Monthly Archives: June 2017

Vacancies data support improving employment outlook in lead up to Qld election

Economists and market watchers were very excited yesterday by the May job vacancies data released by the ABS. Nationally, job vacancies were 1.6 percent higher (in seasonally adjusted terms) in May than in February, the time of the previous quarterly … Continue reading

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Population Growth – Queensland’s recent slump (Guest post from Alistair Robson)

I am delighted to publish a guest post from my friend and fellow economist Dr Alistair Robson on the slowdown in Queensland’s population growth in recent years. GT Population Growth – Queensland’s recent slump By Dr Alistair Robson Queensland has … Continue reading

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Growing interstate migration to Qld reflects improving economy & relatively more affordable house prices

As well as releasing the first batch of 2016 Census data, the ABS also updated its quarterly population estimates yesterday, and I was very pleased to see net interstate migration to Queensland is picking up nicely (see chart below). This … Continue reading

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CEDA report highlights AI & cloud threat to traditional accountants, with Xero and Bean Ninjas thriving

A new CEDA report I attended the Brisbane launch of at BCEC yesterday, Improving Service Sector Productivity, highlights the threat to accountants from machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that I posted on last year (see … Continue reading

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NSW winning fiscal State of Origin

My former Treasury colleague and old friend Joe Branigan, now at Cadence Economics and SMART Infrastructure Facility, was quick to tweet a State-of-Origin themed chart yesterday following the release of the NSW State Budget (see Joe’s chart below). As noted … Continue reading

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Open data workshop at the Queensland Startup Precinct in TC Beirne Building

In the 2017-18 Queensland Budget handed down last Tuesday, among a large number of measures is the “Open data policy and action plan”, to which the Government is allocating just over $1 million over two financial years (see Budget Paper … Continue reading

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Qld labour market continues to improve, but part-time jobs account for bulk of employment growth

Based on the latest labour force figures released by the ABS yesterday, the Queensland labour market appears to be improving nicely, which must be very pleasing to the State Government in the lead up to the next election. While the … Continue reading

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Huge regional disparities in Qld Government capital spending per capita

The Queensland Government’s $10.2 billion capital program in 2017-18 is heavily skewed to regional areas outside SEQ and towards inner city Brisbane, but away from other areas in SEQ (see the chart below which I’ve created based on data in … Continue reading

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Qld Government gets lucky in election Budget, but debt to climb to $81 billion in 2020-21

The 2017-18 State Budget reveals the Queensland Government got very lucky this year, benefiting from a surge in royalties that has allowed it to generate a positive fiscal balance (i.e. the budget balance that also accounts for infrastructure spending) in … Continue reading

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Qld economy needs pick up in private sector investment

According to the latest National Accounts released by the ABS last week, private sector investment spending fell in Queensland over the March quarter (in seasonally adjusted terms) and State Final Demand would have fallen as well, if it were not … Continue reading

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