House prices skyrocket with no end in sight
HOUSE PRICES RISE, TAX BREAKS FOR AI
This morning brings quite the range of economic news, with new data showing house prices reaching a fresh peak in June ahead of the latest Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) rate decision, and OpenAI advocating for tax incentives to encourage a greater adoption of artificial intelligence across the country. Grab that coffee and let’s dive in.
The Nine papers, Capital Brief, Reuters and others have reported on new data from Cotality today which shows home values grew for the fifth month in a row, up 0.6% in June and 1.4% over the quarter.
Reuters points out the national median house price now sits at $837,586, with Capital Brief highlighting Sydney has the highest median at $1.21 million, with Brisbane next at $926,243.
Commenting on the new figures, Cotality’s research director Tim Lawless declared: “The first [interest] rate cut in February was a clear turning point for housing value trends. An additional cut in May, and growing certainty of more cuts later in the year, have further fuelled positive housing sentiment, pushing values higher.”
The RBA’s board will meet on Monday next week and announce its interest rate decision on Tuesday.
The AAP this morning reports on different data, from REA Group’s PropTrack, which shows national home prices climbed 0.4% in June and 4.6% over the year. The newswire says the average home is now $40,000 costlier than a year ago. Stronger buyer demand and fewer listings are cited as being behind the record highs last month.
Reuters has done a poll of economists, which it reports “found that Australia’s home prices are likely to rise a steady 4% to 5% a year over the next three years, on top of a jump of 40% in prices in the past five years”.
The ABC references both the Cotality and PropTrack data in its write-up and highlights the fact that every capital, apart from Hobart, saw values rise in June, with the Tasmanian city dropping 0.2%.
The broadcaster says both sets of data also cite “several factors that should keep a lid on the increases”. These include: reduced demand from slowing population and migration growth, elevated household debt, cautious lending policies and geopolitical risks.
REA senior economist Eleanor Creagh told the ABC: “Stretched affordability is putting a bit of a handbrake on home price growth, and although we’re seeing an upswing in prices this year as rates fall, we’re seeing a more gradual pace of home price growth compared to previous easing cycles. We know growth in household incomes hasn’t kept up with that continued lift in home price growth we’ve seen in recent years.”
Lawless added: “We’re still seeing housing very much unaffordable for most Australians. I think there’s still a few barriers to really see the housing market take off from here. The reality is probably a modest but broad-based level of growth going through the rest of 2025.”
The AAP and The Australian Financial Review also report this morning on what OpenAI reckons Australia should be doing so that it’s not left behind in the AI space.
The AFR says OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is urging the Albanese government to introduce tax breaks for businesses that adopt artificial intelligence. The paper says the advice comes as it launches a report claiming AI could make the economy $115 billion larger by 2030.
OpenAI’s Chief economist Ronnie Chatterji has been in Canberra this week and yesterday met with Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres, Skills Minister Andrew Giles, and Assistant Minister for Productivity Andrew Leigh, the report says. Today he is set to meet with Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Andrew Charlton, at an AI policy forum at the University of Technology in Sydney.
Speaking to AAP, he said: “It’s a good time where there’s a big conversation in economic policy circles right now about how to increase productivity.”
OpenAI’s economic blueprint for Australia, released today, states “a nurse unburdened by paperwork can spend more time with patients” and “a business owner with more bandwidth can pursue bold ideas”.
It also calls for governments to encourage more adoption of AI through investment and extra training. AI literacy and ethics lessons in schools should also be introduced.
Responding to the push for more AI, ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the economic dividends artificial intelligence brings need to be shared with workers and not just swallowed up in corporate profits.
“We want (productivity) to improve because we want people’s living standards to improve,” she said. “You have to make sure that you have a fair distribution of gains in productivity, and that could be via shorter working hours, or it could be via higher pay.”
On the theme of AI, the AFR also flags Meta Platforms chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has “announced a major restructuring of the company’s artificial intelligence group, including a commitment to developing AI ‘superintelligence’”.
LIBERATION DAY 2: RETURN OF THE TARIFFS
As the Albanese government considers the call from a massive AI company to encourage more usage of its product, it is also trying to navigate the impact of another economic disruptor — US President Donald Trump.
As mentioned yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong is currently in Washington for the latest Quad meeting and will meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio amid ongoing attempts to achieve tariff exemptions for Australia.
The 90-day pause Trump put on his chaotic Liberation Day tariffs is due to expire next week, and nations are bracing for what might come next.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed the tariffs placed on Australia “should be zero”, Guardian Australia recalls. Which might be a tad optimistic.
“We continue to put our case forward that it shouldn’t be 10[%]. It should be zero,” Albanese said on Monday. “That is what a reciprocal tariff will be. We have a US free trade agreement, of course, and we’ve put forward very clearly our arguments. We’ll continue to do so.”
In the latest of tariffs, the ABC highlights Canada has in the last few hours scrapped a tax targeting US technology firms, such as Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple, in an attempt to advance stalled trade negotiations with America.
In typical calm, professional and grown-up language from the Trump administration, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared: “It’s very simple. Prime Minister [Mark] Carney and Canada caved to President Trump and the United States of America.”
Carney said in his statement: “Today’s announcement will support a resumption of negotiations toward the July 21, 2025, timeline set out at this month’s G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis.”
That summit obviously involved a hasty departure by Trump and a cancellation of his meeting with Albanese.
As it was a day ending in y, the PM was asked yesterday about when he might get around to rearranging his face-to-face with the US president (at this point I’m reminded of golfer Rory McIlroy asking reporters what on earth they were going to talk about going forward following his Masters victory, after he’d endured years and years of the same question — although it turns out he stopped talking to them anyway…)
The Nine papers report Albanese signalled he could use a gathering of Quad leaders in India, thought to be in September, to chat with The Donald. “I’d be prepared, of course, to meet with President Trump when a suitable time can be organised. We also have the Quad meeting coming up that we are finalising as well,” he told the ABC.
