Jim Chalmers has gone from being a spin merchant to an attack dog and this time his usual target isn\u2019t a Liberal Party politician.<\/p>\n
For the first time since becoming a Labor staffer turned Treasurer almost four years ago, his object of scorn is a former Reserve Bank governor.<\/p>\n
His new bullseye is Philip Lowe, an easy target at that, who\u2019s reinvented himself as a Dr Phil style economist with some simple, homespun commonsense minus a TV studio audience, a moustache and a Texan accent.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also an economic hate figure, with a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n In 2021, at the height of Sydney and Melbourne\u2019s lockdowns, this Dr Phil from inner-city Randwick infamously promised the RBA cash rate would stay on hold until 2024 \u201cat the earliest\u201d only for interest rates to go up 13 times in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n Talk about commitment issues.<\/p>\n A dozen of those increases occurred on Labor\u2019s watch, before Dr Lowe\u2019s successor Michele Bullock and her Labor-appointed monetary policy board followed suit earlier this month.<\/p>\n So, when the former RBA chief goes slams Labor\u2019s high spending record, Dr Chalmers resorts to his first instinct: spin.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it comes to a couple of the issues of substance that he raised, for example spending, spending as a share of the economy has come down from almost a third of the economy, when he was the governor now to closer to a quarter of the economy,\u201d he responded.<\/p>\n Dr Phil\u2019s advice has turned the spat with Dr Chalmers into a verbal version of something from the late Jerry Springer\u2019s show with flying fists and chairs.<\/p>\n No mention was made of COVID lockdowns that saw government spending soar to the highest levels since World War II as a share of gross domestic product.<\/p>\n The 26.9 per cent of GDP forecast for 2025-26 by Treasury would be the highest since 1986 outside of COVID during a time of high inflation.<\/p>\n Real wages are going backwards again for the first time in more than two years.<\/p>\n But rather than address Dr Lowe\u2019s concerns about government handouts fuelling inflation, Dr Chalmers took the battle of the PhDs to a new level.<\/p>\n He\u2019s blaming someone else, like a deadbeat figure of fun on Dr Phil getting jeered.<\/p>\n The best form of defence can be attack, so the instinct was to highlight how Dr Phil wasn\u2019t reappointed in 2023 for another three years.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t engaged in any public criticism of his record as RBA governor or the forward guidance he gave or any of the decisions he took,\u201d the Treasurer said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not interested now in having an argument with Phil Lowe,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, it\u2019s a matter of public record: Phil Lowe would have liked to have been reappointed by the Government.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter he wasn\u2019t reappointed by the Government, he\u2019s become a fairly persistent critic of the Labor government in the pages of the Financial Review and elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cI think to some extent, it\u2019s human nature. I understand that but I have a very respectful view of Phil Lowe.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the former Reserve Bank governor and he\u2019s got his name in the paper today.\u201d<\/p>\n For the record, Dr Lowe had this to say as chair of the Australian Securities Exchange\u2019s new corporate governance advisory board.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope the government turns out to be more ambitious than it currently looks like it will be because if it doesn\u2019t and productivity growth remains weak, the supply capacity of the economy will remain weak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means that demand growth has to remain weak and real wage growth has to remain weak. That\u2019s the fundamental problem.<\/p>\n \u201cProductivity capacity of the economy is not growing very quickly and the government wants to keep spending and wants to keep offering people handouts, which adds to demand, which in the normal course of events would be fine. But if the supply is not growing, you can\u2019t do it and if you try to do it then interest rates have to go up.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Phil\u2019s advice has turned the spat with Dr Chalmers into a verbal version of something from the late Jerry Springer\u2019s show with flying fists and chairs.<\/p>\n With economists forecasting another hike in May, it\u2019s brutal.<\/p>\n But as a Treasurer, he\u2019s resembling Oprah Winfrey leaving a set of car keys under every seat of the studio audience and jumping for joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim Chalmers has gone from being a spin merchant to an attack dog and this time his usual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,927,714],"class_list":["post-483242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-opinion","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}