Key events
What we learned, 1 February 2026
With that, we’re wrapping up the blog. Before we go, here are the major stories from Sunday:
We’ll pick things up again tomorrow.
Auction activity roars back after long weekend
Auction activity has bounced back sharply this weekend, with 1,629 auctions scheduled.
This is almost four times the 305 auctions held at the long weekend last week, and a jump on the 1,390 auctions that occurred at the same time last year.
Based on results collected so far, CoreLogic’s summary found that the preliminary clearance rate was 69.7% across the country, but above the 59.4% actual rate in the final numbers.
Across the capital cities:
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Sydney: 314 of 468 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 71.3%
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Melbourne: 489 of 643 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 69.3%
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Brisbane: 164 of 221 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 75%
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Adelaide: 101 of 153 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 86.1%
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Canberra: 123 of 135 auctions with a preliminary clearance rate of 39.8%
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Tasmania: One auction to be held.
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Perth: Eight auctions held.
Why some economists go against the flow on RBA rate bet
The Reserve Bank is widely tipped to become the first major central bank on Tuesday to U-turn from rate cuts to rate hikes in the post-Covid inflation era.
A handful of economists are expecting the Reserve Bank of Australia to hold the cash rate steady at 3.6% when its board wraps up its first meeting of 2026 on Tuesday.
The crux of his heterodox argument is that most analysts have focused on a rise in core inflation in the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) long-running quarterly consumer price index series, the RBA’s preferred measure.
But doing this ignores a downward trend in the ABS’s newly minted monthly data series, which shows inflationary pressures are more temporary than permanent, although the RBA has said it would pay less heed to the monthly measure while kinks were ironed out in the data.
Money markets believe there is a high probability of a hike, implying a 70% chance of a 25-basis-point increase.
While the decision dominates the week’s agenda, economists will also scrutinise building approvals data on Tuesday and Australia’s balance of trade, due Thursday.
Federal politicians will grill RBA officials on their rate decisions on Friday, when its governor, Michele Bullock, deputy, Andrew Hauser, and three assistant governors front a committee hearing in Canberra.
Wall Street investors are meanwhile trying to figure out what Donald Trump’s nomination to succeed the US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, will mean for interest rates.
Its former governor Kevin Warsh should favour lower rates but stop short of more aggressive monetary easing linked to other potential nominees.
– AAP
Australia swelters through fourth hottest January on record
Graham Readfearn
Australians endured the country’s fourth-hottest January on record, with nationwide temperatures 1.9C above average, according to Bureau of Meteorology data.
Last month marked the 24th consecutive January in which Australia’s mean temperature exceeded the long-term average from 1961 to 1990.
New South Wales had a standout month, with the data showing maximum temperatures were the second highest on the bureau’s record, which goes back to 1910. Maximums in South Australia were the third highest on record.
Global heating caused mostly by burning fossil fuels has seen Australia warm by 1.5C since 1910.
Australia experienced two heatwaves in January. Last week’s extreme heat set records tumbling in South Australia and Victoria, with multiple locations recording their highest-ever temperatures.
Laneway festival to host drug checking service as part of NSW trial
Laneway festival will host an onsite drug checking service as part of an ongoing trial, it was confirmed on Sunday.
Laneway will be the 11th festival to participate in the year-long trial when it begins next Sunday at Centennial Park.
The service will be free and anonymous for festival patrons, allowing them to bring a small sample to be checked on-site by qualified health staff.
Participants will be informed of the substance and its potency, along with guidance on how to reduce risks if they choose to use it.
Trained peer workers are available on site to provide tailored guidance on risks, confidential support and information about additional support services.
The NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, said the service was intended to help people make informed decisions to reduce drug-related harm, but is not a guarantee of safety.
This trial aims to inform individuals about substances, allowing them to avoid dangerous substances, discard high-risk drugs, make safer and more informed choices and potentially avoid serious health risks.
Our priority is to reduce harm and keep people safe.
The trial comes after the NSW Government’s Drug Summit concluded in December 2024. The summit’s report recommended a trial of music festival-based drug testing as a priority.
‘It’s not about democracy’: NSW attorney general doubles down on phrase ban
The New South Wales state government remains determined to ban use of the phrase “globalise the intifada” despite most submissions to an inquiry about the move opposing the ban.
When asked about the apparent opposition to the ban during a press conference on Sunday, the NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, contradicted a report that noted community opposition to the ban, saying, “I’m not sure that’s the case.”
Daley noted that the inquiry received 700 submissions, of which 155 are public.
It’s not about democracy. Just because a lot of people want to keep doing something that’s unacceptable doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for a government to do it.
For more on this story, read the past report by Guardian Australia’s Penry Buckley:
Josh Butler
Greens blame government inaction on housing and price gouging for looming rate rise
The Greens claim that Australians are facing an interest rate hike this week, in part, because the government hasn’t done enough to deal with rising housing prices and corporate price gouging.
