ABC News continues to falsify Australia’s strong economic recovery

Following the lead of Sky News and the Murdoch newspapers, Australia's national broadcaster is misreporting Labor’s economy. Alan Austin reports.

AUSTRALIA'S RETAIL sector employed 1.30 million workers at the beginning of 2024, a number expected to decline as supermarkets shift to self-checkout and online shopping advances.

Yet according to last Thursday's detailed jobs update from the Bureau of Statistics (ABS), shopkeepers had to employ an extra 52,700 workers last year to deal with surging demand.

That brought the retail workforce to a fresh record 1.35 million, up 4.1% for the year, well above the overall jobs growth of just 2.4%.

The same ABS file shows jobs in accommodation and food services surged by a thumping 84,000 last year, or 9.4%.

This brings to more than 20 the number of datasets from the ABS and elsewhere showing Australia has moved out of the Coalition’s cost of living crisis through 2021-23 into an impressive household spending recovery.

Feeble defence from ABC confirms abject failure to report Labor accurately

A recent interview on ABC was the subject of a formal complaint. The official response from the national broadcaster is even more problematic.

Serious media failures

ABC News consistently misreports this, just as it refused to report accurately the Coalition's severe economic failures.

Another shameful example arose during analysis of the (RBA) Reserve Bank’s interest rate cut on Tuesday, 18 February. A chap called Ian Verrender, described as the ABC’s chief business correspondent, made multiple assertions at odds with the evidence.

Claimed Verrender:

“Because we’ve got a strong jobs market, that is not a bad thing. That’s actually quite a good thing. Every other indicator of the economy is weak.”

He also stated:

“There are a lot of indicators out there that the economy is in rather poor shape.”

In fact, virtually all significant economic indicators except gross domestic product (GDP) growth show Australia’s economy is among the world’s best-performed.

These include the 15 graphs listed here last week and these additional 17 datasets, which show:

record employment growth;
record employment to population ratio at 64.6%;
record job participation at 67.3%;
inflation in the lower half of the RBA’s optimum band;
wages growth above inflation for five straight quarters;
median wealth per adult as the second highest in the world;
ASX200 above 8,000 since last September;
poverty and homelessness reducing, according to the Productivity Commission;
emergency calls to the National Debt Helpline declining,
record high new car sales in 2024;
record sales of new private aircraft;
overseas trips in 2024 at a new record high of 11.6 million;
enrolments in fee-paying private schools at an all-time high;
record manufacturing gross profits last financial year (2023-24) at $47.4 billion;
record construction profits last year, at $31.1 billion;
record profits in several other sectors;
household spending at a record high. (See chart below.)

This is the opposite of “rather poor shape”. It is the antithesis of a “weak economy”.

Verrender then claimed:

“You look at GDP growth. In the September quarter it was 0.8% .. But 0.8% growth in the economy is appalling, really.

No, it isn’t. The entire world is in the low GDP growth phase of the long-term cycle, with several countries either still in or just out of recession or a per capita recession. Australia is one of only three OECD economies to have recorded positive quarterly growth every quarter for the last three years. Spain and Costa Rica are the others.

Developed countries to have copped six or more negative or zero quarters over the last three years include Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Hungary, Latvia, Austria, Estonia and New Zealand.

Yes, 0.84% growth is historically low. But this does not signal anything “appalling” given conditions worldwide and all the other strong outcomes.

Verrender's third false claim:

“We’ve got retail sales really just barely flatlining.”

Australia has enjoyed a retail upswing since households were gifted billions in stimulus money during COVID. Retail volumes soared as free cash was splurged. Values increased even more in 2021 as inflation raised prices, prompting the ABS to note that "disruption and volatility caused by COVID-19" impacted its data.

When the aberrant period of artificially inflated retail turnover ended in late 2023, neither values nor volumes returned to pre-COVID levels. Both stayed higher. (See chart below.)

The category breakdown is instructive. Spending on luxuries, including cosmetics and dining out, reached an all-time high percentage of retail turnover in the December quarter at 21.3%.

In contrast, the proportion spent on essential food has fallen. This has averaged 39.5% of retail sales for the last three years, down from the pre-COVID average of 40.6%.

Retail is not “flatlining”. It is surging.

Responses from the ABC

Independent Australia emailed Ian Verrender twice with no response. We also lodged a formal complaint to the ABC Ombudsman, who, it seems, only checked these facts with Verrender himself.

ABC News shamelessly spreads Liberal Party’s blatant lies

The national broadcaster still refuses to fulfil its duty to broadcast the truth.

The Ombudsman’s response addressed most points raised but simply repeated the false claims — which are well-rehearsed mantras of Sky News and the Liberal Party.

The Ombudsman asserted:

'We had the highest disposable income per capita up until the pandemic. Now we have the lowest.'

That is plainly false. The detailed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data explorer confirms Australia ranks seventh among 35 countries with US$37,433 (AU$60,294).

The Ombudsman also claimed:

'Australia’s [sic] has experienced the worst drop in living standards in more than 50 years.'

That is laughably absurd. No dataset shows that — they all show impressive upswings.

Of course, pockets of hardship and deprivation remain. It will take many more years yet to undo all the damage of nine years of Coalition corruption and incompetence.

But the recovery is underway, despite media denials. Just ask the 2.33 million retail and hospitality workers striving to meet consumer demand.

Alan Austin is an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @alanaustin001.