The lights will be burning late into the night in the Canberra bunker of Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
The Treasurer’s team will be working on how to respond to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s expected cash rate rise on Tuesday.
Such a move would be the fifth cash rate hike this year and take it to an 18-year high of 4.85 per cent as the RBA tries to bring down inflation.
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So we can expect to hear more Albanese Government deflections away from economists’ repeated warnings about the inflation role played by government spending.
And get ready for the spotlight to be turned again on the flow-through impact of oil price rises brought on by Donald Trump’s war against Iran.
Or perhaps there will be a new variation on “it’s not us, it’s them”.
It is a theme which is played on repeat by the Government when the news is bad.
And when the news is good, guess who gets the credit? Hint. It’s not the RBA.
Thus on September 1, 2024, with the cash rate at just 4.35 per cent, Dr Chalmers accused the RBA’s hikes of “smashing the economy”.
Yet on February 18, 2025, after the RBA cut the cash rate to 4.1 per cent, Dr Chalmers offered praise closer to home.
“Under this Labor government inflation is down, wages are up, unemployment is low, and now interest rates are falling as well,” he crowed.
“This is the soft landing that we have been planning for and preparing for.”
How times change. With more bad news looming on rates now, Anthony Albanese took a swing at the weekend. At the RBA. He said its rate hikes were a “blunt instrument” which hurt people with mortgages.
It’s not us, it’s them.
It is no surprise the deflector shields have been deployed.
The latest Newspoll found Labor’s primary vote had fallen to its equal-lowest level since Mr Albanese won the 2022 election.
Support for One Nation remained at 28 per cent, ahead of 27 per cent for Labor and 21 per cent for the Coalition, which notched its third rise since August.
Mr Albanese’s net approval rating was minus 23, and Dr Chalmers was sitting on minus 16.
As gloomy forecasts on economic growth and house prices keep piling up, Mr Albanese was already in Antigua and Barbuda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
No doubt there will be plenty of time to bend the ears of world leaders in the quest for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
But it will not play well for the “global citizen” if his own citizens struggling back at home are hit with a rates move which makes it even tougher to make ends meet and further devalues their biggest investment — their home.
Such is the damage already done to the Albanese Government that on Monday NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns continued his bid to put some distance between himself and his Canberra party colleagues.
Mr Minns called on governments — including the Federal administration — to rein in spending to ease demand in the economy — which is helping drive inflation and interest rates.
“I think everybody’s got a responsibility to do what they can to take pressure off the Reserve Bank,” Mr Minns said.
But if rates rise you can bet Mr Albanese — if he drops the absurd ploy of not addressing domestic matters when overseas and deigns to comment — will make sure it won’t be his fault.
It will be down to “them”.
