RBA governor Michele Bullock fields questions after the central bank’s board left the cash rate at 4.35% for a ninth consecutive meeting. Photograph: Steven Saphore/AAP
RBA governor Michele Bullock fields questions after the central bank’s board left the cash rate at 4.35% for a ninth consecutive meeting. Photograph: Steven Saphore/AAP
Queensland Labor has decided to back the Crisafulli government’s “adult crime, adult time” laws, which discriminate against children and violate human rights.
Peter Dutton has said if he is elected next year he will only display the Australian flag at press conferences, arguing that to fly the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flags would be “dividing our country unnecessarily” and sending a “confusing message”.
The Indigenous Australians minister, Malarndirri McCarthy, says the opposition leader is “unfit to be prime minister” after the flags pledge.
Anthony Albanese made brief remarks to a packed crown at the Addas Israel synagogue in Melbourne, saying he’ll speak to leaders about steps forward.
An abortion gag motion passed Queensland parliament, with all 50 LNP MPs present voting to ban any debate on abortion for four years.
Women’s despair after losing contraception class action
Women who suffered debilitating pain and bleeding after a permanent contraceptive device was implanted say they are disappointed a judge found it did not directly cause their symptoms, AAP reports.
Victorian supreme court justice Andrew Keogh handed down his decision on Tuesday, marking the end of a five-year class action against Bayer Australia and five other companies.
The class action, led by Victorian Patrice Turner, claimed women suffered harm as a direct result of the Essure device being implanted into their bodies.
Turner underwent a hysterectomy at 32, five years after the permanent contraceptive device was inserted into both of her fallopian tubes.
She claimed she suffered severe pelvic pain and heavy uterine bleeding, which resolved after she underwent the major abdominal surgery.
Turner and the 1,400 class action members alleged Bayer Australia and the other companies involved in Essure’s design, manufacturing and marketing breached a duty of care.
But Justice Keogh found their claims could not be made out. The judge was not satisfied they established the Essure device caused inflammation, and subsequent pain and abnormal bleeding in women.
Justice Keogh also noted while the device could migrate, be expelled from the fallopian tube or leech metal into the body, the risks were small and often associated with the insertion process.
He did not accept there was a risk the device would break down once inside the body.
Deutsche Bank first to shift prediction of first RBA rate cut after ‘dovish’ decision
As we noted in an earlier post, CBA’s prediction of a February RBA bank cut was the only one among the top four banks, but it might not be so lonely for long.
Deutsche Bank’s Phil Odonaghoe must be a keen reader of this blog – or perhaps he read the same entrails/tea leaves or other divining pointers as we did.
Anyway, Odonaghoe now thinks the RBA will cut the cash rate in February by 25 basis points to 4.1%, rather than at the May board meeting. And that early move will make it possible to squeeze four cuts into 2025 of that size, instead of three he had been tipping for next year prior to today.
He said Michele Bullock had added to the “dovish tone” of the RBA’s statement during her presser that the board would be keenly watching data over “the coming month or so”.
“While the governor also indicated on numerous occasions a reluctance to provide forward guidance and emphasised a heavy reliance on upcoming data, that very specific timeframe reference to upcoming data is important,” Odonaghoe said.
Guess we’ll find out soon enough (18 February, to be precise), whether Deutsche Bank (and CBA) are correct or not.
Katies to close amid restructure of indebted owner
All Katies stores across Australia will shut by mid-January as part of a major restructure of its indebted owner, fashion and apparel company Mosaic Brands, that will cost hundreds of retail jobs.
The Mosaic receivers, KPMG, said today that about 480 store employees will be affected by the closure of 80 Katies stores, plus an additional 80 outlets across the Millers, Rivers, and Noni B brands.
“The decision was made following a review of the performance of Katies as a brand, and the wider store network,” KPMG said in a statement.
“The stores identified to close have been loss making resulting in the decision to close them in January.”
The changes mean the Katies brand will disappear from Australian retail after almost 70 years.
