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Back in August we wrote a post claiming that it made no sense to blame all of the property prices declines (that were obvious at the time) on the 2026/27 Budget and the tax changes included in it. A month later we wrote again, following the release of more data …read more
Australian households are spending on wants again. In Trend terms, discretionary spending was up 7.0% over the year to August, against 5.2% for non-discretionary spending. Discretionary growth first moved ahead in March. Setting aside the lockdown and reopening swings of 2020 to 2023, that has not happened since 2018. Total …read more
The ABS released its March quarter population figures this morning and the interstate migration numbers are the ones worth your time. Queensland’s net interstate migration was 14,718 in the year to March, down 39.5% on the 24,319 of a year earlier, and the lowest annual reading since the year to …read more
The ABS released its small area building approvals data on 8 September, which is the cut that carries a Cairns geography. On our Trend series, Cairns SA4 approvals ran at 108 dwellings in July, down 19.1% on a year earlier. The Queensland ABS Trend over the same period rose 20.0%, …read more
A month ago we argued that the fall in dwelling prices since March had rather less to do with the Budget’s negative gearing and CGT changes than the commentary suggested, and rather more to do with three interest rate rises (see here). The August PropTrack data (along with its revisions …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
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 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
The ABS have just released population data to the end of 2025. This post takes a look at Queensland’s population growth over the past four decades. The data tells a clear structural story, and the interesting part is in the composition rather than the headline. Averaged by financial year, the …read more
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series