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Much is being made in today’s media of the QLD budget deficit for 2014-15 apparently blowing out from the $664m forecast in the Mid-year review to $2.3bn in tomorrow’s budget papers. The $1.6bn increase (about 3.2% of the $50bn state budget) is being partly blamed on a $600m undershoot in …read more
As was the case last month (see our commentary here), nationwide and state building approvals have come in much weaker than expected; this month FNQ has also weakened.Seasonally adjusted approvals nationwide fell 5.6% in April (against expectations of a rise around 2%) and were up just 1.1% from a year ago. …read more
“Building approvals, tourism figures, unemployment rate, real estate market, private sector investment…all much stronger now than at any point of the past five years under the former Labor Government.” So says Member for Cairns Gavin King on his Facebook page referring to a speech he made in parliament on May …read more
Overnight the second estimate of first quarter GDP in the US came out weaker than had been expected at an annualised decline of 1% (revised from an increase of 0.1% and against expectations of a 0.5% fall). However, the fall was being slated to a poor weather in the early …read more
Private Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) for the first quarter of 2014 has fallen by 4.2% (seasonally adjusted), -0.3% trend, from the previous quarter. The markets had been expecting a decline of around 1.5% sa. However, the declines in the previous quarter have been revised to -4.4 sa (was -5.2%) and unch …read more
There is much talk in the media about the potential jobs impact if/when the Aquis integrated-resort goes ahead north of Cairns. The company’s statements talk of 3,750 jobs in the construction phase rising to about 11,000 when fully operational in 2018. To put these numbers in some context let’s just …read more
A report from the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office (available here) compares retail prices (in 2013) in Brisbane with those in a selection of regional local government areas across a range of item groups. Prices in Brisbane are set as a 100 base index for comparison. When considering all the item …read more
A piece in today’s Cairns Post leaves us scratching our head, thinking “where do they get this stuff from?”. Without quoting any sources it makes it hard to know where Peter Michael (a Nick Dalton apprentice perhaps?) gets his information from; what we can say is that none of it is correct.So …read more
Back from a busy few busy days in Cairns which included two economics breakfasts; one yesterday with Michael Workman from Comm Bank (hosted by the AICD) and the other this morning with Warren Hogan from ANZ (hosted by Advance Cairns). Both painted fairly positive pictures for Australian growth in the …read more
The release of ABS regional jobs data this morning has (finally) seen a marked improvement in the picture in Cairns. After very weak data last month (see here for details), it is certainly encouraging to see the data looking a lot better. The recent deterioration in the data for Cairns has …read more
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