Treasurer Jim Chalmers is under fire for failing to take responsibility for the inflation problems that prompted the Reserve Bank to increase the cash rate.<\/p>\n
In duelling Sky News interviews on Wednesday, the Treasurer and shadow treasurer Tim Wilson gave their pitches for what was behind the latest rate rise and what was needed to address inflation.<\/p>\n
The official cash rate was increased by 0.25 percentage points to 4.1 per cent on Tuesday, with RBA Governor Michele Bullock declaring the decision was prompted by inflation data that preceded the impacts of the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n
Mr Chalmers said the US and Israel\u2019s war with Iran would make fighting inflation harder, but that he took responsibility for the task.<\/p>\n
\u201cInflation is too high in our economy. That was the case before the dramatic escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, and that will make this inflation challenge harder, rather than easier,\u201d the Treasurer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are acting on that with all of this work we’re doing in fuel markets, the cost of living relief we’re rolling out – including two more tax cuts – as well as our efforts to make sure that the budget in May, like the four that preceded it, is as responsible as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Treasurer said that the primary driver of the inflation increase was \u201cfaster than expected growth in the private economy, not public demand\u201d, though he acknowledged government spending played a role.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that, that’s why we put so much effort into getting spending as a share of the economy down very substantially since we came to office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s why we found $114 billion in savings and delivered budget surpluses and got the deficits down. It’s because we understand that a responsible budget is\u2026 one of the most important things that we can do in the context of this inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But shadow treasurer Tim Wilson hit out at the claims, telling Sky News Australia the rate increase was \u201cheavily driven by public spending\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf only you could pay your mortgage with Jim Chalmers’ excuses,\u201d Mr Wilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Reserve Bank has made it crystal clear in its statement \u2013 it was the second sentence \u2013 that this is an interest rate hike off the back of inflation data in the second half of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd unfortunately, because this is based off data that came out for December in the second half of last year, the RBA Governor has gone on and said we can’t guarantee that there may not be more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shadow treasurer said the government needed to \u201cstop pouring debt petrol on the inflation fire\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s happening is that the federal government is taking debt, they’re pouring it into the economy through different projects and schemes. It’s pushing up private demand, and that’s why interest rates are going up as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Treasury’s own estimates have outlined that over the past four years that they’ve had to revise their spending by about $100 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need is a treasurer who’s going to take responsibility, control spending and make sure that he’s not actively stoking an inflation agenda, as he is right now, because Australians are paying it through $27,600 a year more on the average mortgage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasurer Jim Chalmers is under fire for failing to take responsibility for the inflation problems that prompted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,14821,47743,164,5626,1788,7054,16776,57056],"class_list":["post-547855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-cash-rate","tag-chalmers","tag-economy","tag-interest-rates","tag-labor","tag-rba","tag-reserve-bank","tag-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}