JOURNALIST:
Treasurer, are you going to be extending the fuel tax reduction?
JIM CHALMERS, TREASURER:
We've made it clear for some time now that it would be too expensive to continue that fuel excise relief indefinitely. Even to extend it by six months would cost something like $3 billion. We've inherited a budget which is absolutely heaving with a trillion dollars in Liberal Party debt. One of the consequences of rising interest rates is that every dollar borrowed by our predecessors now costs more to pay back. The fastest growing area of government spending in the budget is the interest costs on the trillion dollars of debt that we've inherited from our predecessors. So we need to be responsible. We need to be upfront with people and we have been about the cost of extending indefinitely programs like the one you're asking me about. It would be too expensive to continue it forever.
JOURNALIST:
Did the RBA Governor mislead borrowers as some economists claim and should he resign? How much responsibility does he bear?
CHALMERS:
My focus isn't on the Reserve Bank Governor. I don't think this is a time to take potshots at Phil Lowe. My responsibility is to make the Reserve Bank's job as easy as possible. That means not splashing cash around unnecessarily. It means dealing with the supply side issues in the economy where we can so that we make the job of the Reserve Bank easier, not harder. Now, I've got a Reserve Bank review for a reason. I want our central bank to be the best in the world to have the best set of institutional arrangements. That's not about taking potshots at anyone. It's about making sure going forward that we've got the best monetary policy setting in the world. The Reserve Bank Governor himself multiple times now has been quite upfront about the language that he's used in the past to describe the future movement of interest rates. He has said publicly that the circumstances changed faster than the Reserve Bank anticipated. These are not decisions taken by the Government. They are decisions taken by an independent Reserve Bank and they can explain and defend their own decisions.
JOURNALIST:
The New South Wales ICAC has said the pork barrelling could be considered as corrupt conduct given the conduct of the last government. What's your reaction to that? And are you going to be ruling out any kind of pork barrelling under your government?
CHALMERS:
One of the reasons why we've got almost nothing to show for this trillion dollars of Liberal debt is because our predecessors made an art form of rorting the budget. And only in a Liberal Party so bereft of ideas and direction and talent would the chief rorter be promoted to the economic spokesman position. We've got a situation where the budget that we've inherited - heaving with that trillion dollars in debt - is chock full of rorts and waste. And that's the whole reason why Katy Gallagher and I are part way through an audit of rorts and waste in the budget. My primary focus is on the economic and fiscal consequences of all those rorts and all that waste, which were the defining features of the budget for the best part of a decade.
JOURNALIST:
Are you up for a fight with the opposition on the fuel tax excise deadline?
CHALMERS:
We're trying to bring the country together around our big economic challenges. I don't look for fights unnecessarily. I think the Coalition trashes their own credibility by campaigning against their own policy. You know it was only a few days ago that Angus Taylor was trying to goad the government into ending this fuel excise relief and now they say they're all for it. You know they get one bad Newspoll and they spent $3 billion in one hit. I hope those polls don't come out more regularly because what we've seen is a trashing of their credibility. You can't take these characters seriously on the economy. They are the chief architects of a trillion dollars in debt with not enough to show for it. They're simultaneously asking for us to spend more and spend less at exactly the same time. It's reminiscent of the time they demanded an invite to a job summit that they wanted cancelled. They have absolutely no remaining credibility when it comes to the budget. They made a mess of the budget and our job is to start cleaning it up.
JOURNALIST:
With this expected interest rate hike, what are going to be the impacts?
CHALMERS:
Well, Australians are going to need to brace unfortunately for another interest rate rise. The Reserve Bank has made it very clear that they intend to increase interest rates further. These are decisions taken by the independent Reserve Bank and not by the Government. It will make life harder for a lot of Australians who are already dealing with the skyrocketing costs of living. If you've got a $500,000 mortgage, something like $140 a month extra that people will need to find in their household budgets at the same time as they're struggling with some of these other electricity prices and grocery prices and all the rest of it. So we don't underestimate or lightly dismiss the pressure on family budgets from these interest rate rises. These decisions are taken independently as they should be. We don't pre-empt or second guess these decisions. We've got our own job to do and that's what we're focused on.
JOURNALIST:
[Should banks pass on higher interest rates to savers.] It's something that you've encouraged before. Is that something you'd like to see?
CHALMERS:
I think it's really disappointing that some banks are not passing on these increases in interest rates to savers. You know savers have been the principal victims of interest rates when they were incredibly low and they should be the beneficiaries of rising interest rates. There needs to be some positives out of this and for savers they need and deserve higher interest rates on their savings. And so I'll have the opportunity to convey to the banks directly my expectation that these interest rate rises get passed on to savers. For those people who live off savings they've been doing it tough for some time now. It's time they got a bit of relief. Thanks very much.