Power prices up 63pc since 2007.

An ACCC report shows that power prices went up 63pc since 2007, as watchdog casts doubt on Clean Energy Target. The ABC reports that power prices have increased by more than 60 per cent in the last 10 years, according to the latest report from the competition watchdog. And the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims says a Clean Energy Target (CET) provides no guarantee of turning that around. The ACCC found that while retail prices for electricity were reasonably stable between 1990–91 and 2007–08, there has been a dramatic spike in the past decade, in fact prices went up by 63 per cent in real terms — that is, after adjustments for inflation. Speaking upon the report's release, Mr Sims said the CET proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel — who said it would deliver a 10 per cent reduction in prices over 30 years — would not necessarily lower power prices, "We don't judge that it will have that much of an effect on affordability," Mr Sims told ABC's AM.

BIS says Australia's 55-year house price 'upswing' the longest in the world.

The SMH reports that researchers at the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements have analysed long-run trends in house prices across 47 countries, as part of a paper exploring how interest rates affect the price of real estate. The long-term rise in Australian house prices since the early 1960s has been the most sustained property market upswing in the world in recent decades, the new research says. Since 1961, the report says the cumulative gain in Australian property prices is a whopping 6556 per cent, that compares with a cumulative 1332 per cent, or 13-fold, rise in United States house prices over 47 years. "Is housing a good long-term investment? Our data suggests that the answer is an unqualified "yes": real house prices increased on average by close to 7 per cent per annum in the sample of 20 advanced economies for which there are 45 years of data on average," said the working paper, by Gregory Sutton, Dubravko Mihaljek and Agne Subelyte.