GDP growth numbers show Australian workers steadily gaining
Last week's national accounts confirm Australia is one of few economies successfully battling difficult global conditions, reports Alan Austin.
THE LATEST DATA confirms Treasurer Jim Chalmers has Australia's economy recovering rapidly from the dismal Coalition years. Economic observers abroad now expect this from Labor governments.
Simultaneously, most local media are depicting Labor as incompetent and failing, which is what everyone aware of modern history should also anticipate.
Last Wednesday's Global Domestic Product (GDP) growth numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) are quite impressive when studied comparatively, which analysts employed in Australia seem prohibited from doing.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) was typical in noting that quarterly growth of 0.21% was below expectations and therefore a fail. 'Slowing economy fuels rate cut bets in Australia' was their mendacious headline.
'Weak GDP shows why households are grumpy', bemoaned an AFR companion piece.
The Murdoch media continued their decades-long campaign of deceiving readers with misleading or false claims. The Daily Telegraph tried to presage doom with 'Grim sign for economy as Australia enters per capita recession'.
The Australian also falsely depicted the results negatively with:
The ABC followed News Corp's lead, as it does frequently, with 'Australia's economic growth disappoints, as economy goes backwards per person over the past year'.
The Guardian's headline was equally misleading:
Yes, 0.21% is modest growth historically, but it is higher than the September quarter growth last year and vastly better than the contraction of -1.91% in September 2021. It does not in itself signal a slowing economy. The mainstream media are all trying to dud us again.
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Australia rejoining the global leaders
In fact, of the 36 OECD members to have posted quarterly GDP growth figures for September so far, Australia's 0.21% ranks 12th. That's much better than ranking 36th out of all 38 OECD economies, as was the case in September 2021 under the previous administration.
The average of all 36 economies is just 0.027%. More than half have gone backwards. Eight have now copped two consecutive negative quarters, earning the ignominy of being in a technical recession. These include the normally robust economies of Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden.
Of the 12 advanced economies with quarterly growth above 0.20%, only five achieved positive growth through all of the last six quarters, since the COVID recession. Australia was one. The others were Spain, Mexico, Israel and Belgium.
The annual GDP growth figures are even more impressive. Australia's 2.05% over the full year ranks sixth in the OECD, behind only Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Israel and the USA. 13 of the 36 are now in negative annual growth.
Sharing the national pie
Embedded in last week's numbers were some excellent outcomes for the majority of Australians, if not for the big corporations.
The share of the country's total income going to workers via wages and salaries rose to 52.50%, up from the rock bottom 49.05% in the 2022 June quarter, when Labor was elected. That was the lowest percentage since the ABS began this series in 1959.
Commensurately, the share going to company profits slipped to 29.53%, down from 33.36% when Dr Chalmers took charge of the books.
Anyone needing convincing that the Albanese Government is off to an energetic start in redressing the imbalance between profits and wages needs only examine the right-hand part of this chart. The June quarter of 2022 when Labor took office shows two cusps: the lowest-ever share of income going to workers and the highest-ever going to company profits.
The shifts in trajectories since then have been emphatic.
Taylor and Ley continue long Coalition tradition of fudging the figures
It is time to debunk 'the Coalition are better economic managers' theory - once again.
Positive shifts keep piling up
Productivity has been a worry for all Australian governments since 2014. The index in Wednesday's national accounts jumped from 94.40 to 95.20 points, the first rise in six quarters. It's a start.
This follows excellent news this column has reported in recent weeks on wages growth, declining inflation, the jobless rate, hours worked per person per month, the employment-to-population ratio, exports of goods and services, tourism and business travel, government spending, income tax revenue, the budget deficit, government net debt, and the AAA credit rating.
All these outcomes show Australia is rapidly climbing virtually all the global tables, not just on GDP growth.
Shut down the mainstream media
Treasurer Chalmers is also being proactive in getting the key agencies well-staffed and effectively led. He has already replaced the heads of the Australian Reserve Bank and the Productivity Commission, and has just announced the new Australian Tax Office chief.
There is no justification whatsoever for the constant doom and gloom headlines in the finance bulletins targeting the Treasurer. The Australian should be utterly ashamed of its gratuitous "story" last Friday headed 'Dud cabinet ministers are letting down the PM and the nation'. It tried to assert, 'Jim Chalmers the biggest weakness in Anthony Albanese's cabinet'. It was riddled with malicious lies which it expected its readers will swallow.
What such publications show to those aware of reality is that News Corp is a malignant cancer which must be cut away as soon as possible to safeguard the health of the nation.
The majority of Australians, if they stopped reading newspapers and watching television news, would be a lot better informed, far less fearful, much happier and much better off financially.
Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001.
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