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Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers says global economic turmoil and the Middle East conflict are creating substantial pressure on the federal budget and inflation. He says Australia is not expected to enter a recession but warns the country is not immune to weaker global growth, while the government seeks additional budget savings and urges critics to identify services or programs that could be reduced.
Chalmers says global economic turmoil will drive budget cuts, but Australia should avoid recession Treasurer says ‘very substantial and intensifying pressure’ on federal budget as he points finger at private sector for driving up inflation amid Middle East conflict Jim Chalmers has warned of “very substantial and intensifying” economic pressures on the horizon but insists he’s not planning for a recession, as he prepares to find new ways to cut the budget ahead of its mid-year update.
The treasurer on Sunday called on critics of government spending to name the services that should be cut, as he points the finger at the private sector for driving up inflation in Australia amid the protracted conflict in the Middle East. Chalmers said the US-led eight-month war against Iran, which has severely curtailed global oil supplies from the region, has been “disastrous” for cost-of-living pressures.
“No serious observer of what’s going on right now would conclude anything other than ,” he told ABC’s Insiders. “The longer this thing drags out, the bigger the impact on the global economy and on the“We’re not anticipating here in Australia, but certainly it is weighing on global growth, and we’re not immune from that.
”Chalmers said the government was working on finding further savings to the budget in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, due in December, after cuts of $44.9bn over four years were identified in the May budget. The treasurer said cuts to government spending weren’t the only factor driving up inflation in the economy, and cutting larger sums would impact essential services.
“If people don’t want us to strengthen Medicare, for example, or cut income taxes, or provide cost-of-living relief in other ways, then they should nominate where that should be cut,” he said on Sunday. Beyond the war’s impact on driving up prices in Australia, Chalmers said the private sector was partly to blame.
“Budget settings are not the primary driver of prices in our economy. There’s a whole bunch of other things going on. ” Australia’s wealth gap is growing and so is the anger over it. How do we fix this absolutely hopeless state of affairs?
| Zoe Daniel“He’s actively stoked inflation, and he’s fundamentally undermined the success of this country, and now he’s announced today he’s on a sort of Argo-style salvation trip for investment, because he’s created a problem of sovereign risk,” he told News24. The assistant science and digital technology minister, Andrew Charlton, said the consequences of having a recession, which would ease inflation, would be devastating.
“If you have a recession, you throw hundreds of thousands of people on to the unemployment queues, and that pulls a huge amount of demand out of the economy,” he told News24. “It’s pretty easy to have low interest rates and low inflation if your economy goes through a recession. “As a Labor government, that is a big priority for us to make sure that we don’t go into a recession that drives a lot of people into unemployment.
” Chalmers will travel to Japan for meetings with business leaders and the country’s finance minister, in an effort to boost investment and improve fuel security.
Australia Jim Chalmers Budget Cuts Inflation Global Economic Turmoil
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