Allowing the straight-talking Michele Bullock a press conference after every rates meeting has diluted the government’s power to control the economic message.
Already a subscriber?Bill Shorten, who led Labor to successive federal elections in 2016 and 2019, didn’t choose to stay in parliament following his second loss because he wanted to be government services minister for the rest of his life.
Barring a similar Lazarus-like recovery some time down the track, Shorten regards his role as an effective minister who occasionally demonstrates to colleagues the value of straight talk, otherwise known as conviction.A recent example was when he willingly appeared on ABC’sprogram to sink the boot into the CFMEU, hours after the government announced it would place the union into administration. Shorten accepted when Anthony Albanese and then-workplace relations minister Tony Burke declined.
“Perhaps if we’d disagreed with the former governor’s statement that rates would be historically low for years, some people wouldn’t be in the financial predicament they’re in now,” Shorten said.In terms of having nothing to lose, Shorten is a bloke gambling with house money, but one suspects Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese, if they had their druthers, wouldn’t mind having a crack at the bank as well – if only for self-defence.
When Chalmers chose not to renew the tenure of governor Lowe, there was a political element in that someone needed to take the fall for what had become a tsunami of rate increases and rising voter anger.elevated Michele Bullock to replace Lowe, but announced reforms to the central bank as wellMost of these, such as the move to establish two boards, are still stuck in parliament, contributing to the growing pre-election legislative logjam, with little prospect of passage.
Chalmers and Albanese subtly took issue with the assessment that the economy was too hot and that this was being fuelled by state and federal government spending – only to be chastened for doing so.Once upon a time, the RBA released its statement and the treasurer had the microphone. Now the governor also holds a mic and gets to respond in real time. There was a lot more interest in Bullock’s press conference last week than that of the treasurer.
The federal opposition wants to forcibly divest supermarkets and build a network of state-owned nuclear power plants.
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