Victoria's real housing reform is the price record, not the reserve

Publishing auction reserves will generate fights and may not survive. Publishing every sale price for 18 months quietly dismantles the asymmetry that made underquoting pay. Make that half permanent.

Our viewThe headline is the published reserve, but the lasting reform is the published sale price. A free public record of what houses actually fetch lets every buyer check an agent's quote, which no regulator can do at scale.

Sovereign cloud says where the data sits, not who agreed to it being used

Starling says its transaction model will be trained and hosted in a UK sovereign cloud. That is a claim about geography. The question customers should be asking is about consent, and nobody has had to answer it yet.

Our viewKeeping the computers in Britain is worth something, but it answers a question nobody was worried about. What has not been explained is on what basis customers' transaction histories became training material, or whether anyone could say no.

Calling liquidity ample while reviewing whether you can see the market

The Bank of England's September money market minutes certify calm without publishing a single figure — and a parallel committee records that the Bank is checking whether its data powers still reach the market.

Our viewThe September minutes certify ample liquidity without publishing a single number, while the Bank records elsewhere that it is checking whether its data powers still reach the market. Reassurance is not evidence, and a repo-led framework runs on evidence.

A bank deciding which agents may act for you is a competition call, not a safety one

JPMorgan Chase says outside AI agents cannot reach into retail accounts. The security case is real — but a blanket perimeter with no published route through it settles who owns the customer relationship, not who is safe.

Our viewRefusing outside AI agents access to accounts makes sense while nobody has decided who pays when an agent misfires. It stops making sense the moment the bank's own assistant is allowed to do what rivals cannot.

Reserve a share of production and you exempt the plant that produces least

Australia's draft gas reservation scheme hangs the obligation on how much an exporter produces. The export plant accused of draining the east coast market is the one that produces least of its own gas.

Our viewTying the set-aside to how much gas a company produces lets off the export plant that produces least and buys the rest here — the very behaviour the scheme exists to curb. Measure net withdrawals instead.

Two record fines, one payment: the Bank of America penalty is smaller than it looks

Treasury announced the largest penalty in the OCC's 163-year history and then credited it against FinCEN's. The cash figure is honest; the superlatives are not. And no structural remedy was imposed at all.

Our viewTwo agencies announced record-breaking fines, then credited one against the other, so the bank pays far less than the headlines add to. And no growth limit or published remediation deadline came with it.

The cruise ship exemption is a subsidy nobody has ever costed

Canberra has extended a decades-old carve-out from Australian labour law for cruise ships to 2028. A waived rule is industry assistance by another name - and the only kind that never gets a dollar figure beside it.

Our viewSwitching off a wage floor is a subsidy financed by workers instead of taxpayers, and it is the one kind of subsidy nobody ever has to cost. Extend it if you must - but publish the price before 2028.

A cloud-outage drill with no published result is a rehearsal, not a test

Thirty-eight of the UK's biggest banks and market infrastructures spent a day simulating a global cloud failure. The Bank of England says firms should now act on it. It has not said what they found.

Our viewThe rehearsal was the right one to run; the silence afterwards is not. If the Bank can publish bank-by-bank capital stress test results, it can publish what this exercise found and a date by which firms must fix it.

A presidential phone call is not a licence to clear Russian oil payments

Trump says Moscow will immediately ship diesel to American markets. Nothing moves until the Treasury writes the permission down — and banks should not act on an announcement.

Our viewA president can announce a deal, but only the Treasury can make it lawful for a bank to pay for it. Until a written licence exists, no firm should move the cargo — and the announcement has already cheapened the sanctions it suspends.

A lawyer found the error NSW's insurance regulator was meant to find

NRMA Insurance has repaid hundreds of injured motorists for miscalculated compulsory third party benefits dating to 2019. The mistake was spotted by a claimant's lawyer — not by the insurer, and not by the regulator that had audited it.

Our viewAn underpayment nobody notices is not a scandal of greed, it is a failure of checking. If a regulator audits an insurer and it still takes a lawyer to spot the arithmetic, the regulator is auditing the wrong thing.

