Now to tackle jobs, housing, wages, inflation and growth.
Saturday's shock election result was mana from heaven for the property sector, with Scott Morrison's Coalition returned to a third term of government and Labor's proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains taxes consigned to the scrapheap. The win by the so-called Messiah from the Shire, spectacularly missed by every opinion poll leading in to this election, has also raised the question of whether we can ever again trust another Ipsos or Newspoll.
Expect to see pages and programs dedicated to who will take up leadership of federal Labor from here, after Bill's decision to step away. Of the three aspirants as of this morning, only Anthony Albanese has gone on record to say the Party's tax policies were clearly out of line; Tanya Plibersek and Chris Bowen have instead blamed the electorate's lack of understanding.
Today's Chanticleer column in the AFR breaks down the lessons for the business sector from Labor's loss. One such lesson was the Party's approach to tax reform, and the direct and indirect alienation of the electorate over complicated and poorly-explained franking credit, capital gains and negative gearing tax changes.
So NGT and CGT changes are off the table, after months of speculation and angst that has contributed to a lack of recovery in the property sector. Instead, Morrison's government is expected to move quickly on its tax relief agenda, including the introduction of the First Home Buyers Loan Scheme.
Goldman Sachs is on-record today with the expectation that this result will herald an improvement in the housing sector. Stockland's Mark Steinert agrees, adding that the win will also improve business sentiment and in particular, confidence among small businesses.
While we only saw 917 properties taken to auction over the weekend at a clearance rate of 57 per cent, CoreLogic says this is typical of a federal election weekend and the coming weeks will be telling.
Striking while the iron is hot, Frasers Property's Rod Fehring is in the Fin today asking the new government to step up any plans to enable build-to-rent in Australia.
It will be interesting to see if clarity over Australia's tax agenda will have any impact on Saturday's prediction of an 80 per cent chance of a Reserve Bank rate cut in June. This from NAB group chief economist Alan Oster: "Given low inflation, continued weakness in the NAB business survey ... and now higher unemployment, we think the board will now act in June and that this is likely to be signalled in the May board minutes and governor Lowe’s speech on Tuesday."
As Ticky Fullerton lays out in today's The Australian, the economic challenges that beset Australia before the election are still here the morning after. Her take is that the government will need to be better at staying on-track if it is to address these challenges.
Jobs, housing, wages, inflation and growth are all major pain points for the government as it enters its third term. This piece from the ABC lays out the problems the Morrison government will be expected to address.
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