Australian workers have experienced a 5% drop in real wages since 2021, while other OECD nations have seen an increase in real wages.
Welcome to Talking Business, a podcast produced in Melbourne Australia, built on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation. The podcast is available on the Acast site, my own website, the Apple podcast store or wherever you go to get your podcasts. Or you can get it at the Business Acumen website at businessacumen.biz/
I am Leon Gettler. My job is review and monitor the week’s news in business finance and economics. I bring it all to you every week.
For the most exclusive access to leading economists and business leaders from around the world, subscribe to Talking Business from my website leongettler.com or whatever your favourite podcast platform is.
This is episode number 23 in our series for 2026 and today’s date is Friday July 10
First, I’ll be talking to Investment Markets CEO Darren Connolly about the investment consequences of the Budget.
And I’ll be talking to RMIT economist Jonathan Boymal about why Australian property prices have dipped.
But first let’s talk to Darren Connolly
So what’s happening in the news?
So here’s a wild one — nearly a million people who bought into Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin have lost money, to the tune of $3.8 billion combined, according to crypto analytics firm Nansen. Meanwhile, Trump himself pocketed $636 million from the same coin, part of a $2.2 billion haul across his business ventures last year. The mechanics are almost elegant in a cynical way — he profited whether the coin went up or down, since he made money on trading volume itself. The coin’s now down 97% from its peak. One trader who backed Trump in 2024 told reporters he’d lost about $250,000 and called the whole thing “almost a legal scam.” The White House is pushing back hard, saying Trump’s just made America the crypto capital of the world. Legal experts think a class-action suit might eventually be coming, even if it has to wait until he’s out of office.
Sticking with money troubles — but a different flavour. If you’re an Australian listening in, you might already feel this one in your back pocket. A fresh OECD report out this week says Australians have taken one of the worst hits to their living standards of any country in the developed world since the pandemic. We’re talking a 5% drop in real wages since early 2021 — while the average OECD country actually saw wages rise 5% over the same stretch. So Australia’s basically ten points behind the pack. And it’s not just wages — the minimum wage has actually lost purchasing power too, putting Australia in a small club of countries where that’s happened. The only other rich nations seeing similar wage declines are New Zealand, Czechia, Italy, and Sweden — but here’s the kicker: three are already bouncing back. Australia and New Zealand are still stuck near the bottom. And the OECD thinks it’s going to get worse before it gets better — forecasting another one percent real wage drop by September, partly thanks to inflation spillover from the Middle East conflict. Deloitte backs that up, expecting wage growth of about 3.3% this year — but inflation running hotter, around 4%. Treasurer Jim Chalmers isn’t exactly denying the numbers, but he’s leaning hard on the positives — pointing to Australia’s low unemployment, smaller deficits, and business investment. Speaking of which — unemployment is actually a bright spot here. It’s sitting at 4.4%, below the OECD average, and workforce participation is among the strongest in the developed world. So this isn’t a jobs crisis — it’s a purchasing-power crisis. Deloitte’s take on the root cause? Weak productivity. Population growth has been propping up overall economic growth, they argue, while doing very little to actually raise living standards for individuals. There’s also a rate story here. With underlying inflation expected to climb toward 3.9%, Deloitte thinks the Reserve Bank will hike rates again in August — a fourth rise this year, taking the cash rate to 4.6%. Markets, though, aren’t so sure — pricing in just a small chance of that happening. Some economists, like HSBC’s Paul Bloxham, think a cooling housing market might do the RBA’s job for it by dragging down consumer spending anyway. Bottom line: Australia’s economy isn’t broken, but for the average household, wages just aren’t keeping up — and that gap looks set to widen a little further before it starts closing
The OECD just called out Australia for leaning way too hard on income and corporate taxes to fund the budget — we’re pulling 62% of tax revenue from wages and profits, versus a 36% average across advanced economies. Treasurer Jim Chalmers threw workers a $250-a-year tax offset, but economists say it barely moves the needle — personal income tax as a share of GDP is actually projected to keep climbing through the end of the decade, hitting levels not seen since before the Hawke government’s tax overhaul in the ’80s. Part of the story is Australia’s heavy use of property taxes too, especially stamp duty, which economists have wanted replaced with a broader land tax for years.
Australia’s now sitting near the top of the inflation league table among developed economies — second only to Iceland on core inflation, which hit 3.6% in May. A bunch of economists are saying the Reserve Bank straight-up made a mistake cutting rates last year, jumping the gun on the assumption inflation was heading back to target. The critique boils down to this: the RBA tried to protect the jobs market by not raising rates as aggressively as other central banks, and that trade-off is now backfiring — wage and price expectations have gotten baked in, which former RBA research head John Simon says will actually mean higher unemployment down the track than if they’d acted sooner. Add in near-record government spending — federal outlays projected at almost 27% of GDP — and you’ve got a domestic inflation problem that’s arguably home-grown rather than just global spillover. Treasurer Chalmers, for his part, points to Australia’s stronger growth and jobs numbers compared to other G7 countries.
