Taylor set to beat Ley; RBA admits unemployment too low; Spotify hits 750m users

Taylor set to beat Ley; RBA admits unemployment too low; Spotify hits 750m users

News in brief

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock yesterday said while she agreed that the slowdown in productivity in Australia was partly a reflection of the growth in the public sector, it wasn’t the main game. Meanwhile the bank’s chief economist Sarah Hunter admitted unemployment had fallen too low and high labour costs were contributing to inflation pressures.

 

ANZ released a quarterly profit of $1.94 billion, highlighted by cost cutting, sending its share price up eight per cent. It follows the strong showing by Commonwealth Bank on Wednesday, and all the banks’ share prices jumped yesterday.

 

The NBN reported a $335 million loss last half year, which is better than the year before, and said 75 per cent of Australians are now on very fast internet plans.

 

People are making more coffees at home, especially in the US, and that’s helped Breville Group reach record revenue in the December half. There’s also strong demand for household appliances in newer markets including Mexico, China, the Middle east and South Korea.

 

Spotify added a record 38 million new listeners during the December quarter, taking monthly active users to 751 million. It now has 290 million paid subscribers.

Fear-o-meter

The best the country can hope for from this morning’s vote on Liberal Party leader is a decisive victory. A clear-cut winner can get on with uniting the Coalition and providing an alternative to the government, and that’s good for Australia.

 

Sussan Ley has not led a united Liberal party, nor a united Coalition, and that has hampered the first female to lead the federal conservative party. 

 

The history of infighting within parties – think Rudd and Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull – shows that disunity destroys electoral prospects.

 

At the beginning of yesterday, it was not clear that challenger Angus Taylor would win a leadership spill, though by the end of the day, it seemed that was most likely. A sizeable win for Taylor would be in the Liberal Party’s interest. Politics is a brutal game.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On the importance of exogenous testosterone and sleep (for both men and women):

 

“There’s a reason evolution hasn’t got rid of this eight-hour period in our lives where we can’t eat, we can’t reproduce and we can’t protect ourselves. It’s protected by evolution. Interestingly, the rate at which we burn energy sitting around doing nothing — our basal metabolic rate — actually goes up when we sleep.

 

All the clinical trials around memory, learning, exam performance — they’re heavily impacted by sleep the week before. When things get busy, people sacrifice sleep. I tell patients before Christmas: don’t do Christmas parties at night, make them brunch parties. Don’t sacrifice your sleep at the most important time of year.

 

Across a four-week clinical trial, getting an extra half an hour to an hour of sleep a night can boost testosterone by about 10 percent.”

The federal Liberals will gather in Canberra this morning to vote on who will be leader of the party, and challenger Angus Taylor is favoured to emerge victorious over Sussan Ley. Taylor’s supporters resigned en masse from the shadow frontbench yesterday, following Taylor doing the same on Wednesday night. Senate leader Michaelia Cash, Finance spokesperson James Paterson, home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam, and science spokeswoman Claire Chandler were among those to step down. Senator Jane Hume will challenge Ted O’Brien for the deputy leadership of the party. But there are a bunch of contenders for that job, potentially including Tim Wilson, Zoe McKenzie, Melissa McIntosh and former energy spokesman Dan Tehan, who also resigned from shadow cabinet.

Greed-o-meter

Generations	Coffee	Beer
Gen Z	$7.20	$10.30
Millennial	$7.40	$10.50
Gen X	$6.20	$9.80
Boomers	$5.70	$8.80

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Australian consumers expect the price of a coffee to reach $6.70 this year, which is more than the average maximum they're willing to pay, according to research from payments company Tyro. But our willingness to pay higher prices for coffee and beer varies between generations:

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Source: Tyro