Ross Gittins needs to do some fact-checking:
For several years, we had prices rising at a rate that was actually lower than the Reserve Bank and economists regarded as healthy: less than 2 per cent a year. But then, in the months before the federal election in May 2022, at which Scott Morrison and crew were tossed out, prices took off.
…it’s hard to blame the surge in prices on the Morrison government. Prices took off in all the rich economies for much the same reasons. First, because the pandemic caused major disruption to the supply of many goods, and Russia’s attack on Ukraine disrupted world gas and oil markets.
But second, because the efforts to prop the economy up during the lockdowns – by slashing interest rates almost to zero, and the shedloads of government spending on the JobKeeper scheme, the temporary doubling of unemployment benefits, and on many other things – proved to be wildly excessive.
…Despite the unceasing criticism of a largely partisan news media, the Albanese government’s part in helping get inflation back under control has been as good as it’s reasonable to expect.
There is no doubt that the first wave of inflation was global and pandemic-related.
However, the second wave, emanating from the Ukraine War shock, transpired in the first weeks of the Albanese government.
It was never an issue for the outgoing Morrison regime and it was Albo’s cowards that dropped the ball completely through most of 2022 as:
- Resources Minister Mad King repeatedly succumbed to gas cartel techniques of persuasion.
- Industry Minister Ed Husic acted too late and without enough vigour to change his government’s mind.
- Energy Minister Chris Bowen went missing in action.
- Treasury Jim Chalmers projected fear of the cartel at every turn, cutting off moves for domestic reservation and super profits taxes.
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did nothing.
By the time the government applied its $12Gj price cap in late 2022, which is now a floor two years later, markets were already deflating to those levels.
The second wave of Australian inflation was purely the fault of their Albanese government:
I rang key individuals in the government in their first week of government to warn them.
There is also the issue of Albo’s wildly out-of-control immigration surge, which sent rental inflation nuts.
Together, these two blunders added approximately 2% to the CPI without considering spillovers.
Albo made Australian inflation much worse than it needed to be, drove interest rates higher than they needed to be, and gutted households much more than they needed to be.
He turned our natural advantages of a protected labour market during COVID and huge domestic energy reserves into a millstone around our necks.
So much so, that he smashed the economy versus our competitive set.