The number that moves a float is the one nobody has to write down

Firmus's bookbuild turned in days. Whether the demand was ever there at $11 cannot now be checked, because nothing in Australian practice requires the banks running a float to define "covered" or keep a log of it.

Our viewThe claim that most moves an IPO - that the book is already full - is spoken, never recorded, and has no agreed meaning. ASIC should make the banks define "covered" and keep a timestamped log of it.

The Fed punished Amex for a hole it refuses to measure in public

The Board says American Express failed to detect and report certain suspicious activity, and that its group-wide programme broke down at its bank. It does not say how much, for how long, or what fixing it looks like.

Our viewThe action against American Express is justified and lands in the right place. But the Fed's announcement tells the public nothing about how big the failure was, how long it ran, or what fixing it means.

The Firmus float died in a private room. That is the part worth fixing

Withdrawing the biggest Australian listing since Telstra was the right call. The problem is that the doubts and the repricing lived in a closed bookbuild while the public document stood still.

Our viewPulling the float was the right call. The problem is that the doubts and the near-25 per cent repricing happened in a closed bookbuild, while the document ordinary investors actually read stood still.

A 7,300% rise in finfluencer actions tells you about 2023, not 2025

The Financial Conduct Authority's headline growth rate is the easiest statistic in regulation to produce and the hardest to interpret. Publish the base, the mix and the repeat rate instead.

Our viewA 7,300 per cent rise sounds enormous mainly because the starting point was close to nothing. Until the regulator publishes the base numbers, the mix of serious versus trivial actions, and how many accounts simply come back, the figure measures its own effort rather than any

Washington told banks to run these programmes. Now it investigates one for it

HUD says Wells Fargo's race-conscious mortgage programmes break the Fair Housing Act. If that is the government's position, it belongs in a published rule that binds everyone — not a letter to the first mover.

Our viewIf the government now believes these programmes are illegal, it should say so in a published rule that binds every lender from a stated date — not in a letter to the one bank that announced its programme first.

If a model gives the advice, the bank still owns every word of it

HSBC is reported to be cutting up to 70 per cent of its UK financial advisers as artificial intelligence takes over. The saving is only real if the duties attached to advice quietly fall away with the advisers.

Our viewIf the software gives personal recommendations, every duty a human adviser carries attaches to it and the savings are smaller than they look. If it does not, customers are losing their right to complain — and nobody has said which it is.

Wise is paying its customers' tax bills. That should be a rule, not a kindness

When a platform's software produces the wrong figure, the taxpayer signs for it. Britain's self-assessment system has no clean route to push the cost back where the error was made.

Our viewWise covering the tax bills caused by a data error is the right call, but it is a choice. When a platform's figures are wrong, the tax authority should correct the returns centrally instead of making each customer argue their own case.

A stablecoin issuer should not also be the vault for its rivals' reserves

Modern Treasury and Rain applied for the same federal trust charter on the same day to do opposite things. One has promised not to issue a stablecoin. The other wants to issue one and hold its competitors' backing assets.

Our viewHolding your competitors' reserve assets while issuing a competing stablecoin is a conflict, not a custody service. The OCC should approve Rain's charter only with that separation written into the order.

The tax office is not the hypocrite here. The surcharge ban is

Business groups say the ATO refusing credit cards while small firms must absorb fees is a double standard. The real asymmetry is in the rule: a monopoly can walk away from cards, a cafe cannot.

Our viewThe tax office is right: it has no prices to bury the fee in, so absorbing it would mean all taxpayers funding the rewards points of those who pay by card. The real double standard is in the ban, which lets monopolies walk away and leaves competitors stuck.

Rain filed with the OCC. The regulator that decides this is the Fed

A national trust charter buys supervision and a name. It does not buy an account at the Federal Reserve — and for a stablecoin payments firm, that is the only question that matters.

Our viewThe charter is the easy half. Whether a stablecoin payments firm can hold its money at the Federal Reserve is the decision that actually matters, and the Fed should answer it in public before the queue gets longer.

