Westpac and CBA pass on rate cut
Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie have all announced they will pass on today’s interest rate cut to their customers.
Westpac said it was going to pass on the -0.25% rate adjustment to its variable home loan interest rates effective Tuesday, 26 August.
The Commonwealth Bank says all home loan variable rate changes relating to today’s rate cut will be effective 22 August 2025.
Macquarie, meanwhile, says the cut will hit its variable home loan rates just three days from now, on Friday 15 August.
RBA interest rates: Reserve Bank of Australia cuts official cash rate to 3.6% – videoShare
Updated at 03.25 EDT
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What we learned, Tuesday 12 August
And that’s where we’ll leave you this evening. Here’s a snapshot of today’s headlines:
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Anthony Albanese claimed Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is “in denial” about the suffering of civilians in Gaza, and said frustration with Israel’s actions partly contributed to the decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
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Opposition leader Sussan Ley says the Coalition would revoke recognition of a Palestinian state and would “never have taken this step” of recognising a Palestinian state if they were in power.
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The Reserve Bank has cut the cash rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.6%, from 3.85%.
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Treasurer Jim Chalmers hailed the rate cut as “very welcome relief for millions of Australians”.
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Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie have all announced they will pass on today’s interest rate cut to their customers.
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Voters in Kiama, NSW, will head to the polls next month for a byelection to replace former MP Gareth Ward.
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Epic Games, the creator of the popular video game Fortnite, has won a partial victory against Apple and Google in the Australian federal court over the restrictions in their app stores and in-app payment options.
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The health effects of Pfas appear to be small, the NSW Health Expert Advisory Panel on Pfas has concluded in its final report.
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The AFL has announced that American rapper Snoop Dogg will grace the MCG for this year’s grand final entertainment.
Thanks for your company today. Nick Visser will be back with you bright and early tomorrow morning to bring you all of Wednesday’s news. Look after yourselves until then.
Updated at 03.40 EDT
Man dies in snowboarding accident
A person has died at Perisher Ski Resort in the Snowy Mountains today, Guardian Australia understands. Early reports suggest a man died after a snowboarding accident this afternoon. Emergency services are yet to comment on the incident.
Updated at 03.26 EDT
Chalmers has also taken a swing at shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien’s comments earlier:
I did not think [the Coalition] could find someone with less credibility than Angus Taylor but they’ve managed to do that in shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien. I thought it was frankly an absurd comment that will do him no good and to his credibility no good …
I thought his press conference today was a disgrace, frankly. He should be properly welcoming interest rate relief for millions of Australians. He did not want to see rates cut today and I think all of his words today were dripping with disappointment that rates were cut today for the third time this year under Labor.
Updated at 03.08 EDT
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the “productivity challenge” in Australia “is structural” and has been an issue in the economy for two decades, after the RBA substantially revised its productivity assumption in its statement of monetary policy today, prompting a lot of questions.
Chalmers said:
Overwhelmingly we have been making good progress in our country but there are elements of the data which are concerning … Our economy is not growing as strongly as we would like it to and one of the big persistent structural issues we have had in an economy now for two decades is it is not productive enough and productivity matters because it is the main driver of living standards so that workers … can get ahead and provide for their loved ones.
… Certainly, there has been obvious for some time that we don’t have the productivity growth that we need in order to make the economy grow strongly and sustainably over time … It’s not a surprise that we have a productivity challenge, it was one of the defining features of the last decade of our predecessors and remains a challenge in our economy and remains a primary focus of our efforts.
Updated at 02.54 EDT
AGNSW explains ‘needs to make ongoing savings’
The Art Gallery of New South Wales has released a statement this afternoon regarding reports it was set to cut dozens of jobs as part of a restructure effort meant to save millions in annual expenditure.
A spokesperson for AGNSW said:
Like all cultural institutions, the Art Gallery of New South Wales must respond to the changing environment, stay within its budget and operate sustainably. To do this the art gallery needs to make ongoing savings and plan for the future.
The art gallery has begun staff consultation on a proposed structure to ensure resources are aligned with government priorities. The proposed organisational change reflects our operational requirements, future programming and ambitions for the art gallery, its collections and its audiences.
The wellbeing of staff is the art gallery’s top priority, and we’re committed to supporting our people throughout this process.
Updated at 02.50 EDT
Recognition of Palestine makes creation of state ‘less likely’ Paterson says
The Albanese government’s decision to recognise the state of Palestine has “pushed back the prospect” of the state ever being created, Liberal senator James Paterson has said.
He told Afternoon Briefing:
The Albanese government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state is not the same as the creation of a Palestinian state; that would require the agreement of Israel. I think what the government has done has made that even less likely than it ever has been, they’ve pushed back that prospect, it’s an incredibly remote one.
Asked if the Coalition would revoke that recognition, Paterson said:
Yes, just as this government revoked the previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; new governments elected on a different political philosophy can change our foreign policy, and we would change it.
Updated at 02.35 EDT
Fortnite creator scores some wins in major case against Apple and Google
Josh Taylor
Epic Games, the creator of the popular video game, Fortnite, has won a partial victory against Apple and Google in the Australian federal court over the restrictions in their app stores and in-app payment options.
Fortnite was kicked off the Apple and Google app stores in 2020 after Epic Games offered its own in-app payment system that bypassed the one used by the platforms, and cut out the fees Apple and Google receive for in-app payments.
Fortnite sued the two companies in Australia and other jurisdictions as a result. In the Australian case, Epic alleged that Apple’s control over in-app purchases in the Fortnite app were a misuse of market power, which had substantially lessened competition in app development. The company alleged Google harmed app developers and consumers in Australia by preventing choice over app distribution and in-app payments on Android devices.
