House prices to drop 15pc; miners, energy pay most tax; AI cracks 200yo code
News in brief
Chalmers’ tight budget: Treasurer Jim Chalmers says rising bond yields will add billions to government borrowing costs, leaving little room for new cost-of-living handouts in its mid-year budget update.
Miners, energy companies tax bills: Australia’s biggest companies paid $87.5 billion in corporate tax in 2024-25, led by $35.9 billion from mining and energy companies. The proportion of large companies paying no income tax fell to a record low of 27 per cent.
Metrics auditor sign-off: Private credit giant Metrics Credit Partners has released audited accounts for its three ASX-listed funds after a stand-off with KPMG. The accounts confirmed about $170 million in asset write-downs.
Flydubai co-pilot: UAE prosecutors allege the co-pilot of Flydubai Flight 1073 attacked the captain with a crash axe and tried to seize control of the aircraft. Media reports say the co-pilot had previously studied engineering at RMIT in Melbourne.
AI cracks Napoleon’s code: AI has deciphered a coded 1809 message sent on Napoleon Bonaparte’s instructions. The letter revealed details of French and Austrian troop movements ahead of war between France and the Habsburg Empire.
Fear-o-meter
The Super Members Council rejects calls for super to be invested to solve policy problems:
Super has one job: to grow Australians’ retirement savings to deliver them the strongest possible retirement income by investing only in members' best financial interests.
Australians’ retirement savings are only invested where they can generate the strongest possible risk-adjusted returns.
[Recently] we’ve seen more comments from a politician urging the use of super to solve other policy problems.
Trade Minister Don Farrell's comments that Australians' superannuation savings should be invested in American meat-processing facilities to seek to avert lamb tariffs are ill-informed and ill-advised.
Australians are crystal clear that their super should only be invested where it can deliver them the strongest possible long-term risk-adjusted returns.
It is not the job of Australians’ super savings to solve other policy problems. Nor should it ever be.
In the past month, we’ve also seen politicians proposing policies to raid super early which would just unleash higher inflation, hike interest rates, and leave Australians poorer in retirement.
Australian super funds meticulously assess the best investment deals to grow the retirement savings of millions of everyday Australians so working Australians can retire in dignity with income from super.
These investment decisions are always made independently of governments – for very good reason.
All policymakers have a sacred duty to keep Australians’ super strong and maintain trust in the super system.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
The Week Ahead with NAB, including building approvals data, and why the housing shortage and possible competition for tradies from data centres is such a big challenge:
“As an economist, I sort of do frame the housing and the construction picture as probably our biggest social issue, but possibly also our biggest economic issue at the moment, maybe outside of inflation.
“Population growth has been quite strong. We clearly haven't kept up on that building sort of phase. It factors into that productivity discussion. It now takes, I think, in the fastest state on the data we have, in Queensland about seven months to build a detached house, but around thirteen months in somewhere like WA. That's really quite a bit higher than it was pre-pandemic.
“What's interesting about the data that will come out this week in terms of that building activity is we'll certainly get the starts, the completions, and that pipeline of dwellings under construction. But we'll actually also get the non-residential side, and that's a key source of that pipeline of the data centre story.”
Australia could be heading for its worst housing downturn in more than 45 years, with economists forecasting falls of between 10 and 15 per cent.
Higher interest rates, weakening consumer sentiment and changes to housing tax settings are weighing on demand, while capital city prices fell 1.1 per cent in September.
Brisbane and Sydney led the declines, with Sydney now more than eight per cent below its February peak. Melbourne is off more than seven per cent.
AMP chief economist Shane Oliver expects prices to fall 10-15 per cent, while HSBC’s Paul Bloxham forecasts a 13 per cent decline. Weekend auction results added to the gloom, with the national preliminary clearance rate falling to 48.2 per cent, the lowest in three months.
Greed-o-meter
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