'It has been a long time coming', Angus Taylor welcomes RBA rate cut

Australian Community Media

The shadow treasurer has welcomed the RBA's decision to reduce the cash rate to 4.1 per cent, but says 'it's still a long way back' to prosperity.

Transcript

00:00It has been a long time coming. It has been a long time coming. We've seen interest rate

00:06cuts in peer countries around the world of between 1 and 2 per cent in countries including

00:10Canada, the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australians have been suffering in the meantime. With

00:17high interest rates and in the course of the last two and a half years or so since interest

00:22rates have been rising, a typical Australian household has paid an extra $50,000, an extra

00:28$50,000 in interest rates than they had expected to pay. And that has been a huge impost of

00:35course on Australian families who have been doing it very, very tough.

00:41Now despite the welcome cut today, it's a long journey back to the standard of living

00:46Australians had when these interest rate increases began. We've seen 12 interest rate increases

00:52under Labor and one down now, but we've also seen the biggest collapse in living standards

00:57in our history. It has been completely unprecedented. It's also been unparalleled relative to other

01:03peer countries around the world. The living standard collapse in Australia has been bigger

01:08than peer countries around the world. And indeed in the forecast today from the Reserve

01:12Bank, there is a downgrade in living standard forecasts. Despite the interest rate cut,

01:18the Reserve Bank is expecting that living standards will be worse than in their previous

01:23forecasts. And this is more pain for Australian families. The journey is far from over here.

01:29The journey is far from over.

01:33Now let me make a critical point about how we've got to where we are. Australian families

01:40have done the hard work here and they deserve this interest rate increase because they're

01:45the ones that have done the work. To get interest rates down, demand has to come into balance

01:50with supply and we've seen rapid growth in public demand, rapid growth in government

01:56spending, but indeed we've seen households tightening their belts. Households have had

02:02to tighten their belts because governments haven't tightened their belts. And the fact

02:08of the matter is households have had to do the work and we see this every day. We see

02:13it in the living standard outcomes that I described a little earlier.

02:18Now Labor's own forecasts, Labor's own forecasts don't get us back to the living standards

02:23that they inherited back when they won the election in 2022. They don't get us back to

02:29those living standards until 2030. With further downgrades today, it's a long way back to

02:36where Australians were when Labor came to power. And we know that the critical issue

02:43now for government is to accelerate that pathway back, accelerate the pathway to restoration

02:51of Australian standard of living that they had when the interest rate increases began.

02:56That means beating inflation once and for all, sustainably beating inflation. It means

03:01making sure government does tighten its belt, that it grows spending at a manageable rate,

03:10not at the rapid rate we've seen in recent times, 36,000 additional Canberra based bureaucrats.

03:16That is not how you sustainably beat inflation. It does mean boosting growth and making sure

03:22there isn't red tape being wrapped around small businesses who are trying to invest

03:26and create jobs, take risks, all the things that businesses have to do to create opportunities

03:30for themselves and for all Australians. It does mean making sure we've got cheaper, more

03:36affordable energy for all Australians, getting the underlying cost of energy down in this

03:41country. And it does mean, of course, making sure that there are affordable homes for Australians,

03:47breaking those infrastructure bottlenecks, as we've outlined with our $5 billion fund,

03:52to make sure those critical bottlenecks that are holding back the supply of housing are

03:57fixed, and we get that supply really moving. We have had a very, very tough two and a half

04:03years for Australian families. Australian families are poorer than they were two and

04:08a half years ago. We cannot afford, we cannot afford another three years like we've seen

04:15over the term of this Parliament.

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