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Australians cut their spending on overseas travel by 13.9% in the June quarter, a fall of $2,547 million, and the ABS notes that imports of travel services (Aussies travelling overseas) are now at their lowest level since the recovery from the COVID-19 border closures. This is not a price effect: …read more
Queensland household spending was 6.5% higher than a year earlier in July, against 6.2% for Australia, on the ABS Trend series. Queensland is ahead, but by 0.23 percentage points, which is a good deal less than the headline number suggests. Both figures are in current prices, so they mix up …read more
The ABS puts a price on almost everything. There is a CPI series for bread, for childcare, for vets services, for beer. There is no published price index for a holiday. Conus has now built one: a quarterly Australian Tourism CPI running back to September 1989. Its first finding is …read more
The ABS released its 2025-26 wrap on overseas arrivals last Friday and the national picture is one of continued recovery. Short-term visitor arrivals to Australia rose 8% over the year to 9.10 million, a fifth consecutive annual rise, though still around 3% below the 9.3 million peak of 2018-19. Cairns …read more
National dwelling prices are now 1.8% below their March 2026 peak, and July marked the fourth consecutive monthly fall on the PropTrack index. The convenient story is that this is the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes announced on Budget night doing their work. It is a tidy narrative, …read more
The IMF has taken 0.1 ppts off its 2026 global growth forecast, to 3.0%. That is the entire cost, measured at the global aggregate, of the biggest interruption to oil supply the market has seen. The July World Economic Outlook Update also lifted 2027 by 0.2 ppts to 3.4%, which …read more
The Conus Trend series for Cairns SA4 building approvals fell to 96 in May, down 21.6% year-on-year and the lowest monthly reading since November 2024. Last month’s April read has also been revised, down to 101 from the 104 first reported. As flagged previously, the series is still working through …read more
The latest ABS Monthly Household Spending Indicator (May 2026) confirms a milestone worth pausing on. Discretionary spending growth crossed above non-discretionary in March, the first time that has happened in this cost-of-living cycle, and the gap has widened in each month since. By May, Trend discretionary spending was up 5.2% …read more
Cairns Regional Council adopted its 2026/27 budget on 17 June, and for the median residential ratepayer the headline is a total bill increase of around 7.5%, or roughly $283 a year. General property rates themselves rise a more modest 3.95%; the gap between the two is water, waste, and the …read more
The raw figures for May looked soft. Total passenger movements through Cairns Airport came in at 376,582, down 2.8 per cent on May last year. But the headline does the underlying trend a disservice. Our seasonally adjusted and Trend work tells a more encouraging story: the Conus Trend for total …read more
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series