For the vast majority of voters, one interest rate cut won’t come close to easing the squeeze on their living standards
Waiting for this rate cut, instead of calling the election late last year, might turn out to be one of Anthony Albanese’s biggest mistakes.
Andrew Bolt
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It shows the Albanese government’s desperation that Wednesday’s good news about inflation is its big hope for winning the election, now even likelier to be on April 12.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers even hailed the fall in headline inflation as proof of his smarts: “The sorts of things that we are preparing for and planning for are now unfolding.”
Er, Jim: I wouldn’t claim credit for what many Australians are now feeling, with living
standards falling over the past three years.
Still, Chalmers was rightly relieved that annualised inflation in the last three months of last year dropped from 3.5 per cent to 3.2, once you strip away things like the electricity and housing subsidies the government shovelled out to con the Reserve Bank into thinking inflation was lower than it is.
At last! That’s only just above the 3 per cent which the Bank says is as high as inflation should go, so odds are growing the Bank will treat close enough as good enough and finally start to cut interest rates at its meeting on February 17 – or, at worst, at its April 1 meeting, after it gets the latest data on wages and unemployment.
But waiting for this rate cut, instead of calling the election late last year, before his latest
fall in the polls, might turn out to be one of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s biggest mistakes.
Remember, a cut in mortgage interest rates will help only people who’ve bought their own homes, and haven’t paid them off.
And they’ll hardly think one cut makes up for the 12 rate rises under Labor.
For renters and homeowners without mortgages, the cut will mean little.
Indeed, for the vast majority of voters, one interest rate cut won’t come close to easing the squeeze on their living standards.
They’re still paying much more for their electricity, when Albanese promised they’d pay $275 less.
Yes, employment is high, but prices are still rising, and have risen some 15 per cent since Labor was elected.
Housing is still unaffordable for most of the young and the poor.
The tax take is too much.
And that’s just the economy.
The government is meanwhile getting torn apart in the culture wars – on its three flags, the Jew hatred, the tribalism.
Sure, a cut in interest rates will give the government a feather to fly with.
But don’t mistake that feather for a whole wing.
Originally published as For the vast majority of voters, one interest rate cut won’t come close to easing the squeeze on their living standards