A tokenised deposit is still a promise from ANZ. Publish the rulebook

ANZ says it has moved corporate money across borders on Swift's blockchain ledger. The technology clearly works. What nobody has published is what the holder owns, and at what moment the payment becomes final.

Our viewThe pilot shows the plumbing works. It does not say when a payment becomes final or what a token holder owns if a bank fails mid-transfer — and that rulebook, not the technology, decides whether this is safe to scale.

Cutting 400 engineers is a resilience decision, not a cost decision

DNB is shrinking its technology teams while expanding its use of AI agents. Nothing in the operational resilience rulebook requires a bank to say how many humans its recovery plan assumes.

Our viewSwapping engineers for autonomous software changes a bank's ability to recover from an outage, not just its cost base. Regulators should make firms re-test their outage plans at the staffing level they will actually have.

A trust charter is a side door to the payment system. Open it in daylight

Modern Treasury has asked to become a national trust bank. The charter is a legitimate thing to want — but the Comptroller should publish what it permits, and what it does not, before granting the next one.

Our viewA trust charter is a reasonable thing to want, and escaping state-by-state money transmitter licensing is a worthy goal. But the Comptroller should publish what the charter permits, and whether it implies access to the payment system, before granting the next one.

A sewerage bill should track the sewer, not the width of the water pipe

TasWater billed businesses for sewerage based on the size of their incoming water connection. For a sports club watering an oval, that proxy was always going to break.

Our viewCharging for sewerage by the width of a water pipe was never going to work for a club that waters an oval. The design error is forgivable; sending the bills out before anyone modelled who would be hit is not.

The Bank makes banks prove it. For its own defences, it sent a letter

Andrew Bailey's rebuttal to the Daily Mail sets out the standard the Bank demands of supervised firms — proof through testing — and then asks the public to accept assurance in its place.

Our viewThe Bank tells supervised firms that claiming to be resilient is not enough — they must prove it through testing. Its own defences get a letter to a newspaper saying trust us. That gap should be closed by the Bank's own board.

A crypto custody rule is only as good as the day the custodian fails

The SEC has proposed a dedicated custody framework for advisers holding crypto. Judge it on one question: when the custodian collapses, who can still sign the transaction?

Our viewA custody rule only matters on the day the custodian fails. This one should be judged on whether it forces proof that nobody else holds a copy of the keys — and says in advance who bears the loss when someone does.

Two per cent measures cash flow. A housing downturn hits the balance sheet

The Reserve Bank says fewer than two mortgaged households in a hundred cannot cover repayments and essentials. That is a flow number, and it says almost nothing about what falling prices do to the same borrowers.

Our viewThe Reserve Bank's reassuring figure counts who cannot pay this month. It says nothing about what happens when a stressed borrower can no longer sell the house for more than the loan.

Visa and Lloyds finished the stablecoin trial. Now publish the numbers

A completed pilot proves the plumbing held. It does not prove the payment got faster, cheaper or safer — and the three adjectives in the announcement are claims, not measurements.

Our viewA finished pilot shows the plumbing held, not that payments got faster or cheaper. If Visa and Lloyds want credit for the benefits, they should publish the timings, the costs and the liquidity released.

The Fed's renovation needed a price ceiling, not a prosecutor

The watchdog found mismanagement and no crime. The finding worth arguing about is buried in the recommendations: years into a multibillion-dollar build, nobody has agreed a maximum price.

Our viewWhether a crime occurred was always the least useful question. The finding that matters is that a multibillion-dollar build is years in with no agreed price ceiling — and a central bank that funds itself has no appropriator to impose one.

A tenth of a point is not news. Three months stuck at 3.6 is

Markets cut the odds of a November rate rise because August inflation came in 0.1 below consensus. The Reserve Bank's own statement says the decision turns on oil, firms' pricing and expectations - not on that tenth.

Our viewThe August figure missed forecasts by a tenth of a point, which is noise. The real news was that underlying inflation has not budged from 3.6 per cent in three months, and the Reserve Bank said its decision turns on oil and pricing behaviour anyway.

