Australia’s April CPI (0.4%m/m) slowed from 4.6% to 4.2%yr, a downside surprise.
But the trimmed mean rate (0.3%m/m) lifted from 3.3% to 3.4%.
Welcome to Talking Business, a podcast produced in Melbourne Australia. 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 17 for 2026 and today’s date is Friday, May 29.
First, I’ll be talking to Chris Weston, Pepperstone Crypto’s head of research. As a new entrant in the Australian crypto market, Pepperstone says the market is due for a price reset, backing stronger regulation, calling for greater transparency, and pushing down costs for everyday traders.
And I’ll be talking to Independent economist Saul Eslake about the Budget.
But first, let’s talk to Chris Weston
So what’s happening in the news?
So, the big question over the weekend was: is the US close to a deal with Iran that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz? Well, yes and no. On Saturday, Trump was saying a deal had “largely been negotiated” and would be announced shortly. Then on Sunday morning, he hit the brakes — posting that negotiators should “not rush” and that both sides need to “take their time and get it right.” A senior US official confirmed nothing would be signed Sunday, but said there had been “progress.” Here’s what’s reportedly on the table: a 60-day extension of the existing ceasefire, during which the strait would gradually reopen, and talks on Iran’s nuclear program would begin. Iran would commit to disposing of its highly enriched uranium, and in return, the US would ease sanctions and release some of Tehran’s frozen assets — all in phases, tied to Iran’s performance. The US naval blockade on Iranian ports stays in place until a deal is signed.
Politically though, it’s getting messy. Several Senate Republicans — including Thom Tillis, Roger Wicker, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz — have publicly raised doubts, calling a 60-day ceasefire without a final deal risky at best, a disaster at worst. Trump fired back, calling critics “losers who know nothing.” Some Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Rand Paul, are urging patience. And Israeli PM Netanyahu says any final deal must completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
The new pope has waded into the AI debate in a big way. Pope Leo — the first American pope — has released a major church document calling on governments to slow down and tightly regulate artificial intelligence. He’s warned that AI is spreading misinformation, fuelling conflict, and that some autonomous weapons systems have already moved beyond our ability to control them. The document runs to nearly 43,000 words — about the length of a short novel — and was launched at a Vatican event that included Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI tools. Olah actually thanked the pope for speaking up, openly acknowledging that companies like his face enormous commercial pressures that can conflict with doing the right thing. Leo’s core message: AI data shouldn’t be left solely in private hands, workers need protection, children need safeguarding, and the race between AI companies needs to cool down. He summed it up in one line — “What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating.” He also made headlines by declaring the centuries-old “just war” doctrine — the idea that wars can be morally justified under certain conditions — is now outdated. That’s a significant statement given where the world is right now.
Now to our first Australian story — and some welcome relief on the inflation front, though the picture’s a bit mixed. April’s consumer price data came in better than expected. Prices rose just 0.4% for the month, and the annual rate eased from 4.6% down to 4.2% — economists had been pencilling in 4.4%, so that’s a decent beat. The main reason? The government’s decision to halve the fuel excise kicked in, and petrol prices fell 7% in April after surging nearly 33% the month before. But here’s the catch — strip out those volatile items and look at what’s called “trimmed mean” or core inflation, and the picture’s less rosy. That measure ticked up to an annual rate of 3.4% — its highest since late 2024 — and that’s still above the Reserve Bank’s 2-to-3% target band. Higher oil prices are feeding through into freight and logistics costs, and you can see it in things like postal services, up over 12%, and new home construction costs, up nearly 5% on the year. Markets took the headline number as good news — the Aussie dollar dipped slightly, bond futures rallied, and the odds of a fourth rate hike in August fell from about 51% to 40%. Oxford Economics is forecasting headline inflation peaks around 4.9% in the current quarter before gradually coming back under 3% — but not until mid-2027. And with unemployment jumping to a four-and-a-half year high of 4.5% in April, analysts think the rate hike cycle may now be on hold. The RBA has already raised rates three times this year to 4.35%, fully unwinding the cuts it made in 2025. But with the Iran conflict still rattling energy markets — which of course we covered earlier with the Strait of Hormuz story — the Bank has signalled it wants to watch and wait before moving again.
The Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers is flagging a bigger tax cut heading into the next election, after the budget’s centrepiece — changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and trusts — ran into a wall of criticism. The issue? There aren’t enough winners to offset the losers. Former Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson put it plainly: big reform only works when everyone feels like they’re winning something. Right now, the people who stand to lose under the new CGT rules are loud and organised, while the benefits are spread thin. The government is trying to thread the needle — bundling the controversial measures with popular ones like a $250-a-year tax offset and a $1,000 standard deduction, all in one bill landing Thursday. If the Coalition votes against it, they’ll be seen as voting against tax cuts. Classic wedge politics. Small business is pushing hard for exemptions — particularly the tech and start-up sectors, who say the changes could nearly double their tax bill when they sell. The $2 million turnover threshold for automatic CGT exemption hasn’t been updated since 2007, while the Tax Office’s own small business definition sits at $10 million. That gap is where a lot of the pain is landing. The fate of the whole package rests with the Greens, who’ve given it a cautious tick in principle — but want to see the detail before committing.
