Usually falling house prices coincide with weakness in the economy that has central banks cutting rates.
At the moment, however, Australia's economy is ticking along very strongly. Gross domestic product grew 0.9 per cent in the June quarter and 3.6 per cent through the year, official data from last week revealed. Demand is robust and so is inflation.
The discrepancy between house prices and the broader economy can be explained because different sections of the economy are being affected differently by the interest rate rises.
Anyone looking to borrow to buy a house will pay much higher rates than they would have a year ago and faces the prospect rates will rise further. As a result, they are more cautious about overpaying for homes and banks are lending them less, with the result that house prices are falling.
But a significant proportion of existing homeowners have been thus far shielded from this year's interest rate rises because they have fixed-rate mortgages.
Some of these loans are already expiring and a huge number will expire next year, and all of these homeowners will be shifted from ultralow fixed rates to higher and rising rates.
That's when we'll start to see the effect of the interest rate rises. All of a sudden, large numbers of consumers will have hundreds of dollars less in their pockets at the end of the week.
They will cut back on discretionary items – holidays, dinners out and new televisions. They'll delay getting a new car and stick with the old furniture for the time being and the economy will slow.
The big question is how much the rates will bite. It makes for a very tricky situation for the RBA, because it is in effect flying blind.
If the RBA is too aggressive in its interest rate rises, it will only find out when it's too late and it has tipped the economy into a much more severe downturn than was necessary.
Women at the top
Women are massively underrepresented at the upper echelons of Australia's largest companies.
It's an extraordinary topic to still be talking about in 2022, but what's even more surprising is female representation in the ranks of Australia's corporate executives has declined in the past 12 months, according to a survey by Chief Executive Women.
Of the 300 largest companies on the Australian stock market, 46 have no senior women in their leadership teams, up from 44 last year, the census found.
"Women's representation into ASX leadership is going nowhere fast," said Sam Mostyn, the president of Chief Executive Women (CEW).
"Our census confirms that the progress of women into the most senior leadership roles in the nation's top companies has been negligible and in the last year, representation has gone backwards."
Only 18 women are chief executives of ASX300 companies, unchanged from last year and this looks as if it won't change much in future.
Around two-thirds of these companies have no women in line roles – those roles which drive key commercial outcomes and usually have profit and loss responsibility. This is important, because line roles are almost always where CEOs are selected from.
At the current rate of change, CEW said it would take 100 years for these companies to achieve collective gender balance in their CEOs.
The rationale for seeking more women in executive ranks is well-known: more diversity of opinion and avoiding group think; a bigger pool of talent to choose from; and making better use of women to help alleviate Australia's skills and worker shortage.
But what might really move the dial on women in executive ranks is a newer factor – investment capital.
Large institutional investors and pension funds are increasingly paying attention to ESG (environment social and governance) factors when they allocate their capital.
Often this just means a heavy focus on the environmental performance of a company, such as its emissions reduction plan. But more investors are taking a broader view of ESG and will want to see that as part of proper governance, women are equally represented in the leadership ranks.
If companies start to feel their lack of female executives is holding investors back from supporting their share price or providing capital for the company to expand or make acquisitions, they might just begin to act.
