Unconventional Economist

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also Chief Economist and co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.

Australia’s economy narrowly avoids recession

Various bank economists predicted that the economy would slide back into a per capita recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in real GDP per capita, ahead of Wednesday’s Q2 2026 national accounts release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Australia’s productivity performance: “bad to worse”

Australia’s productivity growth over the past decade has been among the poorest in the OECD, hampering economic and per capita growth and contributing to the nation’s inflationary pressures. Australia’s original “productivity tsar”, Professor Gary Banks, was the long-serving founding chair of the Productivity Commission (1998-2013).

Why One Nation leads on immigration and skills

Australia has experienced the biggest migration boom in the nation’s history. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, 1,100 net migrants per day landed in the first 3.5 years of the Albanese government.

A housing market bloodbath awaits

Cotality has revised its daily dwelling values index downward, making the current housing correction worse than previously thought.

Aussies brace for another per capita recession

Labor’s housing gaslighting hits new low

It’s official: Australia’s inflation woes are home grown

I argued last week that Australia’s globally high inflation is homegrown, as illustrated by services inflation tracking at 4.1% in the year to July, well above the broader trimmed mean inflation rate of 3.6%. Housing inflation is posing a particular problem for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

Bureaucrat bloat is crushing Australia’s productivity

Luke Kinsella at The AFR has written a fantastic report on the rising number of federal public servants under the Albanese government.

Finally, some respite for Australian renters

The claim that property rents would spike in response to the federal budget’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax has aged like milk, with new data from Cotality instead showing that rental growth is moderating amid rising vacancy rates.

Property investor credit growth crashes after budget tax changes

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