Brink's-Atleos should go to phase two, not be settled with a promise

The savings that justify a $6.6bn cash-infrastructure deal come from removing duplicate vans, cash centres and machines. A remedy agreed in a fortnight cannot hold that back.

Our viewTake the long investigation. The savings that make this deal worth $6.6bn come from stripping out duplicate vans, cash centres and machines, and no promise extracted in a fortnight will stop that happening.

Europe's payment apps can share rails. The hard part is the rulebook

Five national mobile payment schemes have agreed to link up against Visa and Mastercard. Interoperability is the easy half. Refunds, fraud liability and one contract per merchant are what the incumbents actually sell.

Our viewLinking Europe's payment apps solves the easy problem, which is reach. What makes cards hard to dislodge is the rulebook behind them - refunds, fraud liability, one contract per merchant - and none of that has been published.

Averaging two stress tests only works if each test is worth averaging

The Fed will set capital add-ons from a two-year average from 2028 — while admitting, in the same announcement, that the model behind fee income losses needs fixing. Smooth first, accurate later is the wrong order.

Our viewAveraging two years of stress test results makes a bank's capital requirement smoother, not more accurate — especially when the Fed has just admitted one of the models feeding it needs fixing. Fix the model first, then average.

The Fed made its stress test readable, and made it surprise you less

Publishing the models behind the US stress test is a genuine reform. Damping how much the resulting capital requirement can move is a separate decision, and it travelled in under the same cover.

Our viewPublishing the Fed's stress test models is overdue and right. Damping how much the resulting capital requirement can move is a separate decision that mostly benefits the banks, and it was bundled in with the popular half.

Swift's alias plan makes cross-border payments feel domestic. They aren't

Sending money abroad with a mobile number is a welcome simplification of addressing. But the name on the screen, the loss when it goes wrong and the true price all stop at the border.

Our viewMaking the address shorter is welcome, but it does not make the payment safer. Before Australian PayIDs can be used from overseas, someone must say who guarantees the name on the screen, who pays when it is wrong, and what the transfer really costs.

Monzo's safety net stays British even if its owner does not

A foreign takeover of a UK deposit-taker is not a private transaction. If the Prudential Regulation Authority approves one, it should publish the conditions it attached — capital, board and operational continuity.

Our viewA foreign owner can buy the profits of a British deposit book, but the guarantee behind those deposits stays here. If regulators approve such a deal, they should publish the conditions they attached to it.

A stablecoin is only as solid as the bank accounts nobody has listed

US prosecutors have seized bank accounts at a payments firm working for Tether. Whatever that case turns out to be, it exposes a layer of stablecoin plumbing that no reserve rule reaches and no attestation shows.

Our viewThe rules being written cover what backs a stablecoin, not the bank accounts the money passes through on its way in and out. Those accounts can be frozen overnight, and holders are not told they exist.

A tokenised pound is only a pound if the protections travel with it

UK banks say they have run the first live customer payments in tokenised sterling deposits. The engineering is the easy half. Nobody has published whose promise the token is, or what happens when the issuer fails.

Our viewGetting the first tokenised sterling payment to work is easy; saying whose promise the token is, and whether the deposit compensation scheme covers it, is the part that matters. That paragraph should have been published first.

The Fed has written the reserve rules and left redemption for later

The Federal Reserve's stablecoin proposals spell out what must back a token. The governor who supports them says the holder's right to redeem it still needs to be made clear in the final rule.

Our viewThe Fed has drafted the rules for what backs a stablecoin but left the holder's right to redeem it as an open question. Backing without a universal redemption right regulates the money, not the promise.

The surcharge ban isn't a saving. It just moves the bill onto everyone

Banning card surcharges from 1 October doesn't make card acceptance cheaper — the interchange cap does that. The ban only decides who pays, and the answer is: people who pay by cash and debit too.

Our viewCutting the fee cap is real reform. Banning surcharges is not a saving — it hides the cost in shelf prices, so cash and debit users now help pay for other people's credit cards.

Central bank money for tokenised assets is only as good as its opening hours

The Eurosystem's Pontes puts central bank money behind tokenised trades. Whether that counts as settlement depends on when the cash leg is final, and on who is allowed to hold it.