Australia’s new capital gains tax rules for foreign investors are going to raise a lot more money than the government first thought — about $2.3 billion over five years, more than double the original $1 billion estimate. The changes bump capital gains tax on offshore investors in energy, mining and infrastructure up to 30%. That’s a problem for Energy Minister Chris Bowen, since over 70% of renewables investment comes from overseas, and he’s already struggling to hit the 2030 renewables targets. Research commissioned by the Clean Energy Investor Group found this would make Australia a higher-tax jurisdiction for renewables than Canada, the US, UK, Germany, or the Netherlands. Economist Richard Holden called it a bad trade — risking billions in renewables investment just to collect “a couple of billion dollars” extra in tax. There is a partial concession: a lower 15% transitional rate for renewable assets until 2030 (costing the budget $425 million over five years), and the government dropped a plan to let the ATO reopen transactions from up to 20 years back. But there’s no grandfathering for existing investments, which clean energy groups wanted. CPA Australia’s tax lead pushed back on the government calling this a “clarification” — she noted the Federal Court had already ruled on how the existing law works, and this change effectively overturns that outcome rather than just clarifying it. Politically, the Greens and Coalition are considering a Senate inquiry, but a committee just deferred that decision for five weeks. Treasurer Jim Chalmers hasn’t budged despite lobbying from business groups and foreign governments, and Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson slammed the changes as another handbrake on economic growth.
Albanese’s facing a revolt from his own party base on gambling reform. Labor’s draft policy for its National Conference this month wants to go further than the government’s current bill — specifically cracking down on gambling “inducements” like bonus bets and cash rebates. NSW Labor already voted to push the federal government to ban these outright. The government’s actual legislation is more modest: capping gambling ads at three per hour on TV, banning them during live sport, and banning celebrities from gambling promotions. But that bill just got sent off for an eight-week inquiry after Liberals, Greens, and crossbenchers teamed up, all arguing it doesn’t go far enough.
Cocaine production is exploding, and Australia’s border seizures are proving it. The AFP just recorded the country’s biggest cocaine bust ever — 2.7 tonnes hidden in bunkers under shipping containers at a property west of Sydney, worth over $800 million on the street. What’s driving this? According to the AFP, South American cartels have essentially industrialized their coca farming. They’ve genetically modified coca plants to squeeze out more harvests per year from the same land, and they’ve gotten far better at extracting cocaine from each plant during processing. AFP Superintendent Rebecca Langmead put it simply: cartels are “innovating within their production.” The numbers back this up. A UN report released last week found global cocaine production has quadrupled in just a decade — from 869 tonnes in 2014 to an estimated 4,100 tonnes in 2024. And here’s the kicker: they’re producing nearly five times as much cocaine now from less land than they used a decade ago. That’s productivity gains, cartel-style. One academic — Cesar Alvarez from Charles Sturt University — points out this isn’t entirely new. When governments sprayed illegal crops with glyphosate weed killer, criminal groups just supplied farmers with glyphosate-resistant plants. He also argues the bigger factor might be political: Colombia’s outgoing government scaled back coca eradication efforts in favor of peace talks with armed groups, effectively giving growers room to expand. Crop eradication in the region has dropped sharply — from 136,000 hectares cleared in 2020 to under 46,000 in 2024. And why do farmers keep growing coca? Simple economics — it pays up to seven times more than legal crops like cacao or potatoes. Meanwhile, demand isn’t slowing down. Australian wastewater testing shows cocaine consumption has nearly tripled since 2016, hitting close to 8,000kg last financial year — worth an estimated $2.8 billion. It’s now Australia’s second most-used illicit drug after methamphetamine. So you’ve got a perfect storm: cartels getting more efficient, weakening enforcement in producer countries, and a wealthy market like Australia that keeps buying. Recent busts — including 110kg found in a frozen berry shipment at Port Botany and 14kg hidden in fruit pulp at Melbourne Airport — show just how creative smugglers are getting to keep up with demand
The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) has formally upgraded its probe into KPMG to a full investigation. Peter de Cure, the TPB’s chair, is facing scrutiny over how he’s handled it — partly because he spent almost 25 years as a KPMG partner before leaving in 2013.
A few things are raising eyebrows:
- He pushed a downplaying narrative. Sources say de Cure has been suggesting — as recently as two weeks ago — that the whistleblower might just be a disgruntled former employee. That’s the same line KPMG’s own executives were reportedly pushing to clients early on, before the firm apologized and many of the allegations were confirmed to be true.
