Fellow independent economist Nikki Hutley and I were interviewed by the ABC’s Fran Kelly for her Saturday Extra program on 11th May about expectations for the 2024-25 Federal Budget to be presented by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on the evening of Tuesday 14th May. Here’s a link to a recording of the segment: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/saturdayextra/budget-panel/103832416

I addressed the National Press Club in Canberra, on the subject of the changes made by the Morrison Government (with the support of the then Labor Opposition) in 2018 to the distribution of revenue from the GST among the states and territories at the behest of Western Australia – which I regard as constituting the […]

Along with my former ANZ colleague Cherelle Murphy (who’s now Chief Economist at EY in Australia) I appeared on ABC Radio National’s Breakfast Program (hosted by Patricia Karevelas) to discuss the implications of the higher-than-expected inflation readings for the March quarter on the outlook for interest rates and the upcoming Federal Budget. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/what-do-the-latest-inflation-numbers-mean-/103765828

I recorded a podcast with Georgina Downer, the CEO of the Robert Menzies Institute – a prime ministerial library and museum established to honour Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, and affiliated with the University of Melbourne – about Australia’s ‘housing crisis’, and about how far Australian housing policy has moved away from the […]

China has been running a ‘crawling peg’ exchange rate regime, similar to the one Australia had between January 1976 and December 1983, since 2015. Strictly speaking, a quasi-fixed FX regime like this requires some kind of relationship between a country’s domestic money supply and its FX reserves – although that isn’t really ‘binding’ if the […]

This week’s Saturday Paper‘s “&am” podcast looks at the causes and consequences of the massive increase in Australian residential property prices, relative to incomes, and the resulting decline in home ownership rates, especially among younger and middle-aged Australians, over the past six decades. It includes some extended grabs from me. It’s available here: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/podcast/the-great-housing-disaster-whos-blame (the […]

Is #China heading for some kind of financial or #currency crisis? In the short term, no. But over the medium- to longer-term, the possibility of a sharp fall in the value of the #renminbi against other currencies, accompanied by large falls in the values of other Chinese assets, can’t be ruled out. China hasn’t been […]