Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has openly criticised the Reserve Bank Governor, branding Michele Bullock’s recession warning a \u201cgut punch\u201d to working people.<\/p>\n
Ms Bullock indicated Australia may be pushed into a recession if inflation remained out of control, in a press conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to have a recession, but if it’s hard to get inflation down, then we’re going to have to deal with that, possibly,” Ms Bullock said.<\/p>\n
She said the RBA was prepared to continue increasing interest rates despite the recession fears because inflation was the bigger threat to the economy.<\/p>\n
The Governor said inflation generally hit poorer people the hardest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is that, in the end, if we don\u2019t have low and stable inflation over time, we won\u2019t have full employment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But the Premier attacked the comments, arguing a recession needed to be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking people hear that, and it’s like a gut punch to them, because when working people hear those words being spoken, they know their job is at risk,\u201d the Premier told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know that life is tougher for them, and that’s why I don’t think that is the path that we should be going down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be doing everything we can to help working people, help households, get people into a home that’s affordable. Help them with their grocery bill, with their power bill. Help get the kids to school with a full tummy through our free breakfast program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe alternative approach that’s being proposed brings pain and hurt to working people and families, and they’re the ones that my Labor government is focused on every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Bullock’s comments are reminiscent of Paul Keating’s infamous comments about a severe recession in 1990.<\/p>\n
While announcing the national accounts showed the country was in recession, the then treasurer said it was \u201cthe recession Australia had to have\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked about the RBA\u2019s decision to increase interest rates, Ms Allan said it came at a time when households were already under significant pressure.<\/p>\n
“This is an interest rate decision from the Reserve Bank coming at a time when households are watching fuel prices increase at the same time that there’s already significant pressure on household budgets,” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is the last thing that households, families, and working people need. The last thing they need is added pressure on the household budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My government understands this, which is why we understand that there is a role for government to provide support to households that are doing it tough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has openly criticised the Reserve Bank Governor, branding Michele Bullock’s recession warning a \u201cgut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[178565,79,179,18,19,5389,17,1659,6793],"class_list":["post-391084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-allan","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-interest-rates","tag-ireland","tag-rba","tag-recession"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116249124125084537","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}