Fortnite was kicked off the Apple and Google app stores in 2020 after Epic Games offered its own in-app payment system that bypassed the one used by the platforms. Photograph: Volodymyr Kalyniuk/Alamy
Federal court justice Jonathan Beach found Apple had engaged in conduct likely to diminish competition over preventing side-loading of apps on iOS, and by preventing alternative payment methods for digital purchases. For Google it was found for the similar Google Play billing system, and over Google’s Project Hug, a project that allegedly saw developers enticed to keep their apps in the Play Store.
Other claims from Epic did not succeed.
Two class action cases arguing that Apple and Google overcharged developers for in-app payments were successful, but the difference in what they would have otherwise charged had there been more competition will be decided later.
Beach spent an hour and a half reading through a summary of his reasons in the four cases. The full judgment – expected to be around 1,000 pages long to cover all cases – will not be released until redactions are made. Orders on relief will be decided at a later date once lawyers for all parties have had time to digest the ruling.
Updated at 02.40 EDT
Shadow finance minister, Liberal James Paterson, has told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that he believes the reason so many journalists were asking RBA governor Michele Bullock about productivity, rather than the interest rate reduction, was because “the government has admitted this is a problem”.
Paterson said:
They have recognised it is a problem because it is so closely linked to living standards and living standards did fall over the government’s first term, as did productivity – in fact we went back to 2016 levels of productivity growth.
So that is a crisis for our living standards, for our wealth as a country, and we will go backwards unless we fix this. And the fact that the RBA has lowered their expectations for productivity growth is effectively a vote of no confidence in the government’s economic agenda, they have no a plan to fix this problem and I hope they can come up with one at their round-table but I am really worried they won’t.
Updated at 02.37 EDT
Tom McIlroy
Labor signals plan for road-user charging rules
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has signalled Labor could move forward with a plan for road-user charging rules as soon as next week’s productivity roundtable, saying Labor had flagged such a change before the federal election.
Labor has been working on plans for charges to cover electric vehicles with state and territory governments ahead of the three-day summit in Canberra next week.
Budget revenue collected from fuel excise has been falling as drivers increasingly shift to electric vehicles. Victoria designed rules for a 2c per kilometre charge on EV users in a 2023 plan, but the tax was overruled by the high court.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said last week the government was only considering immediately moving forward with tax plans considered by voters ahead of the 3 May election.
Chalmers said on Tuesday road-user charging met that standard, because the government had flagged its plans in the last parliament:
We said before the last election that this was an area we’re working on with the states and territories and in parts of our political opposition, there’s a sense of bipartisanship as well in dealing with this challenge.
Really for at least a year or two, we have said publicly that this is on the agenda, and so we will continue that work.
He said he expected state treasurers to raise road-user charging rules at a meeting on Friday, billed as a lead in meeting for next week’s roundtable.
Updated at 02.20 EDT
Westpac and CBA pass on rate cut
Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie have all announced they will pass on today’s interest rate cut to their customers.
Westpac said it was going to pass on the -0.25% rate adjustment to its variable home loan interest rates effective Tuesday, 26 August.
The Commonwealth Bank says all home loan variable rate changes relating to today’s rate cut will be effective 22 August 2025.
Macquarie, meanwhile, says the cut will hit its variable home loan rates just three days from now, on Friday 15 August.
RBA interest rates: Reserve Bank of Australia cuts official cash rate to 3.6% – videoShare
Updated at 03.25 EDT
The Reserve Bank has been watching the housing market, Michele Bullock said, due to monetary policy’s direct influence on it.
Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock at a press conference in Sydney today. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
So far, she said, the easing in the housing market that they have observed has been a “fairly gradual recovery in housing activity”:
Broadly, housing prices, dwelling investment, those sorts of things … We hope it happens in a nice measured way, but ultimately we don’t forecast property prices. We can’t control what happens there because I think as I’ve said before, the price, the property prices are about supply and demand, ultimately, in the housing market, and we don’t control that.
But we do know that historically, as interest rates fall, then activity in the housing market picks up. That’s exactly what we’d expect. And it is one of the channels through which monetary policy works.
Updated at 01.57 EDT
A few questions for Bullock at this press conference around the RBA’s assumptions around productivity.
She reiterates a few times that the RBA only makes assumptions about productivity for a two-year forecast period – as in, they assume but don’t model it – and it is not an assumption about productivity in the long run.
Bullock says addressing productivity (or lack thereof) is not the job for the Reserve Bank but for the government:
Breaking out of the productivity slowdown is a matter for the government that they are taking on. They’re looking at what they can do. Businesses are looking at what they can do to take themselves out of the productivity slump.
There’s nothing the Reserve Bank can do. All the Reserve Bank can do is make sure we have low and stable inflation, and if we have full employment, both of those things are very stable environments for businesses to think about how they might improve productivity, how they might produce more for the same amount of labor and capital input. So nothing we can do about it. But the government recognises it’s a big issue and they are tackling it.
Updated at 01.52 EDT
Bullock said the global outlook “remains unpredictable, even though it seems that the risk of a more damaging, widespread trade war has eased a bit”.
The RBA expects global growth to slow as we head into 2026, “as impacts from higher tariffs and broader policy uncertainty weigh on activity,” Bullock said. They expect the domestic economy see “a slow recovery in GDP” and labour market conditions to remain around the current levels.
There may be more interest rate cuts on the horizon, as Bullock said “the cash rate might need to be a bit lower than it is today to keep inflation low and stable, and employment growing, but there is still a lot of uncertainty”.
She continued:
Monetary policy remains well-positioned to respond to shocks that could come our way, and the board will keep doing what it needs to do to keep inflation down and maintain a healthy jobs market because, as we know, when inflation is low and stable and people can get jobs, it’s good for households, it’s good for the community, and it’s good for the broader Australian economy.
Updated at 01.39 EDT