← All silosAustralia
Regulated by ASIC, APRA, ACCC, AUSTRAC. Monetary authority: Reserve Bank of Australia.
The regime that governs published opinion here: Corporations Act financial product advice — AFSL, with a media exemption and a general-versus-personal-advice distinction.
Monetary policyFinOpine desk · 27 Aug 2026
Australia's inflation target is now benchmarked to the monthly CPI. By the RBA's own account it will keep making decisions off the quarterly trimmed mean until the new series matures. Those are two different numbers.
Position
For the length of the CPI transition the RBA's stated target variable and its actual decision variable have come apart, and the Bank has been clearer about that in technical annexes than in anything the public reads.
Wrong if
If the Board's decisions through 2026 and 2027 track the monthly CPI at least as closely as the quarterly trimmed mean, the gap was administrative rather than real, and this argument fails.
TaxFinOpine desk · 26 Aug 2026
Division 296 is a better tax than the one first proposed. But its thresholds move in $150,000 steps, which means that for most of any given cycle they do not move at all.
Position
Indexing the Division 296 thresholds in $150,000 and $500,000 increments rather than continuously means the thresholds sit frozen for long stretches, so the cohort captured widens in nominal terms between steps.
Wrong if
If the large balance threshold steps up at least once every two years in practice and the number of affected members stays roughly flat, the increment size is immaterial and this argument fails.
FintechFinOpine desk · 24 Aug 2026
ASIC's no-action position expired at the end of June. The Digital Assets Framework does not commence until April 2027. Australian crypto platforms are spending the gap under exactly the rules everyone agreed were broken.
Position
The interval between the no-action expiry in June 2026 and commencement in April 2027 leaves platforms governed by the ambiguous pre-reform law without the relief that made it workable, and that sequencing was a choice rather than an accident.
Wrong if
If ASIC takes no enforcement action against unlicensed platforms during this window and processes lodged applications without incident, the gap was administrative and the sequencing concern was overstated.
PaymentsFinOpine desk · 22 Aug 2026
The payments reforms widened the perimeter, which everyone covered. They also moved the power to designate a payment system from the central bank alone to a minister acting in the national interest, which almost nobody did.
Position
Extending designation power to the Treasurer on national-interest grounds changes payments regulation from a technocratic function of an independent central bank into one a minister can exercise for reasons including national security.
Wrong if
If the first ministerial designations rest on competition or consumer-protection grounds indistinguishable from what the RBA would have decided itself, the shift is formal rather than substantive.