The Albanese government is pressing ahead with its capital gains tax and negative gearing reforms, but the cracks are starting to show — even within Labor itself. The government is expected to introduce legislation this week, with a specific concession for tech start-ups to come later via Senate amendments. But here’s the tension: some Labor MPs, including senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah, are arguing the carve-out should apply to all start-ups, not just tech. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and Treasurer Chalmers are reportedly favouring a “narrow” fix focused on tech — partly because they don’t want to undermine the whole reform with too many exemptions. From the business world, Wesfarmers chairman Michael Chaney has labelled it yet another example of “piecemeal tax reform,” arguing Australia really needs wholesale changes — lower income and company taxes, GST reform, stamp duty abolition — rather than tinkering at the edges. Gina Rinehart has warned the changes will push mining and business investment offshore. And the Australian Chamber of Commerce is calling on the government to hit pause and consult properly. The government wants this locked in before the winter recess on July 3 — and is resisting calls for a Senate inquiry. Whether they can get there without broader concessions is the question.
Investment in Australia’s renewable energy sector has fallen off a cliff. New financial commitments for clean energy projects hit a ten-year low last year — $4.4 billion, down 50% from the year before. Onshore wind was hardest hit, dropping 57%. The Clean Energy Council says the country is at a critical juncture. The good news is renewables are already supplying about half of our electricity, and Australia’s big battery rollout has been a genuine success story. But the gap between what’s being built and what’s needed is widening fast — particularly as ageing coal plants are scheduled to close within the decade. The culprits are familiar: years of planning delays, rising construction costs, community opposition in regional areas, and hundreds of kilometres of transmission lines that are years behind schedule. The Council warns that a one-year delay on a major transmission project alone could push household electricity prices up by 20%. The government says its Capacity Investment Scheme is working and points to nine new projects that will power four million homes by 2030. But independent analysts including Rystad and the Grattan Institute say the 82% renewables target by 2030 is almost certainly out of reach — with forecasts landing closer to 60%.
So here’s an interesting split developing in the housing market. The federal budget’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax — yes, they’ll dampen construction in the short term, but the Housing Industry Association is actually upgrading its forecast for New South Wales. Why? Because the state government is now guaranteeing presales on up to 50% of approved apartment projects, which makes it much easier for developers to get things off the ground. NSW goes up to 290,000 homes by 2030. Victoria, on the other hand, gets a slight downgrade. Now, the HIA isn’t thrilled about the tax changes — they’re calling it a step in the wrong direction — but their chief economist Tim Reardon is pretty clear that interest rates, construction costs, and state planning rules are doing far more damage than negative gearing ever could. And speaking of damage — there was actually some good news earlier this year. The backlog of approved-but-not-yet-started homes fell 7% in the December quarter, with Sydney and Melbourne leading the way. Rate cuts and easing construction costs were finally unclogging the pipeline. But KPMG’s urban economist Terry Rawnsley says Trump’s tariff war and the Iran conflict have pushed inflation and rates back up — and that little glimmer of hope has basically gone. On the ground, developers are frustrated. In Melbourne, a company called Hip v Hype is actually celebrating the start of a new 60-apartment building in Brunswick this week — because finishing line moments like that are genuinely rare right now. And in Sydney, developers say mid-market and affordable projects are getting harder, not easier, to make stack up financially. The bottom line? Even if things improve after 2030, the HIA says we’re going to be undershooting what we need every single year until then — which means the housing affordability problem just keeps getting worse.
Australia’s anti-corruption watchdog is in a bit of chaos right now. The founding commissioner of the National Anti-Corruption Commission — Paul Brereton — has resigned, saying that all the scrutiny on him personally was getting in the way of the commission actually doing its job. Brereton’s had a rough run. The commission copped serious criticism for deciding not to investigate the robo-debt scandal, despite getting over a thousand complaints about it. Then there was a finding that Brereton himself showed “apprehended bias” in some decisions — though the inspector made clear there was no intentional wrongdoing. He leaves on July 6, exactly three years after taking office. And he’s not alone — the deputy commissioner also just announced she’s heading overseas. The timing isn’t great. A statutory review of the whole commission is coming up in 2027, and public confidence is already shaky. The Attorney-General has thanked Brereton for his service and says a merit-based search for a replacement is underway. But critics — including the Centre for Public Integrity and the Greens — are pushing for a fully independent, transparent appointment process. The line that caught my attention: “We can’t trust the government to choose their own watchdogs.” The commission still has 34 active investigations on the go, covering current and former politicians, senior public servants, and contractors — so the work continues, just under a cloud.
And finally, a coalition of more than 100 investors, businesses, unions and advocacy groups has written to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland demanding Australia’s modern slavery laws be strengthened — and meaningfully so. The current laws, introduced in 2018, essentially require large companies to report on modern slavery risks in their supply chains. What they don’t do is require companies to actually fix those risks. The coalition wants mandatory due diligence — meaning companies would be legally obliged to identify and address forced labour in their supply chains, not just write it up in an annual statement. The scale of the problem is significant: modelling suggests more than 21% of goods imported into Australia last financial year came from supply chains linked to modern slavery. Globally, there are an estimated 50 million people living in conditions of forced labour. An independent review back in 2022 made 30 recommendations — the Albanese government accepted 25 of them in principle late last year, but hasn’t enacted a single one yet. The US has been critical of Australia’s failure to ban imports made with forced labour, and the EU is already moving to mandatory human rights due diligence for large businesses. The government says it’s still considering stakeholder feedback. The coalition says it’s time to stop considering and start acting.
And that’s it for this week.
And next week, I’ll be talking to Sarah Richardson, CEO of psychiatry service provider ClearMinds, about the importance of employers treating neurodiversity inclusion as both a wellbeing priority and a strategic workforce investment, as well as sharing practical advice for how neurodivergent professionals can leverage their strengths in interviews, onboarding and career progression.
And I’ll be talking to Indeed economist Callam Pickering about Australia’s latest jobs figures.
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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