- He didn’t disclose a relevant conversation. De Cure failed to tell the TPB board that a KPMG audit partner had called him to reassure him the scandal wouldn’t affect an audit he oversees elsewhere (he chairs the audit committee for Royal Flying Doctor Service SA/NT, which KPMG audits). He says he normally discloses these kinds of contacts as a matter of course, which makes the omission stand out.
- He’s recused himself from some, not all, of the process. De Cure says he’s stepped back from the committee that will eventually decide if KPMG broke any rules, but he’s still been part of internal TPB discussions about the case.
- He downplayed the probe publicly, then reality shifted. At a June parliamentary hearing, he told a senator the matter didn’t yet look like a formal investigation — but the TPB has since used its powers to demand information from KPMG.
Greens senator Barbara Pocock is now calling for de Cure to fully recuse himself, warning that anything short of a clean, conflict-free investigation risks repeating a prior incident where the TPB’s former CEO — who’d helped expose the PwC leaks scandal — was sidelined and moved to a lesser role after officials tried multiple times to remove him. KPMG, for its part, says it’s “cooperating” with the TPB, and the firm’s head of tax and legal — who’s also a candidate for the permanent CEO job — has been the main liaison handling document requests from the regulator.
KPMG’s massive job of teaching partners not to misuse confidential info has finally got a price tag — and it’s a cheap one. Which makes it hard to take interim CEO Stan Stavros seriously when he says the firm’s on top of this stuff. KPMG is hiring a “senior consultant, engagement independence, ethics and independence” for its audit team — basically someone to stop partners from doing exactly what they got caught doing at Lendlease and elsewhere: misusing confidential info and conflicted relationships to win business. The pay? $80,000-$100,000. Not exactly a salary that screams “we take integrity seriously” when you’re asking someone to police multimillion-dollar partners. The job spec asks the new hire to build and manage the firm’s “ethics and independence systems” from scratch — which tells you KPMG probably doesn’t have proper ones yet. They’ll also need to train staff, handle angry stakeholders, and come up with “well-reasoned, defensible positions on complex matters” — as if the firm’s already bracing for more scandals. The ad was reposted on LinkedIn in late June, meaning nobody jumped at it the first time round — a sign of just how under-resourced this area has been. KPMG’s also hiring for a similar role focused on US and Australian independence rules, plus a swathe of audit and risk staff (who might want to look inward first). The bigger question is whether KPMG will have any clients left by the time these people actually start. And the ad’s closing line — “how are you extraordinary?” — kind of answers itself: agreeing to teach partners the difference between client secrets and marketing material, for that kind of money, is pretty extraordinary.
EV sales in Australia hit a record in June, with battery electric vehicles making up nearly a quarter of new car sales — up sharply from under 8% the year before. That surge was mostly driven by fuel price pain rather than people suddenly trusting EVs more, but experts think battery durability data could be what turns this into a lasting shift rather than a blip. The old fear — that your battery will die early and cost a fortune to replace — looks increasingly outdated. Real-world data is showing much slower degradation than expected: one study tracking 10,000 vehicles found newer EVs are losing under 2% of capacity per year, an improvement on a few years ago. Another study of heavily-used EVs found most still held onto more than 80% of their capacity even after 200,000 km. Researchers also note that normal stop-start city driving is actually gentler on batteries than the constant-discharge tests used in labs. Where EVs still fall short is driving range — no EV tested by the Australian Automobile Association hits the range advertised on its sticker, with shortfalls in the 5–11% range against modern testing standards (worse against the older, less realistic standard some brands still quote). But experts attribute this to real-world conditions like speed, weather, and terrain, not battery decay. On cost: most EVs come with 8-year/160,000km battery warranties, and a full battery replacement can still be expensive. But full replacements are becoming less common since modern batteries are modular, so mechanics can often just swap out a single faulty module instead of the whole pack. Even worn-out batteries don’t go to waste — they get repurposed as home/grid energy storage or recycled for materials like lithium and cobalt. The main advice for owners: avoid excessive fast-charging (especially in heat), and try to keep the battery charged between 20–80%. For anyone buying a used EV, checking battery health and warranty status is now as important as checking an engine used to be.
And that’s it for this week.
And next week, I’ll be talking to Jane Hardy is a former Australian diplomat and foreign policy expert with more than three decades of experience in international affairs, diplomacy and strategic policy. Across an accomplished career, she has held senior ambassadorial and diplomatic postings spanning Europe, the United States, Asia and West Africa, advising on some of the most complex geopolitical and security issues shaping the global landscape.
And I’ll be talking to RMIT professor Sinclair Davidson about the rise of One Nation and whether that reflects people’s dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.
For the most exclusive access to leading economists and business leaders from around the world, subscribe to Talking Business from my website leongettler.com or whatever your favourite podcast platform is.
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