The Herald's View: The Herald's View: If Treasurer Jim Chalmers wants to raise taxes or cut spending, he should start providing more details
included the usual forecasts in his last budget in March and then the pre-election fiscal outlook revised them a month later.with new forecasts but they will be superseded in October when he announces his first budget. Then in December, the Treasury will release even more forecasts in the traditional mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.
Chalmers went out of his way to talk up the “confronting” aspects of the outlook. It is true that some measures of the economy have moved in a worrying direction since April, especially inflation. Prices are now forecast to rise by 7.75 per cent in the year to the December quarter and the forecast for the 2022-23 financial year is a rise of 5 per cent, much higher than 3 per cent expected in April. Wage growth will lag well behind and living standards will fall.
More information is always useful but it is hard to understand what practical point Chalmers hopes to make by this economic sob story. But the danger with talking up the negatives is that if the government keeps saying things are tough he encourages people to expect government support and undercuts the case for taking hard decisions.inflation rising
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