Editor, Business and Economy
Peter Martin is Business and Economy Editor of The Conversation and a visiting fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU. A former Treasury official with an honours degree in economics, he has worked as the economics correspondent for ABC radio, as the ABC's Tokyo correspondent and as economics editor of The Age. With Dr Gigi Foster of UNSW he created The Economists podcast on ABC Radio National. In 2016 he was made a Distinguished Alumni of Flinders University in recogn...
Will Jim Chalmers' budget drive up inflation? Not likely – and here's why
May 23, 2023 15:03 pm UTC| Economy
The proposition that cutting prices will stoke inflation is a hard one to get your head around, even if you are an economist. Yet it has been seriously put forward as a critique of this months budget; the one in which...
Sure, the RBA froze interest rates on Tuesday, but there's plenty of pain to come
Apr 05, 2023 13:16 pm UTC| Economy Central Banks
Australias Reserve Bank hit pause on interest rates after ten successive hikes on Tuesday, but for many Australians, the pain it has inflicted is about to begin. The Bank says more than one million households will come...
5 ways the Reserve bank is going to bat for Australia like never before
Nov 04, 2020 00:17 am UTC| Economy Central Banks
The most important of the five measures the Reserve Bank announced on Tuesday is the one that wont whirr into place for a very long time. Others start immediately. On Thursday the bank will wade into the market and...
Economic growth near an end as Treasury talks of prolonged coronavirus downturn
Mar 06, 2020 09:13 am UTC| Economy
Australias three-decade run of near continuous economic growth is set to end, with treasury warning of a hit to growth of at least 0.5% in the first quarter of this year, potentially followed by a prolonged downturn. If...
Why we've the weakest economy since the global financial crisis, with few clear ways out
Sep 06, 2019 07:46 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy
The Australian economy is tepid, with consumer spending the weakest in ten years, business investment shrinking, and economic growth too weak to cover population growth. Were it not for very strong growth in export...
Jan 29, 2019 12:26 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy Politics
The Australian economy will remain healthy for long enough to enable the government to claim it as a strength in the lead-up to the May election, but the first Conversation Economic Survey points to a fairly flat outlook...
My magnificent seven. Seven really bright ideas (and one as old as time itself) from 2018
Dec 27, 2018 10:18 am UTC| Insights & Views
Few things are as valuable as a bright idea. They rarely pop up in meetings (where most of the time people agree with other people), or in business (where most of the time its easier to keep doing what youve been...
Drilling down on treatment-resistant fungi with molecular machines