Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on the RBA cutting the OCR to 4.1 percent

Over in Australia, the RBA has moved to lower the Official Cash Rate by 25 basis points from 4.35 percent to 4.1 percent.

This is in line with predictions from economists, who'd noticed inflation had eased in the final quarter of 2024.

Australian correspondent Murray Olds says this will come as good news for homeowners, who have had their mortgage payments skyrocket over the past few months.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International correspondence with ends in eye insurance, peace of mind
for New Zealand business. Murray, i'ld just with us Australia correspondent.
You'll be dancing with the RBA decision. Murray.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Well, yes, very good afternoon, Ryan. A lot of people
will be very happy. I mean, there's not a lot
of money. If you've got a six hundred thousand dollars
mortgage over here, it'll cut your repayments by about one
hundred bucks a month. But since the bank began lifting
rates before the twenty twenty two election, repayments on that
same mortgage have risen by nearly fifteen hundred bucks a month,

(00:33):
So you're going to be saving one hundred down off
that high of fifteen hundred. I mean this interest a
big pardon. The official cash rate over here was at
a thirteen year high, and it's been there for four years.
It's been a long, long long time. Just about every
economist over here said the Board would cut rates. Inflation

(00:54):
was easing significantly. The December quarter was two point four.
That was the annual rate. The underlying rate of inflation,
which is the one the Reserve Bank looks at most
closely because it strips out all the volatile things. That
was three point two, marginally outside the two to three
percent band the Reserve Bank's looking for. So yes, interest

(01:14):
rate cuts on the way here. It won't be the
first this year, That's what they're all saying. Anthony Albanezi
very happy. Indeed, it's a bit of a spring in
his step given the awful opinion polls of recent days.
And you know, for I suppose sentiment, I mean, the
country has been flatters attacked, notwithstanding good job figures, and

(01:35):
a lot of people have been balancing on a knife's
edge around the kitchen tables of the country. So this
is good news, no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, absolutely, and instated first in a very long time,
this video that we would lead our news, that actually
led our six o'clock news over here in New Zealand
of the Sydney nurses who were saying, oh you will
just you know, let the Israelis die basically, or even
you know, kill them, kill them in hospital. And you've
had some blowback from groups, Well we have.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
I don't know what you thought. I saw that video,
and I saw it the number of times it felt
sick in the guts. But they looked like a couple
of young, dumb buffheads who were almost showing off to
each other and try to hit this Israeli guy who
was playing him like a fiddle. That was my initial take.
Having said that, I mean it was disgraceful the fet
the governments of all levels were busy slapping these kids

(02:26):
silly and know they've been Sackeder's nurses won't work in
New South Wales again. So predictably, almost as a coalition
of Australian Muslim groups who have said this is all
about manufactured outrage on the part of those that were
upset by the video. These Muslim groups have put out
a statement saying, quote it condemns the hypocrisy over the
video where I'm here, it's calculated, politically motivated outrage. It's

(02:51):
not a failure of consistency, it's the deliberate engineering of
public morality. The frustration and anger directed at Israel, because
of course that's what the new US as. We're saying
we don't like Israel, and Israelis will be killed or
targeted if they come into my hospital bedrooms. The frustration.
Now the director of Israel's a direct response to Israel's

(03:11):
violent and inhumane policies. It's not an expression of hatred,
of hatred towards Jewish people. Well, you can split here
and you're like, this is going to go down like
a lead balloon just about everywhere. It's almost sad in
a way that these buzzont grips have felt compelled to
come out and say these things. I don't forget one
of them. His book Tahia is actually banned in the UK.

(03:34):
It's on the edge. It's pretty extreme. So this is,
as you say, blowback Ryan from the outrage it was
expressed a week ago.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
You've got this. We have this problem here too, the
e bikes and the scooters catching fire because of the batteries.
But quite a bad one in west of Sydney.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Oh dreadful last night. While early this morning six o'clock,
there were six young people in a rented property in
the western suburbs of Sydney at Guilford. They think it's
an e scooter. They have to do more forensic testing
of the of the of the house, what's left of
the house, but five of the residents got out alive.
It looks like the sixth a young man was trapped

(04:13):
in his bedroom and the dreadful feeling is that perhaps
he was charging his e scooter in the bedroom the
things caught fire. What fire and safety offices over here
fire fighters have been saying for months and months and months,
it's like a thermal runaway fire. It's not something you
can put out with a cup of water. This thing
takes on a life of its own and you simply

(04:35):
can't put them out. And if the scooter that's blazing
away is between you and the only door out of
the room, it's not going to end well for you.
And so that's why they're saying, if you're going to
charge these things, charge them outside, Charge them, not in
a exit route out of the home or out of
the property where you are. It's the third death in

(04:56):
New South Wales that's now being attributed to these things.
But have a listen to the three fires in Sydney
in the last twenty four hours, well of them fatal.
Twenty eight fires and ten injuries this year alone, and
more than three hundred e scooter or e bike fires
last year. But it's not just big batteries. There's one
thousand files a month last year from electric toothbrushes, from

(05:17):
things like Kenny's Toys. They've got these batteries in they
go out in the recycling and in the rubbish and
they're catching fire in rubbish recycling centers or in the
back of rubbish trucks. It's a very big problem. Not
sure how they're going to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
To be frank, no, it sounds like it's getting a
little out of hand. Murray, thank you for that. Murray.
Old's our Australia correspondent with US just confirming the RBA
has cut their first time since twenty twenty that the
Reserve Bank of Australia has cut their official cash right
over there. We're expecting ours of course tomorrow. We'll have
Brad Olsen on that after sixth this evening. For more
from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks

(05:52):
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