Administrators are still seeking to sell Mosaic Brands, which collapsed under heavy debts in October. It had already started winding down well-known labels including Rockmans, Autograph and Crossroads.
As we mentioned earlier, Queensland parliament has today been banned from debate on abortion.
This came after the Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, moved without notice that the state parliament ban the introduction of any bill amending the state’s abortion laws.
Here’s a video capturing the debate:
‘Extraordinary’: Queensland parliament bans debate on abortion for four years - video
Queensland government’s decision to gag debate on abortion for four years ‘lawful’ but ‘odd’
The University of Queensland law professor Graeme Orr says the state government’s decision to gag debate on abortion for four years is “lawful” but “a bit silly”.
Under a motion passed today, parliament’s standing orders now do not permit debate about Queensland’s abortion laws, or any amendment to them.
“This is lawful,” Orr said. “But this is quite odd. Only two weeks back, the government asked parliament to adopt the sessional orders for this term.”
He added:
The motion is largely symbolic: political showmanship.
It tells Queensland the intention is to brook no debate about changing the Termination of Pregnancy Act. And, by falling in line with the motion, there’s enough LNP backbenchers committed to shutting off such debate.
In theory this procedural order can be waived in future, by ‘leave’ of the House. But the government is also signalling it wouldn’t give such leave.
The motion does not prohibit an MP asking about the issue in question time, or a parliamentary committee inquiring into abortion practices, he said.
More on the RBA not considering a rate cut at board meeting:
While the markets viewed the RBA has taken a dovish tone to inflation, the governor, Michele Bullock, has suggested we might need to take a chill pill.
Importantly, the board did not consider a rate cut (or hike) at this week’s meeting, Bullock said.
Now we might get a surprisingly weak CPI figure for the December quarter on 29 January but it would take a bit of budging if a rate cut was not even assessed this week.
It means the board had only considered the “hold’ option for three meetings in a row – and it usually has a look at least before leaping.
We could get a nasty geopolitical surprise by the next board meeting, on 17-18 February.
“We have another problem,” Bullock said, if inflation turns out to be stronger than anticipated.
RBA governor says board ‘did not consider’ cutting cash rate
Asked by Guardian Australia’s Peter Hannam if the RBA had considered a case for lowing interest rates, the bank’s governor, Michele Bullock, said it didn’t.
“We did not consider an interest rate cut,” Bullock said, adding that the board had considered what had transpired since the board’s previous meeting and what was appropriate.
She later said it was too early to tell if there will be a rate cut in February.
I honestly don’t know if we’re going to be cutting in February. We’re going to be looking at the data and be data-driven.
Staying with the RBA governor, Michele Bullock, she has said the change in wording in the bank’s statement was deliberate and the board wanted to convey their opinion is evolving as the data does.
In recent previous statements the bank had declared it was not “ruling anything in or out”, a phrase that had implied another interest rate rise in this cycle was possible. Those words were not part of the new statement on Tuesday.
Bullock said:
We’re not saying that we won the battle against inflation yet, but we are saying that we got a bit more confidence that things are evolving as we think in our forecasts. We’ve got to be aware that things might move in either direction but I think that’s what people would expect of us.
Michele Bullock says RBA needs to see ‘more progress on underlying inflation’
The Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, is speaking now about keeping interest rates unchanged for the ninth meeting in a row at 4.35%.
Bullock said:
The board needs to be confident that inflation is moving sustainably towards the target and, for this to occur, we need to see more progress on underlying inflation coming down from today.
The RBA’s job, our mandate is to keep inflation between two and 3% and to aim at the midpoint 2.5% …We want to bring inflation down in a way that doesn’t cause a spike in unemployment. That’s the balancing act we are trying to get right and it is a challenge.
There is no evidence that an arson attack on an Islamic school’s bus was racially or politically motivated, South Australian police say.
The empty bus was parked outside the driver’s house on Sunday night when it was set on fire just before midnight.
