another day, another rise to 4.85%

Some good news at least with house prices coming down.

more rises on the way ?

Alan Kohler shares his "most important" graphs spanning the last 31 years of his career to mark his last ever finance report.

In short:

A rate rise is estimated to cause an immediate 5 per cent reduction in home purchases.

Economic modelling suggests the home ownership rate would fall by 0.3 of a percentage point and take more than a decade to recover.

What's next?

Markets and economists are almost certain the RBA will announce a rate rise on Tuesday.

Parents and grandparents who bought their first home with ease are hoping the slide in affordability can be reversed for the sake of the younger generation

The period when... Australia's productivity was great and reform was happening was not when government and business were working together, but when government and labour [the workers] were working together.

That was the 80s and early 90s, when productivity grew more than 2 per cent a year versus the current decade average of 0.3 per cent, and minus 0.7 per cent in the 2024-25 financial year.

An obvious difference between now and the 80s and 90s reform era is that the ACTU is a shadow of what it was and is involved in the national discussion from the stands, not on the field of play.

The most powerful players in national policy [now] are lobbyists, as Four Corners showed... last week, and they work for those who pay the most: businesses and their organisations.

A big part of the union movement's decline in influence is simply the decline in union membership, from around 60 per cent to around 10 per cent, and it is focused on government and service industries.

This means labour is no longer institutionalised to the same extent, so political classes can no longer easily speak to the working classes. Employers, on the other hand, are well represented by lobbyists and groups like the BCA, who put on lunches and dinners, both large and intimate.

An important reason for the recent slump in productivity growth has been the decline in real wages, and the fact that per capita household income has been negative for years after inflation — it simply is not true that struggling financially spurs people to be more productive; the opposite happens.

What is more, the decline in productivity growth has coincided with a fall in the growth rate of business investment from 2.2 per cent in 2015 to zero in 2025, while the profit share of the economy has increased sharply and the labour share has fallen.

In other words, the evidence suggests that Australia's businesses have been milking the economy.

My current bank isn't super useful with internet banking, and with branches being as rare as hen's teeth, accessing service is too much of a hassle. So thinking to shift. Interested to know what you all think about these banks I'm thinking about shifting to.

1. Bank Australia

Pro: Love the ethical/environmental stance, like that they trade under their own licence

Con: Not really sure how good their internet banking is.

2. Ubank

Pro: certainly seems like the best for internet banking

Con: trade under NAB licence (is this really much of a problem though)

3. Beyond Bank

Pro: only bank run for members, because it's an old credit union, have personal recommendations

Con: Don't know if they have better internet banking than even my current provider.

4. Mystery Bank suggestions??

Pro: Perfect bank for me!

Con: Don't know about it yet.

Comments, not financial advice ;), are very welcome!

Every finance "success story" you see online survived. The 1000 people who did the exact same thing and lost everything? Silent. You're not learning from data, you're learning from luck wearing a suit.

Many Australian borrowers are spending more than half of their take-home pay on home loan repayments, new research shows, with borrowers devoting an average of 38 per cent of their after-tax income to their mortgage each month.

Raising compulsory super could do the same job as raising interest rates — but the money is yours. So why aren't we talking about it?

Every year for like the last 5 at least I end up owing. I have student debt, but it's all declared and taken out accordingly. I have a single employer and no other income aside from a pittance in interest on bank accounts. It's not massive amounts I owe, usually less than $1k, but it still chaps my grits.

In the past It's been softened by my wife getting a decent return, but this year she owes too.

While I loath admitting I like anything about the US, when I lived there you could set your level of withholding, they had 4 levels, and I'd always max it out and get a decent return, kinda like forced savings. I'd be fine with missing a bit extra off every paycheck just to not end up owing them another $800 on top of the tens of thousands I've already paid.

I'm just pissed and tired of getting worse off every year instead of better.

End rant, I guess.

paywalled version

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/everyone-thinks-the-rba-is-done-they-re-wrong-20260614-p606om

The cash rate needs to rise to at least 5 per cent to have any chance of sustainably returning inflation to target. If it’s not 5 per cent, then it’s something closer to 6 per cent.

The inability to contain inflation over the past two years should have taught the RBA that the real cash rate needs to be much closer to our potential growth rate, which we know is 2 per cent annual economic growth.

I disagree with the premise of the headline but I agree with the article

(to clarify that's with the orthodoxy of which we live , which i disagree with completely as in anyway sane )