The Coalition have touched on this in their response – but not in any way which would make housing more affordable (by giving people access to $50,000 in their super for deposits and loosening the lending restrictions, that just means more people have deposits at once, which just increases house prices).

But it is a major undercurrent to this campaign as well, as one blog reader points out:

Greens senator Nick McKim has echoed calls from Chief Economist Greg Jericho for the RBA to urgently reconvene in the face of the impact Trump’s tariffs are having on the world economy.

McKim said in a statement:

The RBA will cut interest rates at their next meeting, but they should not sit on their hands for another six weeks while the crisis unfolds.

CPI is already in the RBA’s target band and trending down, and economists are debating the size of the upcoming interest rate cut, not whether or not it will happen. There is no justification for the RBA to delay.

People are hurting already, and every week of delay increases the risk of a recession which will hurt Australians even more.

People are getting smashed everywhere – the supermarket checkout, power bills, health and transport costs. A bit of mortgage relief would ease the pressure on millions of Australians.

We also need structural cost of living relief like putting dental into Medicare, which we could easily afford to do if we made big corporations pay their fair share of tax.”

If Labor had been prepared to work with the Greens we could have already made this massive legacy change to Medicare.”

Don’t you just love it when a politician starts talking about a specific metric that they now would have you believe is the absolute most important and best way to measure something.

So, it is with Peter Dutton who is now fixated on “core inflation”, saying this morning “We have the highest core inflation rate of any of the G7 nations”.

What is core inflation?

Well, it’s basically just a way of measuring inflation that gets rid of the big rises and big falls – to measure more of the “middle”. Why do that? The RBA likes to use it because it helps then not get too worried if in a certain period something weird happens (like a cyclone sending the price of bananas sky high) that sees the official measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rise or fall. In such times the “core” inflation probably won’t move much.

But the main reason Dutton is using it is it generally is slower to go up or down – and while the official CPI measure (the one that measures all prices) is 2.4%, the “core” inflation for the December 2024 quarter is 3.2%. Why is it higher, well have a look at all the price changes not counted in the core inflation:

If you are looking at that table and wondering why we would bother caring about a measure of prices that does not count electricity prices, childcare fees, petrol prices, fruit and milk prices, etc etc etc then I agree with.

The core inflation measure is purely of interest to the RBA and economists. But you pay all price rises, all price falls. The CPI is what matters for people – so care about that – and it is also why the government has done energy rebates.

So don’t worry about core inflation – it is also coming down, and in the next March quarter figures it will likely also be below 3%.

But what about the line that Australia has the highest core inflation among all G7 nations? Well, here’s the problem – countries measure core inflation in different ways. In the USA they use the “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food & Energy” which is an aggregate of prices paid by urban consumers for a typical basket of goods, excluding food and energy.

They also measure it each month, and in February it was 3.1%.

Here in Australia the ABS has also started to measure inflation each month. And as a result, it also now measures core inflation each month. So, what was it in February? 2.7%.

Peter Dutton might need to find another measure.

A journalist asked Anthony Albanese if he wanted to address what the protester was asking. Albanese completely avoided the issue and went back to prepared lines:

It just encourages, I think… Security people should be allowed to do their job. But that’s up to you. Hang on. Hang on. Can I make this point?

Yesterday, Peter Dutton tried to pretend that he no longer supported sacking 41,000 public servants, and also – and also – that they now were walking away from their plan to oppose working from home. This was after, on working from home, they opposed our legislation that had that as a bargaining provision, along with opposing same-job, same-pay and the other fairness in the workplace provisions that we had put in place.

When it comes to these issues in terms of sacking public servants, Peter Dutton would now pretend that he can do this just through attrition.

The people who leave the Public Service most frequently are those front-line people delivering services. If you go into DFAT, it’s not a rotation. You tend to stay there as a life career. The people in Services Australia, the people in Centrelink, the people delivering those front-line services, have the most frequency of changes. So this is a pretence of a policy that simply cannot be believed

The protesters were yelling:

Since getting elected, your government has approved 33 new coal and gas projects…

Which is true. You can follow the approvals, here.