Channel Seven reported “fears” the Sunday night attack “may have been racially motivated”. Channel Nine reported the incident had “raised fears” it was a racist attack, but that the bus driver, Errol Koch, believed it was mere stupidity.
Footage showed extensive damage to the yellow school bus, which belonged to IQRA College. Crime scene investigators believe the fire was deliberately lit but that the nature of the attack “indicates it may have been an opportunistic attack, rather than premeditated”. SA police said in a statement on Monday:
Investigations into a suspicious school bus fire in Reynella overnight have so far not identified any evidence to indicate it was racially or politically motivated.
A neighbour reported the voices of youths were heard in the vicinity at the time of the incident with investigations ongoing to confirm this.
Channel Nine reported that the bus was outside Koch’s house. He said it was “a random attack” and that he would hate for people to think it was racially motivated. “It’s very strange for something like this to happen,” he said.
Senator Fatima Payman earlier compared the situation to the Melbourne synagogue fire, which is being treated as an act of terrorism. She said on Instagram there were “two acts of arson, two acts of hate, but two very different responses” and said Islamophobia was “ignored, downplayed or dismissed”.
In a statement, the Islamophobia Register Australia, which tracks Islamophobia in Australia, criticised Liberal senator Dave Sharma’s claim that Islamophobia was “fictitious”.
The register said there had been a 600% increase in reported incidents of Islamophobia over the past year and that “lived experiences ... demonstrate that Islamophobia is not only real but also escalating to unprecedented levels, posing a serious threat to the safety of Muslims”.
Police asked anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers.
No one from the school was available to comment, but a spokesperson told The Advertiser it was a “shock” and that the school was reassessing its security measures. The spokesperson also said he did not believe it was a targeted attack but was not ruling it out.
Chalmers claims RBA board ‘gaining some confidence that inflationary pressures are declining’
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has just spoken about the RBA keeping interest rates unchanged for the ninth meeting in a row at 4.35%, leaving stressed borrowers to wait at least until February before they get some relief.
Chalmers said that the government had made substantial progress in the fight against inflation, and was trying to do so without slowing the economy. He said that progress was reflected in the RBA’s statement today.
In recent previous statements the bank had declared it was not “ruling anything in or out”, a phrase that had implied another interest rate rise in this cycle was possible. Those words were not part of the new statement on Tuesday.
Chalmers told reporters:
The statement makes it clear that the board is gaining some confidence that inflationary pressures are declining.
My job as treasurer is to focus primarily on the fight against inflation, to do that in a way that doesn’t ignore the very substantial risks to growth. We are making progress on that front but we know that people are still under very substantial pressure and that’s why rolling out our cost of living help is so important.
RBA says ‘risks remain’ but fewer look to be on the ‘upside’ for inflation
We noted that markets were pretty clear in their interpretation of today’s RBA verdict: an interest rate cut is coming a bit sooner than they predicted prior to 2.30pm AEDT.
The RBA being the RBA (and no longer dabbling in “forward guidance” after the previous governor, Philip Lowe, got torched) says that while it is confident inflation inline with recent forecasts “risks remain”.
Indeed, “geopolitical uncertainties remain pronounced”, the bank said in its statement. (An understatement given Trump 2.0, Syria, South Korea, France, etc.)
But most of those risks appear to be loading up on the “too cold” rather than “too hot” side of Goldilocks’ porridge. “While underlying inflation is still high, other recent data on economic activity have been mixed, but on balance softer than expected in November,” the bank said.
GDP growth (which we’ve learnt since the bank’s November forecasts) has been weak, the RBA noted. “There is a risk that any pick up in consumption is slower than expected, resulting in continued subdued output growth and a sharper deterioration in the labour market.”
There remain “upside” risks that could stall the slide in inflation. We’ll get more of a sounding from the RBA governor, Michele Bullock, shortly. Perhaps the CBA, alone among the big four banks to forecast a February interest rate cut, might not be so lonely for long. Let’s see.
