The RBA’s interest rate decision staggers the commentariat
RBA WRONG-FOOTS EVERYONE
The Reserve Bank and governor Michele Bullock delivered a timely reminder of the folly in trying to predict their actions by holding the cash rate at 3.85% yesterday. The decision came following a near-unanimous prediction among Australia’s economic commentariat that the bank would drop interest rates to 3.6%.
The move has incensed our own Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer (as well as anyone struggling with a mortgage repayment), and the media floodplain this morning is awash with similar pieces trying to make sense of the bank’s decision.
The Australian Financial Review has its hat in its hand, admitting that its “emphatic” survey of economists — where “32 of the 36 people polled said the RBA was about to deliver the third cut of the year” — was wrong. In trying to make sense of it all, the paper quotes Barrenjoey chief rates strategist Andrew Lilley, who implied we should perhaps stop being so surprised by RBA decisions.
“The RBA has a historical propensity to do what they believe is right, rather than follow market pricing. We’ve seen surprises of this magnitude before in the last couple of years. This would be the fifth surprise the RBA has given the market in the last three years,” he said.
For anyone playing AFR interest rate bingo, the paper has written six pieces on the rate decision, calling it a “finely balanced call in a world of economic uncertainty“, “a lesson in prudence“, a decision ordinary Australians can “take comfort in“, and “a sound decision“.
The ABC, meanwhile, has tried to temper some of the shock by reminding readers that “just a couple of weeks ago, the general expectation was that we’d need to wait until August for the next rate cut”. The national broadcaster points out that expectations of a cut had been brought forward by the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ consumer price index (CPI), but that the RBA has recently shown some distrust towards it.
“The monthly CPI is not a full CPI; each month has different components in it … If you look at the monthly numbers, they bounce around a lot, and the other thing is that the trimmed mean for monthly isn’t calculated the same way as the quarterly,” Bullock said following the decision.
Never one to miss an opportunity to rattle some cages, The Australian has accused Treasurer Jim Chalmers of “weaponising” the RBA’s choice not to cut the cash rate, particularly given revelations the board appeared split on the decision.
Chalmers said the bank’s nine-member board — with six in favour of holding the cash rate and three of an immediate reduction — would be a “source of some interest” to punters speculating on why the decision was not unanimous.
“There were different views expressed around the boardroom table, and we know that because of the publication of these unattributed votes,” Chalmers said. On the decision to hold the rate, Chalmers was circumspect, saying: “It’s not for me to second-guess the decisions that the Reserve Bank takes appropriately and independently.”
Guardian Australia is staying chipper in the face of it all, telling readers that a rate cut is coming, just not now. The publication says the decision shows that the bank “doesn’t give a fig about popular opinion” (which is a real saying, I looked it up), but reminded affected punters that the direction of rates is likely to continue downwards for some time.
“The argument that inflation might suddenly pick back up again sounds well past its use-by date, given where inflation is and has been heading, the weak start to the year for the economy, and soft household spending.
“Still, holding rates for another month or so is no calamity. The direction of travel is clear, we might just take a bit longer to get there.”
MUSHROOM FIXATION
Personally, I’ve never really understood everyone’s fascination with the Erin Patterson case, which seemed to me to lack a lot of the intrigue and unpredictability of other such trials that took the country by storm. It’s clear, however, that I’m pretty alone in this, as nearly every news site in town (particularly the ABC and the Nine papers) continues to try to make hay while the verdict is still fresh.
The Sydney Morning Herald leads this morning with what, to be fair, is some actual news: that police, prosecutors and journalists covering the trial were all put up in the same hotel as the deliberating jury, leading to issues of remaining separated.
“In shambolic scenes, the placement of the jury by the Supreme Court of Victoria in the same property as police, journalists and prosecutors led to people hiding in doorways to avoid contact, skipping breakfast and guests being forced to move rooms to avoid disturbing jury members in the final days of their deliberations,” the paper writes, conjuring up a kind of Benny Hill/Scooby Doo-esque image, of countless different groups running in and out of adjoining doorways, being chased by the ghost of contempt of court (spoiler: it’s just Kyle Sandilands in a mask, and he would have got away with it too…).
As our own Daanyal Saeed has previously reported, accommodation in the town of Morwell (and neighbouring Traralgon) was limited during the trial as swarms of media and onlookers came to gawk. Supreme Court Judge Christopher Beale admitted that “there is a shortage of accommodation in the district, but it is obviously undesirable for any of the parties or the informant to be staying at the same hotel as the jury”.
A veteran criminal lawyer was more scathing in his assessment, telling the SMH: “It just doesn’t look right. Something could have accidentally gone wrong — some kind of interaction that just had to look like it was inappropriate to cause chaos … If it was the defence that had gotten rooms in the same hotel as the jury, the police and prosecutors would be loudly protesting to the judge. It’s just not normal.” The paper points out that there is no suggestion of any impropriety from anyone who stayed at the hotel.
For the ABC, Annabel Crabb this morning tries to drill down into what captivated Australia and the world so much about the trial, saying it “provides a neat example of how humans behave when swamped with too much information”.
“The trial unfurled the kind of detail that is now common in murder trials and would have been inconceivable a generation ago; hot-tempered exchanges that once would have wafted away on the air are now immortalised by messaging apps. Pings from mobile phone towers point an accusatory finger. Closed circuit TV sequences are excavated, along with the damning, unscrubbable images of a dehydrator,” she writes.
