The Business Council of Australia says the government must respond to Donald Trump’s aggressive pro-business platform by reducing the 30 per cent corporate tax rate and slashing red tape – or risk being left behind.
Billions in pandemic-era stimulus may be partly to blame for Australia’s recent sluggish productivity performance, with the former Coalition government response helping to shield jobs but tying workers to substandard businesses.
The Albanese government is set to spend a record $90bn ‘off-budget’ over the next four years, concealing additional expenditure from the bottom line.
The mid-year economic and fiscal outlook shows an improvement in the 2024-25 budget bottom line will give way to deficits totalling $143.9bn to 2027-28 — $22bn more than initially projected.
Superannuation tax concessions are expected to cost the federal budget more than $55bn this financial year, as Jim Chalmers vows to push ahead and legislate Labor’s tax hike on high-balance nest eggs.
Jim Chalmers’s budget update will bake-in $25.1bn in extra expenditure, with some leading economists declaring Labor’s financial path is not inevitable and offsets can still be made.
The Treasurer has appointed distinguished economics professor Renee Fry-McKibbin and former Bendigo Bank boss Marnie Baker to the Reserve Bank’s new rate-setting board as part of the new-look central bank structure.
Labor has overshot its net migration forecast by 50,000 people despite a fall in overseas arrivals.
A surprise drop in the unemployment rate to 3.9 per cent in November has poured cold water on the prospect of a summer interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank.
Australia has an advantage in weathering the expected upending of US trade policy under Donald Trump, Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser has said.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/jack-quail/page/3