“I think where the meeting takes place is less important than what comes out of the meeting, frankly. And I know there is a focus on this, a laser-like focus on this. What I’m concerned about is supporting Australia’s national interests, whether that be here domestically or internationally.”
Albanese could also visit the White House when he travels to the United Nations in New York in September.
Visiting Washington and meeting with the Trump administration this week is one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior advisers, Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, to discuss the war in Gaza and the conflict with Iran, ABC News reports. The ABC reports at least 58 people were killed in Israeli bombardments on Gaza on Monday.
The Nine papers reported yesterday that NSW Police had “declared a critical incident after a former Greens candidate [Hannah Thomas] sustained a serious eye injury during an altercation between police and pro-Palestine activists in Sydney’s west.” My colleague Charlie Lewis has written about the incident here.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
As opening sentences to news stories go, I rather enjoyed this one from the BBC the other day: “A gull has taken revenge on a man who was installing anti-bird spikes in a Cornish town — by drinking his coffee and pinching his mug.”
The man in question is Darren Pardoe, who had been bird-proofing homes in the town of Porthleven, England.
He told the broadcaster he’d been having a conversation with someone when he turned around to find a seagull drinking his coffee.
Before he got a chance to stop the gull, it decided to fly off and take his mug with it. “It flew round the harbour and then landed on the water, put the cup down, and the cup just sank,” he said.
Thankfully, Darren managed to take a picture of the bird mid-flight, with his coffee mug in its beak.
Say What?
I don’t know, your newspaper published the op-ed.
Anthony Albanese
The PM responds to being asked by The Australian if the op-ed written by China’s ambassador calling for Australia to resist demands for increased defence spending constituted “meddling”.
CRIKEY RECAP
Australia’s seven living former prime ministers received $1.89 million in public funding in the past four financial quarters to cover the cost of their offices, air travel, car leases, fuel, and other expenses. This is on top of their publicly funded staff.
Australia’s wealthiest former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was the costliest for taxpayers. Turnbull, a Liberal who once called on Australians to “break the cycle of welfare dependency”, spent more than $422,000 of taxpayers’ money, according to the latest expenditure data from the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for the 12 months to March 2025.
More than $397,000 — or 94% — of this went towards the cost of his private office at Level 48, Governor Phillip Tower at 1 Farrar Street in Sydney’s CBD. Prime commercial real estate with views of Sydney Harbour does not come cheap.
Choppers of credibility: How 15 years of Defence debacle gave us dud helicopter carriers
The most urgent issue in the debate over defence spending isn’t how much we should be devoting to the armed forces or where it should be directed, but the complete inability of the Defence Department to spend it competently.
That was already apparent to anyone who has paid attention to Defence procurement and contract management in recent years. But the latest report by the auditor-general — an investigation of how Defence has managed the maintenance and support service for its two helicopter-carrier assault ships, or “Landing Helicopter Docks” (LHDs) — details such an extraordinary litany of failures that external intervention is surely the only adequate response.
A year into the Melbourne experiment, Kyle and Jackie O bleed listeners while ARN coffers shrink
The parent company behind the Kyle & Jackie O Show has bled advertisers since the duo’s ill-fated launch in Melbourne, a market which is on track to become the biggest in the country by population.
A year on from the Sydney duo attempting to crack the Victorian capital, figures from Guideline SMI published in The Age show ARN, which syndicates the Kyle & Jackie O Show, has continued to bleed money, with the company 13% down on ad revenue so far this year compared to the same period last year.
The owner of the KIIS and GOLD FM radio networks has fallen from 28% to 24% share of metro ad revenue, losing out to Southern Cross Austereo (owner of Triple M) with 32% and Nova Entertainment with 33%.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
All the changes coming into effect from today — and it is not all good news (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Union leader appointed to federal government role without being shortlisted or facing ‘due diligence’ check (Guardian Australia)
What is bombogenesis? The wild storm front hitting the east coast (AFR)
Police launch criminal investigation into Bob Vylan and Kneecap Glastonbury sets (BBC)
Spirit of Tasmania IV begins 27,000 km voyage to Hobart from Scotland (ABC)
A year after ‘loveless landslide,’ UK leader is even less popular (The New York Times)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Ley’s Liberals must not listen to Tony Abbott on gender quotas — Lidija Ivanovski (AFR): First, some advice for the Liberal Party: if you’re looking to get more Liberal women into the parliament, and encourage more women to vote Liberal, then do not, under any circumstances, listen to Tony Abbott.
Tony Abbott, who as Liberal leader, when describing the attributes of a female candidate, offered up her “sex appeal”.
Tony Abbott, who as health minister described abortion as “the easy way out” and the practice of it in Australia as “a question of the mother’s convenience”.
Tony Abbott, who as prime minister appointed just one woman to his first cabinet and gave himself ministerial responsibility for women.
Australia’s had two more years of gambling ad harm since the Murphy report. It’s time for Labor to show some courage — Zoe Daniel (Guardian Australia): Before an election, you can (perhaps) understand why a government may not want to defy powerful media companies that are embedded with sport in this country and historically have had the power to turn elections.
After, with a more than 90-seat majority, what’s the excuse?
If the issue is the profitability of the broadcasters — and I’m all for a strong media landscape — that should be addressed separately. Our communities should not be saddled with gambling problems to keep media and multinational gambling companies profitable. Nor should fans be preyed on by sporting codes that get a commission from each bet. It is immoral.
Had the government found its courage at the time, we would now be just one year off a full ad ban. Instead, they’ve failed to honour Murphy’s committee’s commonsense recommendations.
