By lifting its cash rate by 0.5 points, from 0.35% to 0.85%, the Reserve Bank has added about another $120 per month in payments for a A$500,000 mortgage.
If financial markets are to be believed, by the end of this year it will have added a total of $800 per month – and, by the end of next year, a total approaching $1,000 per month.
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.
Stand by for something “reckless and dangerous”.
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.
The last week of campaigns used to be frantic, behind the scenes. In public, right up until the final week, the leaders would make all sorts of promises, many of them expensive, with nary a mention of the spending cuts or tax increases that would be needed to pay for them.
The Reserve Bank is pushing up interest rates to take money out of our hands.
The first increase in the current round will add about A$65 a month to the cost of paying off a $500,000 mortgage.
One of the stranger things about the Reserve Bank’s announcement of why it’s lifting interest rates by 0.25 percentage points is that it suggests inflation will come down by itself.
“A further rise in inflation is expected in the near term,” the RBA says, “but as supply-side disruptions are resolved, inflation is expected to decline back towards the target range of 2-3%.
There are four economic wildcards between now and the election, and we know exactly when each will be played.
This election will be won by the Coalition and Prime Minister Scott Morrison if the economic models perform as expected – and they usually do.
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.
Offered a menu of issues to choose from as the most important in the May 21 election, Australia’s top economists have overwhelmingly zeroed in on one.
One of the strangest, certainly one of the hardest to justify, measures in last week’s budget was called “supporting retirees”.
A better title would have been “supercharging the wealth of those retirees who already have more than enough to live on”.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
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?