Our viewSaying tokenised trades settle in central bank money means little until the ECB says when the cash leg becomes final and who may hold it. If the euro side keeps business hours, private tokens will keep the nights and weekends.

Instant delivery abroad quietly deletes the right to change your mind

Speed is not what makes sending money overseas expensive — the exchange rate is. And a payment that lands in seconds strips out the half hour in which American law lets a sender cancel.

Our viewSpeed is not what makes sending money abroad expensive — the exchange rate is. And an instant, irreversible payment quietly removes the half hour in which American law lets a sender cancel. The Fed should settle both before it builds.

ASIC can't make AI traders explain themselves. It can make them stop

New market integrity rules for AI-enabled trading will fail if they rest on documenting how a model decides. Load the weight on halting it — and publish what was deregulated in the same package.

Our viewRules that ask firms to document how an AI trading model decides will be unenforceable. The safeguards should rest on hard limits, a halt that is tested rather than certified, and a named person who owns it.

The Clearing House picked a vendor. The hard part is the rulebook

A tokenised deposit network for banks “of all sizes” has an announced technology partner and no published rules on finality, loss allocation or access pricing. Those are the network.

Our viewNaming the technology supplier is the easy part. Until the network publishes who bears losses, when a payment becomes final and what small banks pay to join, calling it “interoperable” is a marketing claim, not a design.

The ACCC says this deal will raise premiums. Now it must say by how much

Blocking a merger only needs a judgement. Weighing public benefits against public detriment needs a magnitude — and the regulator has told us it hasn't calculated one.

Our viewThe regulator is right that this deal would hurt Western Australian insurance buyers. But it has moved to a test that weighs harm against benefit, and it cannot weigh a harm it has openly declined to measure.

One firm clearing and recording the same trade undoes a deliberate split

The Bank of England has let a clearing house also run the ownership record for tokenised securities. Those two jobs were separated on purpose, and the sandbox should say how they are being kept apart.

Our viewLetting one firm both guarantee trades and keep the ownership record undoes a separation that exists for good reason. The Bank should say plainly how the two halves are walled off, and when the permanent rules arrive.

A bank paying in a token it issued itself has not settled anything

SoFi Bank is moving its card programme onto its own stablecoin with Mastercard. Settlement means the obligation is discharged in an asset nobody has to trust. A self-issued IOU is not that.

Our viewHanding someone a token you issued yourself is not settling a debt; it is swapping it for a promise with a redemption queue behind it. Before this goes live, the rulebook should say exactly when the obligation is legally discharged.

ASIC has spent a year asking private credit nicely. Now write the rule

The corporate regulator says too many private credit funds have been too slow to lift their standards. That is a verdict on its own method, not on theirs.

Our viewASIC keeps asking private credit funds to improve and says too many have not. The bigger danger is not bad loans but funds promising quick withdrawals against loans that take years to repay — and that needs a written rule, not another speech.

Letting super into the housing market mostly moves money to the seller

Andrew Bragg is floating super for first-home deposits. Until the Coalition says whether that means withdrawing the money or pledging it, and publishes the price effect, it is not a policy — it is a slogan.

Our viewGiving first-home buyers more money to bid with, when the number of houses for sale hasn't changed, mostly raises prices. The seller gets the benefit; the buyer gets the same house and a smaller retirement.

Telling people to use more comparison sites is not a remedy

A court found one site compared policies that nearly all came from a single insurer. The regulator's answer — shop around across several sites — asks consumers to fix a problem they cannot see.

Our viewTelling people to visit several comparison sites is not a fix, because they cannot see any site's panel. Make every site state, at the top of the results, how many insurers it can quote, which ones, and who owns them.

Sanctions screening checks names, and names are the cheapest thing to change

An FT investigation says a Kremlin-linked fintech pushed billions through international banks. The control that failed was never strong: banks match strings against lists, using data supplied by the party with a motive to lie.

Our viewName-matching against lists was never a real control, because the names are supplied by whoever wants the payment to clear. Regulators should test whether screening catches disguised payments, and publish how often it does.

