Australians stay at home and splurge on EVs
Patrick Commins
High fuel prices dragged on household spending in the three months to June, with Australians filling up their car less and putting off overseas travel as airlines pushed up their fares to compensate for more expensive jet fuel.
National accounts figures showed consumption lifted by a weak 0.4% in the quarter – but even that was double the previous quarter’s pace.
The Middle East conflict disrupted overseas travel, slashing the usual pilgrimage north of the equator.
Grace Kim, Australian Bureau of Statistics’ head of national accounts, said “the number of Australians travelling overseas for the northern hemisphere summer fell for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Instead, we splurged on fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, with record sales of EVs and hybrids bolstering spending and the economy.
Vehicle purchases jumped by 10% in the quarter as Australians continued to shift away from gas guzzlers in an attempt to protect themselves from pain in the pump, both today and in the future.
The household saving rate lifted to 6.5%, from 6.4% in March.
Key events
Communications minister expects Telstra to act ‘without delay’ after report into network failure
Anika Wells, the federal communications minister, said she expects Telstra to act “without delay” on the findings and recommendations in an independent investigation into the telco’s nationwide network failure in July.
The report found a lack of ownership and oversight of curtain functions led to the outage, which was triggered by a software update not being done on a GPS card. An ongoing and separate investigation by the industry watchdog could result in fines of up to $30m per breach.
Wells said in a statement:
This was an outage that should not have happened, and it caused an extraordinary disruption across the country which impacted people, businesses and transport.
What this report has unearthed is concerning and clearly shows there have been preventable failures.
Wells went on:
Australians rightly expect to reach Triple Zero when they need it most, and telcos are legally obligated to ensure that connection occurs.
The industry must learn from its mistakes and continue to rebuild trust with Australians by ensuring networks do not succumb to preventable failures.
Benita Kolovos
Carroll says erecting statue for Victorian state leaders a ‘stupid waste of money’
In a sometimes fiery press conference, Carroll described the Jeff Kennett-era policy of erecting a statue for state leaders who have served more than 3,000 days in office as a “stupid waste of money”. On Saturday, he scrapped the $134,000 statue of Daniel Andrews.
This morning, he said 50% of the contract had already been paid out:
I am aware of design work completed and 50% of the contract being paid. I have now set up a process where the contract will be fulfilled for an alternative subject, an alternative location based on an independent panel that will give me advice. This was a Jeff Kennett, stupid waste of money, 3,000 days. In the Labor party, our statues are fixing up our roads, building better hospitals and better schools.
Benita Kolovos
Victoria premier’s pothole blitz continues with $270m commitment
The Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, was in Epping, in Melbourne’s north, this morning to announce that if re-elected, his government will spend $270m to improve an intersection that locals say isn’t safe.
The funding also includes the doubling of the number of lanes from two to four across 3.6km of Findon Road.
The announcement follows his press conferences on Sunday and Monday about his pothole blitz.
Carroll was asked about the edict sent out by police management to ignore increasingly overcrowded cells when making bail decisions, first reported by the Herald Sun. He said it was “the right thing” that cells were “more full” than before.
Carroll said:
I want to congratulate the chief commissioner, and I want to congratulate every hard-working Victorian. People being put into custody, whether it’s a police cell or a jail cell, is the right thing. I make no apology for our cells being more full than they ever have before. This shows our laws are working. That we’re focusing on making sure there’s accountability, that there’s consequences.
He said a “very simple way to not go into a cell” was to not “do the wrong thing in the first place”.
Carroll also denied he had plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 despite it being in Labor’s party platform. He said he’s seen many Labor policies “get developed” but “not implemented” during his 30 years in the party.
Tiny wallaby detected for the first time in 50 years
Australia’s second smallest wallaby, the nabarlek, has been detected at two new locations in Western Australia’s vast Kimberley region, described as like “finding a needle in a haystack”.
Images and scats showed the 1.2kg rock-wallaby on Yampi Sound Training Area on Dambeemangaddee Country – one of 20 priority places in the federal government’s Threatened Species Action Plan.
A second population was also confirmed around 170km away in the north-east of Dambeemangaddee Country – the first detections of the species on mainland Dambeemangaddee Country in over 50 years and the first record for Yampi Sound Training Area.
