{"id":605843,"date":"2026-08-27T04:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605843\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T04:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:20:11","slug":"jim-chalmers-said-hed-slain-australias-inflation-dragon-two-years-later-its-breathing-fire-over-household-budgets-and-ordinary-aussies-are-paying-a-brutal-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605843\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Chalmers said he’d slain Australia’s inflation dragon. Two years later, it’s breathing fire over household budgets – and ordinary Aussies are paying a brutal price"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, Treasurer Jim Chalmers<\/a> posed for a magazine photo shoot against a giant illustrated cartoon backdrop, replete with an inflation<\/a> dragon he was shown triumphantly slaying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six months later, he boasted of ‘substantial progress’ on national television, and certainly didn’t correct the interviewer who declared the beast slain.<\/p>\n

It was a premature victory lap then, and it looks even more ridiculous now.<\/p>\n

The latest figures confirm the dragon is still breathing fire over household budgets. The annual trimmed mean inflation rate for July is steady at 3.6 per cent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stripping away statistical noise, this core measure remains stubbornly stuck well above the Reserve Bank’s 2 to 3 per cent target. Underlying prices rose half a per cent in July alone, smashing economists’ expectations of a 0.3 per cent rise.<\/p>\n

This is the real inflation story. Chalmers naturally prefers the headline figure that can’t be manipulated with handouts and the like, which eased slightly to 3.5 per cent, allowing him to issue a triumphant media release with the callow observation that the outcome was ‘promising’.<\/p>\n

That’s rubbish.<\/p>\n

A marginally lower headline inflation rate doesn’t mean prices are falling, just that they are rising slightly more slowly. Politicians celebrate the maths while families stare at prices that never went back down and keep going up.<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

Two years ago, Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed for a magazine photo shoot against a giant illustrated cartoon backdrop, replete with an inflation dragon he was shown triumphantly slaying<\/p>\n

The damage is everywhere around us. Over the past year, housing costs are up 5 per cent, electricity 6.1 per cent, childcare 7.3 per cent, and food and non-alcoholic drinks 3.2 per cent. These aren’t luxuries. They are the essentials of daily life, perhaps minus the alcohol.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, wage growth is less than inflation, meaning that real wages are going backwards.<\/p>\n

Next comes the interest rate punishment. The RBA has already hiked the cash rate three times this year, to 4.35 per cent, and these stubborn figures have economists bracing for more rates rises to come.<\/p>\n

An average household with a $600,000 mortgage and 25 years remaining is already paying roughly $3,300 more a year than it was at the start of 2026. A fourth quarter point rise would lift the cumulative annual hit to about $4,450.<\/p>\n

Renters aren’t spared either, with rents up 3.6 per cent amid a severe housing shortage, with higher rental increases predicted courtesy of Labor’s increases to property taxes, as investment property owners pass the added costs on to their tenants.<\/p>\n

And homeowners are being squeezed from both ends as national property values fell 0.7 per cent in July. Repayments are rising while equity vanishes, yet Labor says it’s a good time to buy into the falling market.<\/p>\n

Add GDP growth grinding towards a halt, and Australia is facing stagflation-lite: entrenched inflation, falling real wages, weak growth, and declining property values. There is nothing promising about all of that.<\/p>\n

We’re also once again on the cusp of a per capita recession, something high levels of immigration can’t hide.<\/p>\n

\"Over <\/p>\n

Over the past year, housing costs are up 5 per cent, electricity 6.1 per cent, childcare 7.3 per cent, and food and non-alcoholic drinks 3.2 per cent\u00a0<\/p>\n

So who is to blame?<\/p>\n

Chalmers rightly points to the conflict in the Middle East and higher global oil prices.<\/p>\n

\u00a0These are certainly factors weighing us down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But global oil prices don’t explain away underlying inflation stuck at 3.6 per cent, much less non-tradable inflation running at 4.4 per cent. We had an inflation problem domestically before the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

So Chalmers can’t outsource his responsibility, as much as he keeps trying to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal budget added billions of dollars of inflation stoking new spending precisely when fiscal restraint was needed most.<\/p>\n

Don’t take my word for it, that was the conclusion of the economics team at CBA.<\/p>\n

Temporary energy rebates and fuel-excise cuts are the economic equivalent of pushing a beach ball underwater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It conceals headline inflation for a little while, but does nothing to slay the underlying inflation dragon.<\/p>\n

Spending restraint, productivity reform (as opposed to dismissing the views of the Productivity Commission as Albo did), and housing construction that actually keeps pace with population growth are the answers to high inflation and low GDP growth. Sadly the political class doesn’t have the stomach for it.<\/p>\n

Ordinary Australians are the ones paying the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years ago, Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed for a magazine photo shoot against a giant illustrated cartoon backdrop,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[986,72,539,113,61,60,50761,43],"class_list":["post-605843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-dailymail","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-chalmers","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}