Australian Prime Ministers typically leave a single memory to mark their reign. Morrison had his lump of coal. Rudd loved Pink Batts. Gillard haunts our empty school halls. Turnbull is the man from Snowy two-point-never. Abbott stopped the boats and Albanese had no Voice.
Then there is Paul Keating. Mister 17.5 per cent.
The pain of Keating’s interest rate hell looms large inside the halls of the Labor Party. They fear being attached to rate rises in case they find themselves falling out of power – rejected by the Australian people who are wising up to the Treasurer’s faux economic mutterings.
As whispers spread of more interest rate rises before the end of the year, Jim Chalmers has decided to wipe his hands clean of responsibility and remove the long-standing laws that allowed Treasurers to overrule RBA interest rate rises.
This decision has left many baffled.
Surrendering power is not common and so we must ask, why? Why has the Treasurer given up his hold on the economic safety net?
Simple. Chalmers is the Pontius Pilate of Treasurers. He has found a way to distance Labor from blame.
At least, that is what the Treasurer hopes to argue in the new year when things go from nasty to ruinous for Australian families.
If Labor continues on its economic trajectory – throwing money at solar and wind ‘energy’, borrowing money it can’t afford, and handing out billions to foreign governments and corporate friends while importing over a million migrants – the inflexible and unimaginative RBA will keep raising interest rates.
When people complain, the Albanese government can stand back and say – truthfully this time – that there is nothing they can do about it.
In old language, we’d call this a ‘cop-out’.
Labor are terrified that interest rates could sink them just as interest rates destroyed Keating’s leadership and sent the party into the wilderness. Chalmers’ handwashing is disingenuous at best, given that public policy sets the economic climate effectively forcing the hand of the RBA. He is the spectre in the room with the RBA.
With or without this piece of legislation, the Prime Minister and his Treasurer are responsible for interest rates.
The flip side of the legislation is an increase in control handed to the central bank’s members.
‘We want to ensure Australia’s central bank remains world-class with a monetary policy framework fit to meet our current and future economic challenges,’ said the Treasurer.
Others may see it as Chalmers streamlining the central bank to allow it more freedom to implement unpopular practices in lockstep with other central banks. Global central banks are homogenising. Updating their policies. Clarifying their position on dubious ideas. The public are right to be sceptical and more than a little concerned. There is a spirit of ‘unity’ and ‘shared vision’ going on in the West. Whose vision?
We have the media praising the introduction of more unelected bureaucrats to the RBA – leaders of industry – or in this case, those who specialise in international central banks.
Chalmers has effectively removed scrutiny of the RBA – and in turn, the Reserve Bank Digital currency – from the scrutiny of the Parliament.
The complexities of the central banking system and its subtle changes are likely to slip under the news cycle unnoticed even though they could be economically dangerous.
Interest rates … well … those will not go quietly into the night.
They are Labor’s Achilles’ heel, and it is interesting that Chalmers’ made it his first port of call.
Keating came to power with the help of a rabid environmental movement (sound familiar?) and during his leadership, the government’s obsession with an ever-expanding welfare system that saw unemployment in 1992 rise to 11.4 per cent.
His introduction of the superannuation scheme, originally praised, has exceeded the worst doomsday prophecies of its critics. Compulsory superannuation created the Super Barons – a dangerous collection of union-linked groups who, within seven years, will have more wealth between them than the four Big Banks.
That sort of influence is driving supposed ‘green’ policy where retirement funds are being poured into Net Zero investments that are increasingly likely to fail. The potential for catastrophe is creating yet another economic bubble in the market already riddled with fail-points.
Indeed, it was Keating’s ‘Big Australia’ obsession with mass migration that saw the housing market stretch and services collapse. It is a policy mistake Mr Albanese has taken and vastly exaggerated.
To distract the population from their growing poverty, Keating pursued ‘feel-good’ Aboriginal affairs headlines and the establishment of Native Title – the mechanism race-based bureaucrats are using to fence off Australians from their land. Albanese attempted the same thing, but far from distracting the public, the Voice to Parliament hung as a lantern on political activists concocting and widening a racial divide.
It was immediately after Keating’s nightmarish reign that One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson made her dramatic maiden speech, correctly flagging the reverse-racism government encouraged and directed against the Australian people. The decades since have proved her warnings true. We are in a mess from Keating’s mistakes.
What will the Chalmers-led Treasury do as interest rate hikes force Australians out of their homes?
How much of that real estate will end up in the hands of the banks? How much money will be spent constructing slums for migrant arrivals while Australians face a homeless epidemic? How much will be sold off to corporations, governments, and foreign buyers at the expense of Australian citizens who feel the dream of home ownership slipping away?
Remember the World Economic Forum’s gloating: ‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy…’
Reducing property ownership is one of the most effective ways to disempower citizens. And it ‘won’t be Labor’s fault’.
Chalmers has pulled a swifty on the public under the guise of giving the RBA ‘independence’.
There are no free lunches, and this piece of legislation will come with consequences.
Mr ‘I’d like to re-invent capitalism’ has been busy.
…busy making sure you’ll have no one to blame when Albanese becomes Mr 17.5 per cent mark two.
