Australian politics is full of mise en abyme, the endless regress of self-referentiality into a meaningless abyss.
Nobody better exemplifies this than Treasurer Jim “chicken” Chalmers who is so inept and cowardly that he has to lie about being so, the reasons for it, and then lie about those lies as well!
Take today:
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review ahead of the release of the key GDP number that is expected to be underwhelming, the Treasurer said it was incumbent on him to be honest with people about why the economy was struggling to grow.
“I don’t see it as a shot at anyone, I see it as a reflection of reality,” he said. “My job is to tell it like it is, to acknowledge the economy is slowing considerably and what we are doing about it.”
“Tell it like it is”. OK then.
Australia has two unique inflation problems:
- an energy permashock driven by the east coast gas cartel, and
- a housing shortage driving rents mad.
The first shock began with the Ukraine War and has continued ever since. Why? Because instead of smashing the gas cartel for war profiteering, Chicken Chamlers protected it, and still is, with a ludicrously high $12Gj mandated price floor.
This led directly to the huge rise in energy-intensive building materials that has bankrupted builders and crushed any dwelling construction supply response to the second great blunder by Chicken Chamlers – surging immigration – which has sent rents mad.
These two inflationary sources are the sole reason that the RBA is behind the curve versus other developed economies.
They are also why living standards fell much further under Chicken Chalmers than in other developed economies.
To top it all off, Chicken Chalmers’ RBA reforms are stillborn so the central bank is operating as half-pregnant trailer trash for Chicken Chamlers to bash every time his own blunders come back to haunt economic performance.
That is reality. Whatever Chicken Chalmers is smoking is something else.
