It is Wednesday the 2^nd of July 2025, and home prices across the country rose by 7.1 per cent last financial year. That's above the long term average, although the overall figure disguises the reality of very hot cities, in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Darwin, and one cold city in Melbourne, while Sydney, Hobart and Canberra eked out small gains for the past 12 months, according to Cotality. Regional Australia did better than the capital cities. Over ten years, the best performing geographies over ten years have been Brisbane, Adelaide, regional NSW and regional Queensland.

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News in brief

Ahead of next week’s return to Canberra for the new government, the changes to taxation of high super balances is getting plenty of attention. Earlier in the week, compulsory super architect and former PM Paul Keating took a swipe at the policy, and now, ACTU Secretary Sally McManus says the $3 million threshold for the government’s new superannuation earnings tax needs to be indexed.

Commonwealth Bank enters the financial year as easily Australia’s largest company. Twelve months ago, both Commonwealth Bank and BHP were about the same size. Today CBA is about 70 per cent bigger and worth more than $300 billion. Its weighting in the ASX200 has gone from 9 per cent to almost 12 per cent.

Coffee prices surged to hit record highs earlier this year, but the good news is that the spike has faded, and prices are now down more than 25 per cent since the February peak.

Revolutionary diabetes pills offering an alternative to popular injectable treatments such as Ozempic are a large step closer after the release of phase three clinical trial data for a new type of medicine that lowers blood sugar.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on July 7, as the US administration urges an end to the war in Gaza and attempts to secure the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

Fear-o-meter

A 7 per cent return for the housing market is good at a national level. But real estate is all about location, so if you own a home in Melbourne or Canberra, you didn’t have much of a year. Sydneysiders made a smallish return while those in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Darwin had a cracker.

What about the next 12 months? Well, it should provide decent returns for home owners. Interest rates are falling and that is the main driver of prices in many markets.

There are some big caveats to the outlook. Affordability constraints remain, as do an elevated level of household debt and a generally cautious lending environment. The geopolitical turmoil doesn’t help either. The upshot of all that is that researcher Cotality is forecasting growth this financial year, but not strong growth.

Business By Numbers

The top 3 numbers to know for the week, brought to you by Xero

10 per cent: how much the S&P/ASX200 rose in the last financial year.

7.1 per cent: the increase in the price of the median home across the capital cities last year.

1 per cent: the depreciation in the Aussie dollar over the past 12 months.

Who's talking today?

Busting some tax time myths for small businesses, and how SMEs can set themselves up for success in the year ahead:

 

"Small businesses, I would always recommend to speak to an accountant because there's a lot of different nuances that small businesses wouldn't be aware of. So one example would be the immediate asset write-off, which the government... has promised they're going to legislate to extend it. So that's the $20,000 immediate write-off for assets up to $20,000. You claim it as a one-off rather than over what we call the useful life and depreciate it. So that could be quite a big tax deduction that if you're a small business doing your own tax return, you might miss. So definitely speaking to an accountant just to make sure that everything is going through as it should."

 

This interview is brought to you by Xero.

Greed-o-meter

Netflix might be our dominant streaming service, but the largest chunk of viewing still takes place on free-to-air television. TV measurement company OzTAM, owned by the free-to-air broadcasters, has released its first Streamscape report, examining the viewing habits of Australians.

Source: OzTAM Streamscape

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