Cairns Building Approvals…take a cold shower

As we noted a few days ago (see here) the Building Approvals situation in Cairns is improving with the Conus Trend data showing a slight increase for April (after some sharp downward revisions to previous months).Today’s Cairns Post is running a rather excitable article, quoting the Deputy Mayor, talking about approvals …read more

GDP beats expectations; QLD investment weakness

1st quarter GDP has come in well above market expectations for a 1.1% q/q increase; equating to a 3.5% annual rate of growth (seasonally adjusted). On a Trend basis growth was +0.8% q/q, +3.2% ann which shows the economy rolling along at about the long-tern trend average pace. The main …read more

Retail Trade disappoints but we’re eating out a lot!

Retail Trade data released this morning for April shows a modest 0.2% increase on the month (seasonally adjusted). This is at, or slightly below, market expectations and comes on the back of only very modest gains in Feb and March. On a Trend basis sales are up 6% for the …read more

QLD Budget; surplus forecast in 2015-16

As noted earlier in the week (see here), the 2014-15 QLD Budget (full details here) has forecast the deficit increasing to $2.7bn (from the MYFER estimate of $0.66bn) as a result of a $0.95bn hit to NDRRA spending (caused by a mis-match between the timing of expenditures and commonwealth reimbursements) and …read more

This QLD Budget isn’t a classic pre-election sweetener

With a state election due next year it might have been expected that the budget measures announced today would be something of a sweetener; but that’s proven not to be the case. After funding from the Australian Govt is taken into account this Budget outlines only an extra $342.6 million of …read more

QLD budget deficit…let’s see the detail tomorrow

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

Building approvals demolished by units

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

Gavin King Fact Check

“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

US Q1 GDP revised to a fall..don’t panic!

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

CAPEX falls again but it’s not all bad

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

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