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Australians stay at home and splurge on EVs
Patrick Commins
High fuel prices dragged on household spending in the three months to June, with Australians filling up their car less and putting off overseas travel as airlines pushed up their fares to compensate for more expensive jet fuel.
National accounts figures showed consumption lifted by a weak 0.4% in the quarter – but even that was double the previous quarter’s pace.
The Middle East conflict disrupted overseas travel, slashing the usual pilgrimage north of the equator.
Grace Kim, Australian Bureau of Statistics’ head of national accounts, said “the number of Australians travelling overseas for the northern hemisphere summer fell for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Instead, we splurged on fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, with record sales of EVs and hybrids bolstering spending and the economy.
Vehicle purchases jumped by 10% in the quarter as Australians continued to shift away from gas guzzlers in an attempt to protect themselves from pain in the pump, both today and in the future.
The household saving rate lifted to 6.5%, from 6.4% in March.
Tom McIlroy
One Nation’s popularity slips as Albanese records lowest approval as prime minister
Labor’s national primary vote has dropped five percentage points in a month, falling to 26% in the latest Guardian Essential poll as Anthony Albanese records his lowest approval rating as prime minister.
And despite One Nation’s win in Saturday’s Secret Harbour byelection in Western Australia, the poll showed the national primary vote for Pauline Hanson’s party dropping five percentage points since May. The party recorded a primary vote of 23% in the latest poll, down from a peak of 28%.
Labor and the Coalition both recorded primary votes of 26% in the new results. That position represented a rise for the Coalition, from 22% in July, while Labor was down from 31%.
The poll has a margin of error of about 3%.
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Women leaving management roles due to home demands
Australian women are less likely than men to stay in high-paid roles because of domestic expectations, AAP reports, despite entering those roles at the same rate.
Equality Agency’s chief executive, Christine Castley, said most companies were still struggling to retain females in the best-paid positions, particularly in industries saturated by men, as they were expected to do a far greater share of at-home labour.
Women were far more likely to take on part-time roles than their male counterparts as a result, and most management jobs are full-time positions.
“That means people who are predominantly in the part-time workforce generally tend not to stick with it because they have to make choices about priorities,” Castley said.
That choice is usually falling on women, particularly when it comes to family responsibilities.
Promotion of paid parental leave for both genders and flexible working hours were key to creating better retention in management roles, she said.
Economy grows by 2.1% in year to June
Patrick Commins
Australia’s economy expanded by 0.4% in the three months to June, marking an expected, if less marked, slowdown in annual growth from 2.5% to 2.1% as rising interest rates and the high cost of living take their toll.
National accounts figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the three-monthly growth rate in real GDP ticked up from 0.3% in the March quarter.
Economists had expected the economy to grow by only 1.9% in the year to June, and 0.3% in the quarter, which suggests the economy is not slowing as quickly as the RBA predicted in its latest set of forecasts.
Grace Kim, ABS’s head of national accounts, said:
Economic growth remained subdued in the June quarter as households continued to behave cautiously. While increased spending and business investment occurred in pockets of the economy, imports supported much of the growth, moderating its contribution to overall GDP growth.
Telstra outage driven by lack of oversight and expertise, investigation finds
Telstra did not prioritise systems that caused a major nationwide network failure and lacked the technical expertise to properly maintain them, AAP reports.
An independent investigation into the telco’s 8 July network failure, which left thousands of Australians unable to make calls or access data, was released on Tuesday.
A lack of ownership and oversight of the functions that led to the outage were identified as key contributing factors by Technology Audit Partners in the report. The investigation also found a further eight triple-zero calls did not go through to emergency services during the outage.
The outage was triggered by a software update not being done on a GPS card, which resulted in incorrect date information.
A separate ongoing Australian Communications and Media Authority investigation into the outage could result in fines of up to $30m per breach.
Hiker missing overnight on South Australia’s Mount Remarkable found ‘safe and well’
Some good news from South Australia this morning: a missing hiker has been found “safe and well” after failing to return from a hike yesterday at Mount Remarkable.
Officials were first notified she had not returned around 9pm last night, but said the woman was found about 10am this morning.
She was uninjured and did not require any medical treatment.