With every tiny detail of Patterson’s trial and life to come now being under intense public scrutiny (see: Charlie Lewis’ excellent analysis), the ABC is also running this morning with a story headlined: “Erin Patterson could take years to adjust to maximum security, expert says” — you know, unlike everyone else who gets used to it straight away.
“It takes anywhere from five to seven years for a woman to at least assimilate or adjust to the ‘prison way’ or prison approach to how we survive inside, ” Dr Kathryn Whiteley told the broadcaster.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
If you’ve made it to this point in this morning’s Worm, I can only assume you’re paying attention. Or are you just reading the words, repeating the sounds of the letters in your head, divorced from their meaning?
If you’re prone to spacing out, then do I have the competition for you. The Seoul Space-Out Competition is an annual contest that forces participants to sit in silence for 90 minutes, with the winner determined by the lowness and steadiness of their pulse, and an audience vote.
The competition originated in 2014 when an artist called Woopsyang noticed that she, and everyone around her, seemed burnt out and in desperate need of a break. The New York Times sent Yan Zhuang to participate in this year’s contest, and while she didn’t bring home the win, she did learn a thing or two about how difficult it is to truly do nothing.
In the end, the winner was punk drummer Park Byung-jin, who said: “I emptied my mind again and again, except for the thought that I had to win,” an envious mentality that I’d love to be instilled in my futsal team.
Say What?
“Picking mushrooms … Hasn’t she done something like this before, with the mushrooms?”
Kyle Sandilands
These few words, spoken on June 16’s Kyle & Jackie O Show (well before the verdict in the Erin Patterson trial), could land Kyle in a heap of trouble for contempt of court.
CRIKEY RECAP
A taxonomy of takes: The mushroom trial
Naturally, there are several stories or asides about what it has been like to stay in Morwell for so long, but we have to, as ever, tip our hat to the Daily Mail for vaulting above all the takes collected here to record the most unhinged content in the aftermath of the verdict.
“Some of us felt like we were losing our minds. A photographer had a heart attack on the first day. Something about this trial felt cursed,” wrote the Mail’s correspondent Wayne Flower. He noted that Sophie Stafford, one of Patterson’s lawyers, “would break into a smile and attempt to hide it with her flowing brunette hair” as she entered the court. He ended on the revelation that the trial helped bring about the end of his marriage
“The grind and my absence had made my partner of 24 years — the mother of my two children — come to realise she no longer needed me in her life.”
From ICE to Coles: Controversial US tech company Palantir’s links to Australia spark backlash
Palantir, founded by billionaire Peter Thiel and three others, is a US-based data analysis and tech company. Its Australian government clients include the Department of Defence, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the Australian Signals Directorate. Its corporate clients include Coles, Rio Tinto and Westpac.
The company has gained notoriety for its work with the military and assisting with government surveillance schemes. Its work with the Israeli military — including reportedly the use of AI tools supporting automated decision-making in the war on Gaza, according to a recent UN report — and with the US administration on its mass deportation plans, has brought renewed attention to the company.
The women we work with through the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls often face immense barriers to obtaining a WWCC, even when their charges have nothing to do with children. Many who apply have convictions that stem from surviving poverty, violence, homelessness or substance use. These are routinely read by the system not as evidence of structural harm or survival, but as fixed indicators of unsuitability.
Criminalised women — especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women — already face steep hurdles when applying for a clearance after prison. The law treats a decades-old shoplifting charge, a survival response to domestic violence, or even the state-sanctioned removal of one’s own child as permanent red flags. These often result in women being denied a clearance and being issued a prohibition or negative notice.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
THE COMMENTARIAT
The 10 hurdles Erin Patterson needed to jump. She hit every one — John Silvester (The Sydney Morning Herald): We are told repeatedly that the jury system is the truest form of justice.
Then why is it that so much information is kept from jurors?
In many pre-trial discussions, part of the prosecution’s case is knocked out before a jury is empanelled, rather than allowing the jurors to decide the evidentiary value themselves.
In one case I covered, the jury acquitted a man of murdering his wife. The prosecution case was that he had hired a hitman, and even though the killer testified that the husband paid him, the accused walked.
On verdict, the defence lawyer turned to the prosecutor and said, “You were robbed.” The defence lawyer was Nicola Gobbo.
We all became detectives in Erin Patterson’s trial. But as a crime writer I can’t help wonder, at what cost? — Candice Fox (Guardian Australia): The problem is that armchair detectives and their untrained analysis of apparent shock and grief has been historically (and, for the victims, very painfully) wrong.
The plight of Joanne Lees, whose boyfriend Peter Falconio disappeared during a terrifying abduction attempt by Bradley John Murdoch in the Australian outback, is an example of the savagery of mob crime-solving. Deep-breathing and tearless, her seemingly calm walk down a corridor to front the press, and her choice of a singlet top emblazoned with the words “cheeky monkey”, turned the tide of opinions against her. Her account of crouching in bushland, evading her would-be attacker and his dog, was shredded at watercooler conversations nationwide. The whole time, Joanne was telling the truth. She was traumatised and grieving and being called a liar.
