JOURNALIST:
How are you going to fix inflation?
JIM CHALMERS, TREASURER:
What I hope to do today is to bring the Australian people into our confidence about the size and shape of this inflation challenge in our economy. We expect inflation to peak north of 7 per cent towards the end of the year and begin to moderate after that. This inflation challenge is primarily global, but not exclusively global. There are issues we can focus on here at home to try and fix those supply chains, which are pushing up the price of essentials. And that's why our economic plan is focused on three things. First of all, responsible cost of living relief. Secondly, trying to lift the speed limits on the economy by dealing with those supply chain issues: investing in skills, energy, and the drivers of growth. And thirdly, by trimming the rorts and waste, which have been a defining feature of the budgets handed down by our predecessors, and directing that money towards investing in areas where we get an economic dividend.
JOURNALIST:
How are all of these challenges and these new forecasts going to affect your budget planning [INAUDIBLE]?
CHALMERS:
The key reason why I want to bring Australians into our confidence at this point in the budget cycle is so that they understand the challenges and opportunities that we're working through as we put together the October Budget. But when you've got rising interest rates, when you've got dramatically slowing global growth, that will obviously have implications for our economy here at home and that will flow through to implications for our budget as well. There's no use pretending otherwise. I think for too long Australians have had governments which have tiptoed around the bad news and tried to sugarcoat things. That's not our style. What we'd prefer to do is to be up‑front and honest, paint a realistic picture of the economy that we've inherited from our predecessors, and outline the plan to deal with it. But there is an understanding in the Australian community that it will take longer than 9 weeks to clean up 9 years’ worth of mess that we've inherited. There's an understanding of that and there's an appetite for some real talk about the economy, and there's a hunger for Australians to come together to address these pretty serious economic conditions that we confront right now.
JOURNALIST:
On pensioners, would you mind, the National Seniors have been pushing for changes to the pension or work test rules. They say they are too complicated and are a deterrent for older Australians. Will the Labor Government change those rules?
CHALMERS:
I have a heap of respect for National Seniors. I've spoken to them about this issue and other issues and I'll continue to engage with them on it. We've said that perhaps this would be a good thing for us to nut out at the Jobs and Skills Summit in September here in Canberra. We expect it to come up there. We listen respectfully to anybody who's got ideas about how we deal with the challenges in our economy, whether it's National Seniors or others, and I'm happy to continue that conversation. I'll just take two more guys ‑ I'm just in a bit of a rush sorry.
JOURNALIST:
Can you guarantee that the country won't go into another recession?
CHALMERS:
It's not Treasury's expectation that we will go into recession in Australia. We have grave fears for the global economy of course, as others do too, but here in Australia our economy is expected to continue to grow but so are our economic challenges in the near term. We've got a lot of things going for us in Australia and I am optimistic about the future of our economy and the future of our country. But first we've got to brace for some particularly heavy weather in our economy. I'm confident that Australia will weather this storm as they have others in recent times. But we need to be up‑front about the nature and scale of these challenges so that we can get through it together. Thank you.