Business

Peter Martin

Peter Martin is the Economics Editor for The Age.

RBA governor Philip Lowe is expected to hold rates for now.

Rates on hold as inflation bottoms

The Reserve Bank has been given licence to leave interest rates on hold at its first board meeting for the year, after the delivery of a low inflation result in line with its expectations and signs it will lift.

Native Fijians and ethnic Indians in a queue to vote in Fiji.

Open Australia to workers from the Pacific, says Lowy Institute

The Lowy Institute has proposed opening Australia to workers from Pacific nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a way of easing some of the shortages predicted as a result of changes to the backpacker tax and as a way of helping workers from those nations far more powerfully than could foreign aid.

Labor's Andrew Leigh said the complaint figures did not take into account this month's IT system failures.

Entire ATO website down

The Tax Office ruled out a census-style "denial of service" attack as the reason for the loss of its entire website, saying the massive failure was due to hardware problems "not being caused by any external factors".

The Dow Jones keeps making fresh record highs but some of Donald Trump's policies could cause a US recession

Recession? We're not even close

The Treasury and the Reserve Bank are likely to 'look through' the reported numbers to focus on what's happening beneath them.