He’s only two years late:
Anthony Albanese has asked Treasury for advice on how the government can roll out more cost-of-living relief in the May budget without adding to inflation, prompting Labor MPs and unions to call for highly targeted programs to be expanded to provide support for middle income earners.
In his first press conference of the year, the Prime Minister – who signalled there would not be an election until next year – declared cost-of-living was central to his agenda after he was criticised for allowing 2023 to be dominated by the voice to parliament referendum and his overseas trips.
Foreshadowing support for struggling households as part of a government reset, Mr Albanese said he wanted to help people who were “feeling pressure as a result of global inflation”.
“I have asked (the departments of) Treasury and Finance to come up with further propositions that we’ll consider in the lead-up to the May budget this year,” Mr Albanese said.
Lies as ususal. Global inflation has gone bust:
What Albo needs to fight is Alboflation. That is, his self-inflicted inflation blundering is the only price problem left in Australia.
The mistakes were twofold.
First, in 2022, Albo acted far too late against energy cartels that were Ukraine War profiteering. He allowed the gas export cartel to import European prices for dirt-cheap Aussie gas, which blew up the local electricity market:
I rang very high levels in Albo’s ranks the week that they were elected and warned them directly that this was coming. They were too busy crawling to corporations to listen.
The rest is history:
Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra said businesses would need to pass on increasing costs to consumers or face closures.
“Small and medium businesses have been hit with this explosion of costs from supply chain to energy, even staff costs, and it’s making it more difficult for them to survive,” Guerra said.
Energy bills and staff shortages were the most common complaints from business in Victoria, though Guerra said he expected staff pressures to be relieved in the next six months.
“But the energy one is the biggest concern,” he said.
The news is better in the future, given the Australian Energy Regulator should slash prices in March for July 1 after the wholesale electricity price normalisation of the past year.
That is where Albo should be focused. Ensuring the AER does just that. Otherwise, the regulator may get rolled by vested interests.
Albo’s second major inflation blunder was dropping an immigration bomb on an economy with no plan to accommodate it.
Again, it was Albo’s penchant for corporate grovelling that led him astray. At the bidding of “business”, the newly elected Albo raced off to India to sign crazy immigration deals designed to crush wage inflation.
The result was a catastrophic surge in residential rents and clogging of infrastructure that spiked building costs.
The obvious solution is to slash immigration numbers for real, not the Albo pretence we currently have.
Albo’s immigration and energy blundering delivered nearly half the inflation in the economy by the end of 2023.
So, if today’s genius political pivot were for real, Albo would begin by sacking himself.
