The picture of life in Australia being painted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers is taking striking form with its fresh contours, colours and textures.
Last Wednesday’s data drop from the Bureau of Statistics for the December quarter provides the final palette for the full calendar year 2023, and six quarters of Labor’s creativity. (The reformist Labor Party replaced the conservative Coalition in May 2022, after nearly nine years of Tory rule and economic decline.)
The canvas currently depicted by Australia’s mainstream media is of “a cost of living crisis” and “people really struggling” and “troubling interest rate rises” and “disgruntled voters”. Those were the constant refrains during the night-long vote counting in the recent Dunkley by-election – when media pundits called on voters to “hold the Government to account” and “send a message to Albanese” and, if they had their way, to replace Labor with the nation’s rightful rulers.
There are two fatal problems with Australia’s economic media reportage, even when they get their facts straight. They seldom make valid historical comparisons, and they seem absolutely forbidden from observing the rest of the world. These failures ensure that the situation is seldom reported accurately.
The reality is that Labor governments always generate demonstrably better outcomes than the Coalition.
In this respect, Australia is similar to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and several other advanced economies.
(The final by-election vote count in Dunkley — once a very safe Coalition seat — saw voters support Labor emphatically.)
Economic growth in recessionary times
Australia’s economy grew by 0.24% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the December quarter, and by 1.55% over the full year. That is dismal by historic standards in Australia but strong relative to the rest of the world.
It ranks a creditable tenth among the 38 wealthy members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) today. That’s a huge lift from ranking 28th two years ago.
Only seven OECD members survived 2023 with four quarters of positive growth. They were Spain, the USA, Mexico, South Korea, Belgium, Slovakia and Australia.
Eight nations ended the year in recession – Japan, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Finland, Ireland, and Estonia.
Strong budget surplus
The highest spending by any Australian administration was in 2020 under PM Morrison when consumption expenditure reached a record 10.42% of GDP. The current Government has reduced this in both 2022 and 2023.
Controlled spending along with more revenue clawed back from tax cheats generated a strong budget surplus last year. At A$22.1 billion, which was 0.9% of GDP, this ranks fifth in the OECD. See green chart, below.
Rapid economic recovery
Australia’s inflation is now 3.40%, down from 6.12% when the current Government took office in May 2022 and down from 7.48% one year ago.
Unemployment was 4.06% in January, maintaining Labor’s record of 21 consecutive months with the jobless below 4.4%. This is the first time this has happened since the ABS began collecting this data in 1978.
Among the 38 OECD members, Australia is now back in the top ten on both jobless rates and youth unemployment.
Share of the pie going to workers and owners
Here we see an intriguing feature of Jim Chalmers’ economy. While emphatically redressing the historic imbalance in the share of national income by favouring workers, the Treasurer still supports the business sector.
Compensation paid to employees in 2023 was 9.02% higher than in 2022. That follows the 9.23% lift the previous year. Impressive.
And yet the stock market reached new all-time highs five times in the last two weeks, driven by record corporate profits.
The critical question
Finally, Australia enjoys the world’s highest issuer credit rating with all three major credit rating agencies, along with only eight other nations.
So here’s the question. How many economies in the entire world are in budget surplus, have the top credit ratings, have their jobless below 5%, inflation below 4% and achieved positive growth every quarter last year?
The answer is just the one – Australia. So it’s not such a bad tableau. But those who get their “news” from the mainstream media will never see it.
*
This is an edited version of an article published today in Independent Australia, available in full for free here:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/despite-media-frenzy-labor-continues-to-lead-economic-metrics-worldwide,18408
*