News agencies will continue to independently review content and provide warning ‘labels’. Follow today’s news live
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Chalmers urged Peter Dutton to support his promised “meaningful but responsible” cost of living help in the forthcoming federal budget, accusing the Coalition of opposing key cost-of-living relief measures brought forward by the Labor government over the past term.
Speaking to the ABC, Chalmers said:
One of the most surprising and disappointing elements of this Parliament has been whenever we’ve tried to help people with cost-of-living, the Coalition has opposed that. They didn’t want a tax cut to every taxpayer, energy bill relief, cheaper medicines, rent assistance, cheaper early childhood education, fee-free TAFE, wages moving again.
We’ll announce our cost-of-living relief in the Budget … we would obviously ask the Opposition to do away with this habit they’ve formed of opposing all of our cost-of-living help. Everyone in the Parliament recognises that people have been under pressure in the last few years but the difference is only the Labor Party has been there for people to help them with cost of living and that is rolling out right now despite the Coalition, not because of it.
Nobody wins from a trade war and especially a trade-exposed country like ours.
… When you consider not just what’s happening in Washington DC but Beijing and elsewhere around the world, we are seeing the breakdown that the rules of global economic engagement are being rewritten. They are seismic changes. It’s a whole new world in the global economy and that will impact our own economy and our own Budget.
I think as the Productivity Commission made clear today and the OECD made clear overnight as well, two of the consequences of escalating trade tensions are slower growth and higher inflation and, again, it would be strange to conclude that we’d be immune from that.
When these tariffs are imposed and when there’s the retaliatory nature of these escalating trade tensions, we do expect higher prices. That’s one of the obvious consequences of tariffs. We’ll see that around the world and we are at risk of seeing it here.
About Author
More Stories
Activist alerts ICC to spyware attack while sharing Libya torture victims’ details
Chinese EV maker BYD says fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank
Conor McGregor’s Trump meeting was ‘sinister’, says Irish rape crisis centre