Two years ago, amid the fastest interest rate rise cycle in a generation, Jim Chalmers met with the then governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, in Sydney. The federal treasurer was direct about his growing displeasure with the central bank boss.

Chalmers accused Lowe of ignoring the pain that rate rises were having on regular people, like those in Logan, the city nestled between Brisbane and the Gold Coast where Chalmers grew up and still lives. Lowe, the treasurer noted somewhat caustically, had never been there, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange and who asked to remain anonymous. The RBA governor was told he lacked empathy and that he needed to get outside Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs where he lived.