Economists and newsrooms collaborate to lie about Australia’s economy

Australian media has hit a new low in deceptive reporting, but there is a positive note too, as Alan Austin reports.

IMPORTANT economist Saul Eslake It was announced on Sky News this last monday “The OECD has shown that Australia has the highest core inflation rate of all but one of the 38 members of the OECD.”

Apparently Eslake was commenting on the day’s news release From the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) titled Consumer Price IndexJuly 6, 2026.

Eslake said with his usual self-confidence. Reserve Bank‘s management of interest rates and the Federal Government’s first home purchase program adds an unnecessary reference to a budget measure that was renegotiated after last year’s Economic Roundtable. “broken promise”.

But here’s the thing. The OECD report did not say what Eslake claimed. It showed Australia’s core inflation (all CPI items excluding food and energy) was 3.5%. It also showed Belgium at 4.1%, Mexico at 4.3%, Lithuania at 4.6%, Colombia at 6.5%, Iceland at 6.7% and Türkiye at 30.6%.

Australia is not in second place. There is nowhere nearby.

Therefore, the inference that Australia’s economic management is inadequate is not supported.

So how did this come about? Did the economist not read the OECD document and instead relied on the fake report from the previous day? Financial Review (AFR)? Or did he trust a made-up impersonator? story in the Murdoch media that morning? Or did he concoct the false narrative himself, in line with Sky News’ editorial policy of only broadcasting economic “news” that was damaging to Labour?

We don’t know because our requests for clarification went unanswered.

Malicious lies across the country

Entire newsrooms are falling over each other these days trying to copy every false story anyone creates. This came amid serious threats of recession in January and February, concern that interest rates were in the middle of the optimum range in March and April, over-excitement over the May budget and warnings that this would inevitably cause house prices to fall. rise and at the same time to fall – and now core inflation.

Last week’s headlines were:

‘Australia has the highest core inflation rate outside OECD members’ (Sky News, 6 July);
‘Australia’s core inflation is now second highest in the world, expert blames spending’ (news.com.au6 July);
‘Shock inflation ranking. Australia has become an international outlier (Nine News, July 6); And
‘Australia’s inflation among the highest in the world’ (Yahoo Finance, July 6).

AFR fake chart

This latest wave of blatant lies appears to have started with an incident article with Michael Read inside AFR headed, ‘Australia remains high on inflation rankings among all major developed economies’.

Read what is requested:

‘Australia has become the tipping point of international inflation’ [with] Equally the highest core inflation rate among major developed economies and the second highest inflation rate among all developed economies, behind Iceland…’

He added this table to illustrate the concept he wants readers to accept:

The obvious trick is to pick an arbitrary group of 34 economies plus the Eurozone and claim that they are all comparable. It left out seven OECD members and many other advanced economies.

Disturbingly, for some countries (Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands) it used May data, while for others (Belgium, Portugal, Spain) it used June data. commodity prices were different. May numbers were available for everyone except New Zealand.

A much more valid exercise is to compare all developed economies that have a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index May core inflation figures are above 0.76 tradingekonomi.com.

There are 60 of them; 0.28% from Costa Rica to 32% to Argentina. These include all 38 OECD members, as well as AFR He wanted it to be hidden. See the table below.

Unfortunately, the country names are hard to read in this chart, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Australia is not the second worst country. Core inflation ranks 22nd at 3.57%, below the 4.27% average.

AFR The article went on to falsely claim that Australia was still in a cost of living crisis and inflation was out of control. They want us to forget that inflation is above 10 percent most of the time John Howard He was trying to become Treasurer in the 1980s.

The article ended with another economist: John SimonHe not only implies that inflation in Australia is excessive, he actually says:

“What’s happening in Australia is not a global event.”

Real data, which economists seem reluctant to have access to by newsrooms, shows that Australia’s inflation is indeed global and not an outlier.

ABC News changes its mind

In a surprisingly bright spot last week, the ABC’s economics correspondent said: Alan KohlerHe made a 180 degree turn and announced It is certain that Australia is not heading for a recession. The economy is so strong it actually needs to be eased:

If you spent your time on the websites of the Bureau of Statistics, the Reserve Bank and the ASX you would think all was well…

Economic growth of 2.5% is solid, if not exciting, employment growth is quite strong and unemployment is falling…

Inflation is falling, consumer spending is increasing…

In fact, the economy is doing so well that the Federal Reserve is increasing interest rates to slow it down.

That’s nice, because just last month this column counted Kohler among the hooligans and charlatans in newsrooms who publish nonsense. warnings a harbinger of an impending recession.

We hope his colleagues will join him. But they have some work to do with the economic reporter. Gareth Hutchens Lately crying a slowing economy and a KPMG senior economist insisting things are going well ‘it is worse now than it was almost forty years ago’.

Absolute nonsense! But public economists know that Australian newsrooms want devastating lies, and they seem happy to deliver it.

Alan Austin is an Independent Australian columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001 and Bluesky @alanaustin.bsky.social.

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