What we learned; Friday 30 August
And with that we are going to put the blog to bed. Before we go, let’s re-cap the big headlines.
Albanese backflips on census question after almost a week of backlash
Brisbane man charged with murder by ‘reckless indifference’ after deaths of two people
Equality Australia welcomes Labor’s census backflip but says it doesn’t go far enough
Transgender and intersex people should be included in census: Bandt
The Star enters trading halt as it mulls inquiry’s report on management
Newborn baby found outside Melbourne home with life-threatening injuries, police say
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Updated
Australian shoppers didn’t increase their spending in July despite an income boost from stage-three tax cuts.
Retail turnover stayed flat last month, after rising 0.5% in both June and May thanks to end of financial year sales, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
That was a “disappointing result given the context of tax cuts,” according to Matthew Hassan, Westpac’s head of Australian macro-forecasting.
Food retailing was the only industry to grow its sales, picking up by 0.2%. Sales of clothes, shoes and accessories fell 0.5% as EOFY sales ended, back to where they were in May. Department store trade fell 0.4%.
The figures were the first official sign of spending behaviour since the stage-three tax cuts boosted Australians’ pay packets. They suggest workers are saving the extra money or spending it on essentials, according to bank economists.
Continued weakness in retail spending bodes poorly for the economy at large. We’ll get a clearer picture of how domestic spending is going on Wednesday, with the release of national data on spending and production (GDP).
Will spending stay weak? The big banks say consumers might start to spend more of their tax cuts in coming months as bigger pay packets and cost-of-living relief build up buffers in shoppers’ accounts.