"A more sensible level" is an adjective doing a central bank's arithmetic

The Reserve Bank is justifying further rate rises by describing a destination rather than naming one. Markets have already priced the trip at 95 per cent. Parliament should ask for the number.

Our viewCalling the cash rate's destination "more sensible" is a judgment dressed as a measurement, and it pre-justifies every rise between here and there. The Bank should publish the number instead.

The Fed's hike is defensible. The years before it are not

Raising rates into a war premium, a tariff programme and an investment boom is the right call. The scandal is that it took all three, on top of a long overshoot, to produce it.

Our viewRaising rates now is right, and upsetting the President is not a reason to avoid it. The real failure is the years of above-target inflation that came first, which will make this correction bigger than it needed to be.

Repealing a mine's housing condition by statute makes every condition cheaper

A condition attached to a mining approval is part of what the approval cost. Deleting it by legislation, with no published price and no transition, makes every future condition worth less.

Our viewIf the housing condition no longer works, remove it on terms — with a price, a timetable and something in return. Deleting it by statute tells the next company that conditions are negotiable once the approval is banked.

Canada's outsider seat should not be a staircase to the inside

The external deputy governor position exists to put a voice at the rate-setting table that did not come up through the building. Its occupant has now been promoted into the building. The board should write that route shut.

Our viewThe outsider's chair at Canada's rate-setting table has just been shown to be a route to a permanent job inside. That is the wrong incentive, and the board can close it in the job description.

Capping London's tourist tax at 5pc caps the rate, not the bill

A percentage ceiling floats with room prices, so it is an index rather than a limit. The decision worth arguing about is whether boroughs may each choose their own instrument.

Our viewFive per cent of a room rate is a moving target, not a ceiling. The choice worth legislating is not the cap but whether London gets one instrument and one taxable base instead of borough-by-borough improvisation.

Third-party risk rules bind the bank, not the vendor it cannot replace

US regulators have put draft third-party risk guidance out for comment and, separately, addressed how small banks deal with their core providers. The second document quietly concedes the first one's weakness.

Our viewGuidance binds the bank, not the supplier it cannot replace. Telling a small bank to negotiate better terms with its core provider asks the weaker party to fix a market it did not make.

An 18-month exam cycle is defensible. Calling it burden relief is not

Widening eligibility for the longer examination cycle is a reasonable risk-based judgment. Selling it as a cut in cost, rather than a reallocation of scarce examiner time, means nobody ever has to prove it worked.

Our viewStretching the inspection gap for small, well-run banks is sensible, because frequency was never the same thing as vigilance. But the agencies sold it as cost relief and never said where the freed examiner time goes.

A battery rebate that pays for paperwork will end up buying paperwork

Almost 100 whistleblower tip-offs allege faked installs and forged signatures under a multi-billion-dollar battery scheme. The tell is not the fraud. It is that outsiders found it before the scheme did.

Our viewIf a subsidy is released by a signed form, forging the form becomes the business. The worry is not that people cheated — it is that outsiders found it before the scheme's own checks did.

Banning card surcharges hides the fee, it does not cut it

From 1 October Australian shops cannot surcharge card payments. The cost stays and moves into the price of everything — paid by cash customers too — while the last visible pressure on card fees disappears.

Our viewBanning card surcharges hides the cost of card payments, it does not remove it. Unless the fees merchants pay are capped and falling, the bill just shifts onto cash payers and small shops.

Diverting super into wages is a pay rise that ends up in the landlord's pocket

One Nation would let workers redirect part of their retirement contributions into take-home pay for three years. Offer that to everyone bidding for the same houses and the money lands in the price, not the pocket.

Our viewGiving every renter and buyer more monthly cash to bid with does not make housing cheaper for them; it makes it dearer for all of them. The relief ends up in the rent and the sale price.

A tax break bought by promising never to change is grandfathering, not reform

Discretionary trusts can dodge the new 30 per cent minimum if they freeze their distributions. That locks in the very income splitting the tax was meant to curb, and rewards whoever organised first.

