CommSec has released its latest State of the States report for the September quarter. The report analyses eight key indicators to assess the performance of Australia’s states and territories: economic growth; retail spending; equipment investment; unemployment; construction work done; population growth; housing finance and dwelling commencements. For each state and territory, latest readings for the key indicators are compared with decade averages (against the ‘normal’ performance).
Construction highlights
The measure used for analysis was the total amount of residential, commercial and engineering work actually completed in trend terms in the September quarter. Note: ABS could not provide an estimate for the Northern Territory; however, given its strength and overall rating for building work, the June quarter result for Northern Territory construction has been used.
- In all states/territories, construction work was higher than decade averages. There still remains a large gap between the strongest states (the resource states) and weakest state (Tasmania).
- Construction work done in the Northern Territory (in the June quarter) was 47% above its decade average. In the September quarter, Western Australian construction was up 34% on ‘normal’ levels, followed by Queensland (up 24%).
- In Tasmania, overall new construction work completed was 0.3% above the decade average after being down 6.2% on its decade average in the June quarter.
- Next weakest to Tasmania is South Australia, where construction work was just 4.0% above decade averages, followed by the ACT (up 6.5%).
- NSW was fourth ranked with construction work 14% above decade averages. Victoria was fifth ranked with construction work almost 8% above ‘normal’ levels.
- In terms of annual growth rates, Tasmanian construction work done in the September quarter was up 15.4% on a year ago – the best growth in eight years. Tasmania was followed by NSW (up 3.2%).
Read CommSec's State of the States report in full here.
Adapted from report by Rosalie Starling