Minutes of the April Monetary Policy Meeting of the Reserve Bank Board were released Monday and despite its dovish bias, the AUD/USD pair seemed to regain momentum and even hit fresh 2016 highs.
The AUD/USD pair moved up 0.27% to 0.7770, easing slightly from fresh ten-month highs of 0.7784 reached post-minutes release.
Other Asian markets followed suit Tuesday with South Korea’s won climbing to a five-month high and New Zealand’s dollar climbing as much as 0.9 percent to 70.09 U.S. cents. The euro rose 0.1 percent, after climbing 0.3 percent on Monday amid speculation the European Central Bank will refrain from further monetary easing at an April 21 policy meeting. The yen weakened 0.1 percent to 108.94 a dollar, extending its retreat from a 17-month high of 107.63 reached last week.
Minutes just released from the RBA December meeting indicated that Australia’s GDP had grown by 0.6 per cent in the December quarter. Growth in household consumption and dwelling investment had been strong in the quarter, while net exports had been little changed and business investment had subtracted from growth.
New Elections
Despite these positive numbers, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday that the country would probably go to the polls on July 2, after parliament blocked his government's proposal to reinstate a building industry regulator. The bill was seen as an attack on unions and was widely expected to fail but Turnbull pursued it nonetheless as he had sought a reason to call an election.
New elections give Turnbull a chance to reassert his leadership after ousting former leader Tony Abbott in a party room coup in September. Since then, Turnbull's lead in opinion polls has been in decline.