Our viewPaying for a tax exemption by freezing distributions rewards whoever set up the most aggressive split first and punishes families whose circumstances change. It preserves the problem instead of ending it.

The tokenisation question the RBA should ask is about access, not plumbing

Australia's central bank wants views on what its settlement system should do in a tokenised market. The decision that matters is which institutions may hold central bank money, and it belongs in the same paper.

Our viewThe Bank is asking how its settlement system should work in a tokenised market. The harder question is who gets to hold an account in it, and that one should be asked out loud rather than settled by engineering.

A delayed payments release is fine. A delay without a new date is not

The Bank of England has pushed back its November 2026 RTGS standards release. Slipping a date in shared infrastructure is often the right call — but only if the replacement date and the reason land with it.

Our viewDelaying a payments standards update is usually the right call — a broken release is far worse than a late one. But a delay is only half an announcement. The new date and the reason are the other half.

The Bank of England's stablecoin rulebook starts too late by design

A Code of Practice for "systemic" stablecoin issuers has nobody in it until the Bank names someone. Publishing the rules was the easy part. Publishing the trigger, and the runway, is the part that matters.

Our viewRules that bite only once a stablecoin is declared systemic arrive after the risk does. The Bank should publish now what makes an issuer systemic, and how long it gets to comply once it is told.

The RBA has given up the quantity lever. Now the price on the window is everything

A demand-driven liquidity regime only delivers ample reserves if banks are willing to ask for them. Price the Reserve Bank's window too far above the cash rate target and "ample" becomes a name, not a condition.

Our viewLetting banks decide how many reserves they hold is sensible, but it only works if borrowing from the Reserve Bank is cheap and ordinary. Price the window above the cash rate target and banks will avoid it exactly when it matters.

The Bank changed which inflation number counts, then kept watching the old one

Australia now measures its inflation target against a monthly figure. The Reserve Bank says it will keep making rate decisions off a quarterly one until 2027. Those are two different numbers.

Our viewThe Bank is now judged against the monthly figure but still makes its decisions using the old quarterly one. That is a sensible choice, badly explained — and it will cost the Bank trust it cannot currently spare.

Australia gave a politician the payments switch. Britain gave it to a bigger regulator

Both countries decided in 2026 that payments oversight needed different hands. Australia added a minister. Britain removed a specialist. Neither changed a single rule about what payment firms must do.

Compares Australia, United Kingdom

Our viewAustralia handed more power to a politician. Britain handed it to a bigger regulator. They diagnosed the same problem and did opposite things about it, so at least one of them is wrong.

The payments regulator won in court in January and was abolished in April

Mastercard, Visa and Revolut challenged the PSR's power to cap card fees and lost. Three months later the Treasury confirmed the body would be folded into the FCA. Its powers survive. The question is whether the appetite does.

Our viewEvery legal power transfers across. What does not transfer is appetite — a body with one job behaves differently from one with twenty. The fee work will quietly slow, and nothing in the law will show it happening.

The $3 million super line rises less often than the word indexed suggests

A new tax applies to very large superannuation balances. The threshold is meant to rise with prices, but it only moves in $150,000 jumps — so most of the time it does not move at all.

Our viewThe line does rise, but only in jumps of $150,000, which takes about two years to earn. In between it sits completely still while savings keep growing towards it. That is not what most people heard when they were told it was indexed.

Crypto firms lost their safety net ten months before the new rules start

The relief letting Australian crypto platforms trade while the law was settled ran out in June. The law replacing it does not begin until April 2027. In between, they are back under the rules everyone agreed were broken.

Our viewThe promise not to prosecute expired in June 2026, ten months before the new law starts. Crypto firms are stuck under the old unclear rules with none of the protection that made them liveable. Those two dates should have been lined up.

The Treasurer can now switch on payment rules that only the Reserve Bank used to control

New laws widened who regulates digital wallets and buy-now-pay-later, which was well covered. They also handed a politician a power that belonged to the central bank, which was not.

Our viewThat decision used to belong to the Reserve Bank alone. New laws let the Treasurer make it too, on national security grounds that may never be published. A technical judgement has quietly become a political one.