Greens leader Larissa Waters claims the Labor government should be doing more to manage those issues, in a bid to keep inflation down.
If you’re a mortgage holder or a renter, you face being hit by the RBA to ‘fix’ the government’s ‘inflation problem’. Anyone with a mortgage will be giving more per month to the big banks. Renters are going to cop it as it will trickle down into unfair rent rises.
It’s hard enough right now to get ahead, you shouldn’t be doing it harder. It shouldn’t be on you. This is about choices. The government’s priorities mean that you are copping the pain while banks, energy companies and property investors keep winning.”
She added:
If they’d taken them on, you wouldn’t be getting a rate rise.
Greens’ economic spokesperson Nick McKim went on to say:
This is about political choices, and Labor has chosen to protect corporate profits while ordinary people wear the pain.
If the Reserve Bank increases interest rates the treasurer will wring his hands and pretend he shares people’s pain when in reality he is responsible for increasing pressure on the RBA to raise.
NSW to remove ‘good character’ from being considered at sentencing hearings in nationwide first
Offenders convicted of any crime will no longer be able to rely on glowing character references during sentencing under changes being introduced in New South Wales, in a move supported by survivors of sexual abuse but which others say could limit defendants’ rights.
On Wednesday, the state government will become the first nationwide to introduce legislation to remove “good character” from being considered at sentencing hearings, when judges hear about someone’s prior record, general reputation and any positive contributions to society as mitigating factors.
It follows a recommendation from a NSW sentencing council review released on Sunday, which was commissioned in April 2024 after a campaign by Your Reference Ain’t Relevant to remove good character references during sentencing for child sex offenders.
For more on this story, read the full report by Guardian Australia’s Penry Buckley:
Victoria flips Metro Tunnel’s ‘big switch’ as new services begin
Sunday marks the day Melbourne’s $15bn Metro Tunnel will begin service in what the Victorian state government is calling “the big switch”.
New timetables with extra services that use the Metro Tunnel – first announced in 2015 and opened in November – will begin from Sunday.
The state government says the services will reduce congestion on the network and will also involve changes to bus routes in regional Victoria and inner-city Melbourne.
‘Changed me’: deputy leader back after cancer fight
The NSW deputy premier is returning to work for the new school year after her second cancer battle in three years.
Prue Car, who is also the minister for education and early learning, went on leave in June after revealing she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 43-year-old mother said it had been a difficult seven months, but she would be back at work on Monday to kick off the new school year.
In a video message on Sunday, she said the experience had “certainly changed me in so many ways”.
What hasn’t changed is my unwavering commitment to deliver for the people of NSW, for this beautiful community I represent here in western Sydney, as well as continuing our program in education.
I can’t wait to get back to work.
Car entered state parliament in 2015 for the western Sydney seat of Londonderry and has been deputy premier since Labor won government in March 2023.
The NSW MP remained deputy premier during her treatment but stepped back from her ministerial duties in education and early learning and western Sydney, handing the reins to fellow minister Courtney Houssos.
It was Car’s second major health battle, having taken leave in 2022 after an unrelated kidney cancer diagnosis.
– AAP
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas expected to enjoy comfortable win at next state election
South Australian Labor is tipped to take the stand in another landslide against the state’s Liberal party.
With the Liberals largely missing in action, Adelaide University emeritus professor of politics Clem Macintyre said the Labor Premier didn’t face much of a challenge.
The opposition party, she said, had been “at sixes and sevens” for most of his term.
The opposition leader, Ashton Hurn, who was thrust into the Liberal leadership in December, months out from the 21 March election, is left to pick up the pieces of a party that failed to recover after Labor turfed them out in 2022, winning 27 lower house seats to 16.
Labor has since gained two more seats at byelections, snaring former premier Steven Marshall’s electorate of Dunstan in 2023 and Black, which was held by his successor, David Spiers, in 2024.
Speirs quit parliament in October 2024 and was convicted on drug supply charges last year.
He was replaced by Vincent Tarzia, who trailed Malinauskas 58% to 19% as preferred premier in October’s DemosAU opinion poll, before he stepped down in December.
Hurn, 35, who is the member for the Barossa Valley seat of Schubert, is now one of five women leaders in the Liberal party at federal, state or territory level.
Macintyre said she expected the election would result in fewer Liberal MPs in the lower house. “Certainly, there’s unlikely to be many, if any, from metropolitan Adelaide,” she said.
Flinders University associate lecturer in public policy Josh Sunman said the oppositions light policy offering stands in contrast to the big announcements offered by Labor.
Though vulnerable on the state debt, ramping in the state’s hospitals and the Premier’s intervention into Adelaide Writers Week, Sunman suggested the Liberals had been unable to capitalise.
An unusual factor in this election is the number of MPs on criminal charges.
In addition to Spiers, three former Liberals-turned-independents found themselves before the courts last year.
The state election will be held on 21 March 2026.
– AAP
