The Albanese government will consider further cost-of-living relief alongside planned spending cuts in the upcoming mid-year budget update.<\/p>\n
News24.com.au can reveal targeted relief measures are being discussed as Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares the economic statement for December.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s understood that any new assistance will have to pass the critical test of not adding further to inflation.<\/p>\n
It comes amid growing calls for drastic action to rein in government spending, following five interest rate hikes this year.<\/p>\n
Labor\u2019s proposed approach will allow it to offer households relief from rising costs while attempting to convince the RBA it is taking action to reduce demand in the economy.<\/p>\n
The cheaper medicines policy is among the examples of cost-of-living assistance that could meet the government’s requirement for measures to be non-inflationary.<\/p>\n
The consideration of further assistance comes as ministers face growing pressure to identify savings.<\/p>\n
There have so far been multiple meetings of the government’s Expenditure Review Committee, as it examines spending ahead of the December statement.<\/p>\n
Ministers have been challenged to find savings within their portfolios as the government attempts to balance competing demands for household relief and tighter fiscal policy.<\/p>\n
But Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has previously refused to guarantee the government will deliver net savings in the mid-year update.<\/p>\n
She warned that growing pressures on the federal budget were making the task increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n
Ms Gallagher said she did not want to pre-empt the Expenditure Review Committee process, despite the effort being put into finding savings.<\/p>\n
“I can’t, I don’t want to pre-empt the (Expenditure Review Committee) process,\u201d Ms Gallagher said last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will go through that … but there is enormous effort being placed, particularly by Jim and myself on the savings side.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing a lot of work on the savings side but I can\u2019t get ahead of decisions that haven\u2019t been made yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Finance Minister also rejected suggestions there was tension inside cabinet over the push to rein in spending.<\/p>\n
The Treasurer also refused to commit to net savings as annual inflation hovers above 4 per cent, and outside the RBA\u2019s 2-3 per cent target range.<\/p>\n
RBA Governor Michele Bullock has stressed Australia’s monetary policy tightening is aimed at addressing domestic capacity pressures.<\/p>\n
The government has also faced questions over the extent to which international events, including the US-Iran conflict, are driving inflation.<\/p>\n
The impact of the conflict has been felt overseas, with the Bank of England raising interest rates from 3.75 to 4 per cent on Friday, its first increase in three years.<\/p>\n
Governor Andrew Bailey warned further increases could follow if the Middle East conflict was not resolved.<\/p>\n
“Today\u2019s increase shouldn\u2019t be seen as the first in an inevitable long sequence of hikes,\u201d Mr Bailey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, unless the conflict in the Middle East is resolved, neither does it seem likely to be the last increase.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Ms Bullock has made clear Australia’s latest rate increase was largely driven by domestic spending pressures rather than global oil prices.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister has previously acknowledged the RBA only has a single \u201cblunt instrument\u201d in the fight against inflation.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the budget update, Mr Albanese has signalled a willingness to make difficult decisions on spending, while accusing the Coalition of blocking proposed savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were always going to be fiscally responsible because my government is a fiscally responsible government, and we will take appropriate action,\u201d he said last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won’t rip money out of health or schools. What we will do is take responsible action and take hard decisions. We’ve shown we’ve been prepared to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Albanese government will consider further cost-of-living relief alongside planned spending cuts in the upcoming mid-year budget update.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2324,8931,1480,2610,20309,43,5465,42086,114203,1788,523747,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-956460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-auspol","tag-budget","tag-cost-of-living","tag-government-spending","tag-headlines","tag-inflation","tag-jim-chalmers","tag-katy-gallagher","tag-labor","tag-midyear-budget-update","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956460","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=956460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}