Protesters have interrupted this press conference, which has been a recurring, yet largely unacknowledged theme of the campaigns. Protesters who are yelling for more climate action from both the major parties are being seen as an annoyance, rather than a movement, which is very telling.

The Guardian recently addressed some of this with an excellent look at the extinction crisis which is going largely ignored by the major parties and other media. You can find the series here and I recommend you read it as it is an excellent example of looking at what is important in the big picture, that small target campaigns ignore.

Q: Do we have fiscal room to deal with a global recession, Prime Minister?

Albanese:

We’re not immune from impacts of the global economy. But what we have shown, consistently, is a preparedness to act for the times, to provide support that is needed for people. And it stands in stark contrast – and I go back to – you know, we are in uncertain times, but I’m absolutely certain this is not the time to cut.

This is not the time for what the coalition are going to have to do to pay for their $600 billion of nuclear power plants as we go forward. Now is the time to continue to manage the economy responsibly whilst we make sure we build Australia’s future by building up our education system. By making sure that people’s health is looked after.

By making sure, as well, that people have rights in the workplace. And yesterday, we saw an extraordinary turnaround from the coalition when it came to working from home and the sacking of 41,000 public servants.

This question sounds very similar to what Peter Dutton was saying this morning on ABC TV and other interviews.

Q: Last election, you promised that electricity bills would go down by $275. They didn’t. Why should we trust you on the economy this election when you made promises that you couldn’t keep and probably shouldn’t have made? Will real living standards go up in the term? Can we avoid global recession? And have you left yourself fiscal room for a stimulus package if we do, indeed, go into a global recession?

Albanese:

What we have done is continue to have responsible economic management.

I said before – we had the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. That’s just a fact. And you would have recognised that, in the United Kingdom, the energy bills in Europe and in the UK were impacted, indeed – some nations hit double-digit inflation. We didn’t do that.

We took on responsible economic management. And I note, as well, that as well as economic growth occurring, unemployment being low, wages going up, inflation going down, and interest rates starting to fall, in addition to all of that, what we saw in the latest figures the last quarter was per-capita incomes, as well, are growing in real terms. We have turned a corner. There are, of course, global headwinds that we are seeing. We have to deal with that.

Q: You and Minister Wong have for years talked about the need to deepen ties in the ASEAN region. Do you believe that Trump’s tariff regime will push ASEAN countries further into China’s orbit?

Albanese:

What I want to see is us strengthen our relationship further with ASEAN countries. I was very proud to host every leader of ASEAN in Melbourne in March of last year. That was really significant. I don’t think, with respect, it got, perhaps, the coverage and the acknowledgement that it should have. I was really proud that every single leader came. No deputies. No representatives. Every single leader. And that’s a direct result of the hard work that my government has done to turn those relationships around. …Our relationship with Indonesia has never been stronger. Never been stronger. And the work that we’ve done there, but with other nations in ASEAN as well. And one of our responses to the decision of last Thursday will be to build on that.

I will convene – won’t necessarily go tell all of them – but the idea of missions, business missions – we’ve had business missions to Indonesia, to India, to Lao, to the region to China as well – that have been important in terms of those economic relationships.

Q: Prime Minister, government spending as a share of the economy is at a near-record high, at levels not too dissimilar from the COVID pandemic when the economy was in crisis. Have you left the budget in a position where government will be able to adequately respond in an event that there is a global recession?

Albanese:

Well, thanks for the question, which is very similar to a question that I got over here. Look, we have turned a – what we inherited – which was deficits each and every year – into other surpluses or a lower deficit.

Q: PM, Queensland today is extending the use of coal-fired power, pushing their plants out by three years and more. Are you concerned about that? Will that undermine efforts to bring down carbon emissions in Australia?

Albanese:

Look, they’re decisions of the Queensland government – they’re just that, a matter for the Queensland government. Of course, the Queensland government own their internally network and, of course, that has provided a significant benefit that I’ve seen during the flood events that have occurred. The fact that they are government-owned has meant that people have been able to reconnect with power, whoever was in government – Labor and now the LNP – and that’s been positive.