Australia’s incompetent newsrooms fail to report best financial year ever

Last week’s gross domestic product (GDP) numbers confirm Australia’s economy is a world leader again, as Alan Austin reports.

ONLY ONCE since records have been kept has Australia achieved these four coveted outcomes together through a full financial year:

Jobless rate below 4.6%
Inflation below 4.6%
Interest rates below 4.6%
Annual GDP growth above 2%.

Throughout the entire fiscal year from July 2025 to June 2026, the results on these critical indicators were:

Jobless rate ranged between 4.08% and 4.49%, closing the year at 4.43%
Inflation fluctuated between 2.96% and 4.57%, finishing at 3.75%
Interest rates varied between 3.6% and 4.35%, closing at 4.35%
Full-year GDP growth was 2.35%

Never before, since data was collected soon after the Second World War, has Australia managed such outcomes. The economy came close in 2007-08, except for interest rates above 6.25%. It impressed again in 2024-25, but full-year GDP growth was just 1.31%. (All GDP figures are adjusted for inflation.)

Economists and newsrooms collaborate to lie about Australia’s economy

Australia’s media has hit a new low in deceptive reporting, but with one positive note.

Excellent June quarter results

Australia’s quarterly accounts, released last Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), confirm Australia is nowhere near the recession the mendacious newsrooms and sundry internet nutters have predicted.

Quarterly growth in GDP for the June quarter was 0.42%. That’s higher than the modest 0.29% in March and close to the average of the eight quarters before that.

Of the 33 wealthy OECD members to have filed June numbers, three reported zero growth — Belgium, France and Chile. Iceland and Austria went backwards, by 3% and 0.1% respectively.

Australia’s annual growth – the increase in June quarter GDP over June 2025 – was 2.14%.

The OECD average is a dismal 1.86%, due to the destructive invasions and trade wars instigated by the corrupt and inept Trump regime in the USA. So global conditions are grim.

GDP for the four quarters of the last financial year totalled $2,778.8 billion, which was 2.35% more than in 2024-25.

The accounts completely dispel cost-of-living concerns. Household consumption rose 0.41% in the June quarter with sustained spending in most categories.

Household spending over the year increased 2.32% after inflation, the best in three years. That’s higher than the ten-year average of 2.02% and well above population rises. This confirms living standards are rising steadily.

Total national factor income reached a record $674.6 billion, up 5.7% on one year ago. The share going to employees is now 54.28%, the highest since 2016. The company profits slice increased slightly to 27.13%, suggesting the Albanese Government’s determined and successful shift of income from bosses to workers may have reached equilibrium. See chart below.

A figure caption for your reading pleasure

Multiple successes

Those four outcomes above are the most frequently tracked and debated. They are not the only important variables.

Other achievements last financial year include:

Company gross profits grew 3.97% to $572.9 billion, despite slumped iron ore prices. Profits ex-mining reached a fresh record of $327.2 billion.
Average wages increased 3.67% over the full year. That was a poofteenth off breaking even with inflation. Over the last three years, however, wages have easily outpaced inflation — 13.36% to 9.74%.
Median wealth per adult, according to this year’s UBS Global Wealth Report, was the world’s third highest at US$210,783 (AU$292,600).
Australia’s Gini coefficient, which measures equality of wealth distribution, was 0.53, ranking fourth most equal on UBS’s list of 32 rich countries,
Australia also enjoyed steady progress in exports, engineering construction, capital expenditure, new houses and families in social housing, and a reduction in net debt to GDP and poverty.

Stony media silence

Australia is now the world’s only economy with GDP growth above 2%, AAA credit ratings and interest rates in the optimum band of 2% to 5%.

It is one of only two triple-A rated economies with the jobless rate and inflation both below 4.6%, and government debt less than 20% of GDP. Switzerland is the other.

So why no celebration of this best year ever? Do the mainstream reporters and their tame economists know these outcomes are historic but lie about them, or do they simply not know?

Blatantly false “stories” since last Wednesday include:

‘Australia risks recession as Reserve Bank battles to control high inflation’ (Murdoch tabloids, 2 September);
‘Cautious Aussies spend less as interest rates and petrol prices bite hard’ (Murdoch tabloids, 2 September);
‘Australia’s economy grows by 2.1%, but people’s living standards aren’t keeping pace’ (The Conversation, 2 September);
‘The great Australian quagmire will get only deeper from here’ (Australian Financial Review, 3 September); and
‘Australia’s economy limps along, but the RBA should take a closer look before raising interest rates again’ (The Guardian, 3 September).

Australia’s newsrooms continue to suppress vital information

Australia is enjoying a rare era of sustained economic calm and stability, which the mainstream media actively denies.

Nonsensical claims about productivity

As argued here at last year’s Economic Roundtable and elsewhere by multiple academics, the old productivity formula is useless.

The newsrooms know this now, but keep flogging the dead horse with headlines like:

‘Calling for a defibrillator: Australia’s economy is flatlining as productivity stalls’ (News24, 2 September);
‘Productivity pick-up a slow burn as data dips again’ (AAP/Businessnews.com, 3 September); and
‘Jim Chalmers is positive on growth but Australia's productivity problem persists’ (ABC News, 4 September).

Australia’s actual productivity is surging, as proven by rising company profits, strong growth in real wages and the household discretionary spending boom.

Similar false claims are made about GDP per capita reflecting living standards, which academics abroad now openly ridicule as “stupidity”.

Newsrooms now the enemy

It is increasingly clear that Australia’s newsrooms are the main cause of collapsing social cohesion, life satisfaction and happiness. Finance “reporters” are paid by their billionaire owners to concoct falsehoods to undermine the Government in the hope of installing either the Coalition or One Nation.

The sooner Australians shut them out or close them down, the sooner the nation will recover its self-respect, confidence and celebration of excellence.

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