alert issued in Mackay region as cases grow
The Mackay Hospital and Health Service has issued a measles alert for the region after the detection of a case, the latest in an outbreak of the virus, with the state recording at least 12 infections in the past six weeks in Cairns, the Gold Coast and Townsville.
The latest alert in the Mackay region includes people in the small town of Middlemount who visited:
-
The Middlemount Gym on 12 to 14 September or 17 to 18 September between 6.30pm and 8pm.
-
The Middlemount Shopping Centre, including the Middlemount IGA and pharmacy, from 17 September between 9.30 -10.30am.
The service said on social media:
Although the most well-known symptom of measles is a blotchy red rash, this is not usually the first symptom. Measles symptoms may appear 7-18 days after exposure, typically around day 10.
If you were at the above locations at the listed dates and times, please look out for symptoms.
Stephanie Convery
How a Melbourne sewage farm became a haven for 300 species of birds
Brolgas are common in northern Australia but are endangered in Victoria. One of the most reliable places to see them, though, is in the wide grassy plains, ponds and marshlands of Melbourne’s largest sewage farm, the Western treatment plant.
It may seem an unlikely bird haven but the abundance of birdlife famously rivals Kakadu. South of Werribee, at the edge of Port Phillip Bay, nearly 200 human-made lagoons and natural wetlands sit side-by-side across the 105 sq km site. More than 300 species of birds have been recorded here, including many threatened species.
Due to the constant supply of wastewater, the area is protected from drought, and in dry years has become a refuge for half of Victoria’s waterfowl. It was formally listed under the Ramsar convention in 1983 as an internationally significant wetland.
Read more here:
Half of Australians anxious about retirement savings, reports find
Half of all Australians don’t feel particularly confident about their retirement finances and almost as many don’t have a post-work financial plan, three new reports show.
AAP reports just 50% of 2,000 Australians surveyed in July said they felt confident about their financial security in retirement, with more than one in three of those older than 65 still feeling financially insecure.
The financial services giant AMP commissioned the survey by the independent research company Dynata as part of its new emphasis on retirement services and released the findings today.
Meanwhile, the investment manager Natixis said its Global Retirement Index found 53% of Australians said it would take a “miracle” for them to be able to retire securely – up 5% from 2023.
CoreData Research surveyed 7,050 individual investors in 21 countries in February and March for the Natixis report, now in its 13th year.
Man dies after being hit by forklift at Sydney workplace
A man died in a workplace in Sydney’s eastern beaches area earlier this morning, police have said.
Emergency services were called to a warehouse in the suburb of Matraville about 5.30am after reports the worker was seriously injured. On arrival, officers with NSW police were told the man had been struck by a forklift.
The man, 57, was treated by paramedics, but he died at the scene.
Police have established a crime scene and opened an investigation.
Luca Ittimani
Sydney has the highest fare evasion rates in Australia. What can it learn from Melbourne and Brisbane?
NSW has the highest rate of fare evasion in Australia. There is about half as much fare dodging in Melbourne as Sydney, while evasion rates have plummeted in Queensland after the rollout of 50c fares, new data shows.
In 2019 NSW’s transport department all but declared victory on fare dodging. But a subsequent surge in fare evasion has punched a hole in the state’s budget, with lost revenue climbing from less than $80m to almost $130m annually.
By 2022 fare dodgers accounted for nearly one in 10 trips across NSW. That figure has remained high as commuters struggle with surging living costs.
Experts say NSW can learn from the experiences of Australia’s other two big public transport networks.
Read more here:
Acma not told of Optus triple-zero network issues for more than 10 hours
Nerida O’Loughlin, the Australian Communications Media Authority chair, said Acma usually gets multiple emails a day from telcos when something goes wrong with their networks. But in the case of the Optus outage, Acma wasn’t “notified at all until the outage was resolved”.
O’Loughlin explained more about the typical timeframes as to how the authority was notified earlier:
I would have to say it is variable, but particularly with the local significant outages, we receive multiple emails per day, usually as soon as the telco is aware that something has gone wrong.
In this case we did not know that something had gone wrong until the matter had been resolved more than 10 hours later.
Tom McIlroy
Major Jewish human rights group criticises Australia for recognition of Palestinian state
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has hit out at Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood, along with the UK, Canada, Portugal and France.
Named for the Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, the organisation is a global Jewish human rights organisation working to confront antisemitism and hate, and to defend the safety of Israel and Jews worldwide.
The group says recognition of Palestine rewards the 7 October terrorists, responsible for the bloodiest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the center’s director of global social action, said:
If these governments truly cared about humanitarian crises, they would demand the immediate release of every last hostage before Hamas kills them all.
Instead, they have abandoned the innocent men, women and children in Hamas’ brutal hands.
He said diplomatic recognition under the current circumstances was appeasement and wouldn’t bring peace any closer.
Wells expresses ‘unbelievable disappointment’ to Optus CEO
Wells said she had spoken to the Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, to express her deep disappointment after the outage:
You would be unsurprised to hear that I expressed my unbelievable disappointment that we were here again so quickly. Or here again at all.