Page 3838 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 30 November 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
recovery underway. We get early indication of the strength of that recovery through almost real-time data that the Australian banks provide in terms of spending across the economy.
I do want to also note, of course, that the Australian Bureau of Statistics are now undertaking a more contemporary data release that assists us in tracking the economic recovery and having a good understanding if we necessarily need to make more frequent fiscal policy decisions. Having access to this sort of data is very helpful.
I can advise the Assembly that this data came through just this morning: we are seeing very strong levels of consumer spending across the economy and in a diverse range of industry settings. Credit card spending is up 20 per cent on the equivalent pre-COVID periods when benchmarked against 2019. They are also up, though, on the COVID rebound periods equivalent in 2020. In the ACT the retail trade figures that came out just for the final two weeks of October, before we were fully out of lockdown, saw a 20 per cent increase in retail spending.
As I foreshadowed during the lockdown, we were anticipating a V-shaped recovery. We are certainly experiencing that. And in some industry sectors, retail spending is now up over 30 per cent. What we are seeing across recreation, personal care, transport, clothing and footwear, food and hospitality services is an incredibly strong rebound, demonstrating that there was a significant amount of pent-up demand, as you would anticipate.
What we have seen is that the accumulated savings from households and businesses on their balance sheets—not all businesses but many businesses on their balance sheets, as a result of government stimulus payments, government support payments or indeed household or business savings, particularly in industry sectors that were not significantly impacted by lockdowns—across the nation is more than $330 billion. The ACT’s share of that, at around two per cent of the Australian economy, sees over $6 billion of accumulated savings sitting with households and businesses in the territory. And what we are clearly seeing now, as we come out of lockdown and as things have freed up, is that that money is now being spent in our economy.
A new variant of the virus emerging and the necessary caution around international border reopening that the commonwealth announced overnight—a further at least two-week delay in the return of certain visa classes, particularly skilled migrants and international students—puts a slight dampener on those industry sectors. I think it is worth noting that, given the international border closures, our restrictions are likely to be in place even more so over the summer period as a result of this new variant. What that will mean is a lot of domestic tourism.
I make two observations there, in an ACT context, on why this is somewhat helpful in terms of our economy. Firstly, about 90 per cent of our tourism market is domestic. Australia is an importer of tourism services normally. We see more Australians travelling and spending money overseas than international tourists spend when they visit Australia. So we see a net outflow of money. That, again, will not be the case over this summer. More of that tourism dollar will be spent domestically. Pleasingly,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video