Australians should thank their lucky stars that Steven Miles and his coterie of populist Premiers aren’t pulling the Reserve Bank’s monetary levers.
The Queensland Premier and his WA counterpart, Roger Cook, who inherited budgets bulging with iron ore, coal and gas royalties, are singing from the same song sheets of their union masters in demanding the RBA immediately slash rates.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, another newbie craving popularity, joined the RBA bashing chorus despite running Australia’s worst budget.
Yes, all households are desperate for interest rates to be cut. But voters are sick of politicians, especially three premiers who have never won elections in their own right, using their economic pain for political gain.
Populist Premiers shouting from the cheap seats was a daily annoyance during the Covid pandemic, as they oversaw some of the world’s most draconian restrictions that failed to stop mass breakouts and deaths.
There’s good reason the RBA is independent. Politicians obsessed by polling and focus groups can’t be trusted with making tough decisions to combat inflation. Governments themselves have stoked inflation through infrastructure spending binges and ballooning public services.
Miles, who replaced another populist premier in Annastacia Palaszczuk, elevated to the top job in Queensland on the cusp of a wild storm and cyclone season. Cue hi-vis jackets.
Ahead of a tight Queensland election in October, Miles has hit the ground running with dozens of picture opportunities, a shiny new emissions target and road trips with Anthony Albanese.
The 46-year-old smiling assassin has shown little interest in substantive new policies. He is building a brand based on voter-friendly banter. For a bloke who’s been in cabinet since 2015, his new-found passion defending farmers and households by admonishing the RBA and supermarket chains is a bit rich. Despite the ACCC running a national inquiry and grocery prices surging over several years, Miles announces his own supermarket probe with no teeth. It seems the new class of post-pandemic premiers have fully embraced the shrill, populist politics that Daniel Andrews, Mark McGowan and Palaszczuk feasted on.
The International Monetary Fund last month urged the RBA to lift interest rates further and warned federal and state governments to cut spending to return inflation to its target band before 2026.
The Prime Minister and Jim Chalmers are praying that inflation will continue to moderate over the next two quarters, paving the way for a series of interest rate cuts in the second half of 2024.
After a horror end to 2023, and last week confirming their broken promise on stage three tax cuts weeks out from the crucial Dunkley by-election in Victoria, they are as desperate as households for interest rates relief.
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