Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question goes to the Treasurer. In announcing today the 13th interest rate rise under Labor, the Reserve Bank said in its official statement:

… inflation is likely to remain above target for some time …

In light of this, can the Treasurer rule out future rate rises this year?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You'd think by now that the shadow Treasurer would know that the Reserve Bank takes its decisions independent of government.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can hear them interjecting over there, including the member for Hume, but when we took steps to make the Reserve Bank even more independent, the member for Hume supported us until everyone else rolled him and then they opposed us. So he doesn't come to this with a heap of credibility when it comes to Reserve Bank independence.

Now, as I said before in the answer to an earlier question, I have responsibilities when it comes to managing the budget, rolling out the cost of living and working with these colleagues to make sure that we play a helpful role in this really important fight against inflation. We have different responsibilities to the independent Reserve Bank. The shadow Treasurer really should know that by now. He's been in the role for a little while. We've got different responsibilities, but we've got the same objective. We need to get on top of this inflation challenge in our economy. We need to do that in a way that doesn't sacrifice too many jobs, and that's the task that the Reserve Bank independently and the government separately are engaged in.

If the shadow Treasurer wants to refer to the statement put out by the Reserve Bank a little while ago, he should concede that this whole campaign that they've been running up to today—they've been desperately hoping for a rate rise today—and that saying that the Reserve Bank was terribly concerned about public spending was rubbish. If you look at the Reserve Bank's statement today, it doesn't mention government spending. It's not a factor in the decision that they took today. In fact, they've gone out of their way to say that the upside surprise in inflation and the pressure on the outlook is coming from private demand.

These aren't my opinions on their own. They are now in a statement issued by the independent Reserve Bank. If those opposite want to pretend now that government sets interest rates, that is, obviously, dishonest. Of course we don't, but we do work as hard as we can to get on top of inflation and to roll out this cost-of-living relief, because we do understand that people are under pressure. But we do more than acknowledge that. We're acting on that. If those opposite really cared about cost-of-living pressures, they would have supported our tax cuts, they would have supported our cost-of-living relief, they wouldn't have left us a mess in the budget, and they wouldn't have taken to the election a policy for higher taxes, bigger deficits and more debt.

Those opposite spent the end of last year trying to divide the country. They spent the start of this year trying to divide themselves, and now they want the Australian people to believe that, all of a sudden, they care about the cost of living. Only this side of the House does.