The head of the Bureau of Statistics has apologised for poor judgment and testing the patience of Australians during the 2016 census, and revealed that the failure of the digital system cost taxpayers $30 million.
What can you do when your dreams come true, and it's not quite like you planned?
- Don Henley, Glenn Frey
Anyone would have thought Philip Lowe had it made. The new Reserve Bank governor has taken the helm at a time when the Bank's traditional enemy, high inflation, is dead. He says he is the first to have done so. Yet he is worried by the fruits of that success.
Australia's top financial regulator has dismissed as self-serving arguments by the big four banks that they can't afford to offer so-called "tracker mortgages" whose rates would automatically rise and fall in line with the Reserve Bank cash rate.
So concerned is the head of the Treasury about the cost of housing, he says he is having to help out his own son, and that parents like him are endangering their superannuation.
"It's a worry, the Bank of Mum and Dad," Treasury secretary John Fraser told a Senate estimates hearing.
Australia's biggest business organisation has distanced itself from claims the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and be a "gigantic foundation stone" for Australia's future.