If you’re looking for clues about whether the Reserve Bank has any interest rate rises left, Governor Michele Bullock offered several in her statement after Tuesday’s board meeting, saying:
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the latest monthly figures showed inflation “continuing to moderate”
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inflation expectations remained “consistent with the inflation target”
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wages growth was “not expected to increase much further”.
Since Australia’s Reserve Bank hiked interest rates two weeks ago, there have been two important developments – one in the United States and the other in the United Kingdom.
If it’s not clear to you why events overseas influence Australia’s interest rates, which are meant to be set to control Australian inflation, read on.
US and UK inflation close to zero
We haven’t been complete masters of our own destiny since the Australian dollar was floated 40 years ago next month.
Among the seemingly endless coverage of Queen Elizabeth II dying at age 96 in Balmoral, Scotland, a legal fact gets lost: this event generates exactly zero change in law. There are non-law implications – historical, cultural, symbolic, administrative – but not legal change.
The Victorian Labor government has done some fantastic work, but principles have to count for something.
Just for the record, I canceled my membership to the Victorian Labor Party on the 13th May.
Those of you who know me well will know that this hasn’t been a decision I’ve taken lightly, however under the circumstances, it’s a decision that was easy to make.
You may find this hard to believe, but the 2016 federal election campaign was a full fortnight longer than this one. I remember journalists from the campaign bus complaining afterwards that Malcolm Turnbull was moribund and lazy, booking a single daily event.
Yes hello long time blogger, first time in almost two years post. In late 2020 my life (and writing) became consumed by completing a doctorate, which was eventually conferred in September 2021. I even popped on a floppy hat in December last year.
Labor’s Senate leadership under attack from within as three leading Senator’s are smeared in the ugliest factional fight to date from a repeat offending sub-faction of the Victorian Right. So what’s it all about and who’s involved?
Another Labor factional shitfight. What’s new eh?
The events over the next week in NSW could have massive ramifications for the whole country.
There is a lot going on the NSW at the moment, however, I fear worse may be yet to come.
Now that ‘Back In Black’ has transformed into ‘I See Red’ Australia is waking up to the fact that after years of Coalition mismanagement ‘The Honeymoon Is Over’.
Although many of us would like to think so, elections are not won from the left or the right, they are won from the centre. At the end of election day, it is the swinging voters that will decide the immediate future direction of the country.
And so it went in 2013 when as a nation we were afflicted with this Coalition government.
I don't need to know about that bit.
- Gladys Berejiklian to Daryl Maguire
An earlier version of this post focused on the fact that the budget was announced last week, and right now there are compromises and horse-trading underway to get it passed into law, and that any member of the federal parliamentary press gallery worth their salt should be onto this and what it might mean for our country in these uncertain times.