“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
A piece carried in today’s Courier Mail highlights the well documented, and much commented on, failings of the QLD government’s “Strong Choices” website. Our friend Gene Tunny over at Queensland Economy Watch has previously posted at some length on the inherent problems with the site and the way that the LNP are trying to “sell” …read more
For the 4th consecutive month the Australian jobs market has grown strongly in April with the headline unemployment rate unchanged at 5.8% (despite market expectations of a reversal of last months decline with a move to 5.9%). On seasonally adjusted terms, we added 14,200 new jobs (all of which were …read more
As we noted earlier today, there are some positives to take away from the ABS labour force data for QLD. The LNP are now sharing social media pictures which spruik the “over 64,000 jobs” that have been created in QLD since the election of the Newman Government. That’s perfectly true, but …read more
Nationwide building approvals for March have come in much weaker than expected. Seasonally adjusted data showed a 3.5% decline on the month for a 20% increase over the past 12 months. The Trend data confirms the slowing with a second consecutive monthly decline (-0.8%) for a 21.9% increase over the …read more
One of the less discussed recommendations from the Commission of Audit is their recommendation number 41 related to disaster relief. The Commission recommends replacing the current Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements (NDRRA) with a Commonwealth grant for each disaster of between 25% and 33%. Under the current NDRRA arrangement …read more
Today saw the release by the QLD Premier’s Office the latest quarterly Renewal Program Achievements report for the first quarter of 2014 (although much data relates to the period up to Dec 2013). At first glance there appears to be much to celebrate with good news stories abounding in the …read more
Today saw the release of the Dec 2013 International Visitor Survey from Tourism Research Australia (available here). This has been delayed for almost 2 months due to a change in ABS methodology for data collection related to international visitors. The results are something of a mixed bag.Headline International Visitor numbers …read more
After the surprise strength of last month’s jobs data, the markets were bracing for a disappointing set of jobs numbers this morning for the March data. In fact the result has once again surprised on the up-side with jobs up 18,100 (expectations had been for +2-7,000) and the headline unemployment …read more
Regular readers will know that we are in no way politically aligned but that we will take issue with “facts” being touted by pollies that are (at best) misleading. On Wednesday Minister for Tourism in QLD, Jann Stuckey, put out a press release spruiking the pick-up in QLD tourism data …read more