source : the age
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news this Wednesday, September 30. Here’s what is making headlines today.
- Inflation jumped to 4 per cent in August, a four-month-high, increasing the chances the RBA will lift interest rates again this year. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has noted today’s inflation increase was lower than expected, and came after four months of moderation.
- The Greens have elected David Shoebridge as leader, with Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May as deputy. Their ticket beat the joint ticket of Mehreen Faruqi and Nick McKim, as well as Sarah Hanson-Young.
- Yesterday the Reserve Bank hiked interest rates to 4.6 per cent, marking a 15-year-high, despite rising unemployment, falling house prices and sluggish economic growth. RBA governor Michele Bullock said Australia was being impacted by “domestic capacity pressures” as well as extraordinary shocks, including the ongoing Iran war, spending on AI, and a lack of productivity. Bullock warned there could be more hikes on the way.
- On Tuesday, Chalmers said the government took responsibility for its role in managing inflation, but continued to blame continuous interest rate hikes on the war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson called for Chalmers to resign following yesterday’s rate decision, and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said it was a “dark day” for mortgage holders.
- Anthropic has warned investors that its technology could pose “existential risks to humanity” as it prepares to list on the sharemarket. The AI company warned in the prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) filing that its models could exhibit unpredictable behaviours including attempts to “resist shutdown”, to “conceal or manipulate information” and behaviour “resembling blackmail”.
- ABC Finance journalist Alan Kohler announced his retirement from the public broadcaster after 31 years.
Nationals MP Michael McCormack asks how much more the average Australian can cop after interest rates were raised yesterday by the Reserve Bank of Australia.
“What we’ve seen is the interest rates go up to a 15-year high,” McCormack told News24.
“The average mortgage holder has to find additional [money] to pay, along with higher gas prices, higher electricity prices, higher fuel costs, and not to mention groceries. People just can’t keep forking out.”
McCormack said that the Coalition would contribute to inflation by halving the fuel excise in order to help “Mr and Mrs average”.
The Coalition would find spending cuts, McCormack said, such as Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen COP presidency, and subsidies for green energy projects.
“You only have to go on Facebook to see all of this being forced down people’s throats with a picture of the prime minister to say get on this renewable fantasy lane, and there will be subsidies available in one way, shape or form, we have to get off this gravy train of subsidies for these companies, often foreign-owned, and… help Australians.”
Seoul: The powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un has rejected findings that North Korea planted land mines that injured three South Korean soldiers last week.
Three South Korean military officers were injured in two explosions on September 21 in the Demilitarised Zone, a heavily fortified buffer between the nations commonly known as the DMZ.
Kim Yo-jong’s statement came after South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff announced a preliminary assessment that the blasts were caused by North Korean mines, following a joint inspection with the US-led United Nations Command.
The Command said it determined North Korea violated the armistice agreement that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi says she is disappointed that her party chose a different leader than herself and called for members’ election of leaders in future.
Earlier on Wednesday, NSW senator David Shoebridge was elected leader of the Greens, with Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May as his deputy.
“I am disappointed the party room chose another direction, and know many others will feel the same way,” Faruqi wrote in an Instagram post.
“This morning I stepped down as deputy leader of the Greens to put my hand up for leader.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has urged incoming Greens leader David Shoebridge to focus on One Nation and the Coalition, after the NSW senator attacked Labor in his first remarks as leader.
Chalmers said he had never met Shoebridge and his deputy Steph Hodgins-May, but that he expected collaboration in the Senate – where Labor does not have the numbers to pass legislation alone – would continue.
“I’m told that [Shoebridge] was particularly focused on the Labor Party in his introductory remarks,” Chalmers said as he wrapped up his own Sydney press conference.
“I think it’s really important that we focus on the risks posed to workers and to our economy by One Nation, the Liberal Party, and the National Party,” he said.
“We know that from their approach to wages. We know that from their approach to super, and so they will continue to be the main risk posed to our economy and to our workers.”
Jim Chalmers has defended Labor’s record on productivity, saying the government had included “the biggest and broadest productivity package in any budget for some decades” in the May budget.
Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock said yesterday that productivity was “doing nothing”, though she would not be drawn on who was to blame, saying government and business both had roles to play.
“We made a central feature of the May budget a very broad, very substantial productivity package because [we] more than acknowledge the productivity challenge in our economy, we’re acting on it,” Chalmers said at the Sydney press conference.
“You can see that across the board, cutting compliance costs by more than $10 billion a year, national competition policy, working with the states and territories, faster approvals, including [environment protection and biodiversity conservation] and Foreign Investment Review Board processes”.
The treasurer said sluggish productivity had become an entrenched challenge in Australia over decades.
“It will take a bit of time to turn it around. Because if there was an easy solution, an immediate solution, to the productivity challenge we see here in Australia and in most comparable countries, somebody would have done that already,” he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has rejected suggestions that the relationship between his office and the Reserve Bank governor’s was strained.
“I confer regularly and compare notes regularly with governor [Michelle] Bullock. I like working with her. I work with her closely,” Chalmers told the Sydney press conference.
“We’ve got similar objectives, which is full employment and lower stable inflation, but we’ve got different responsibilities. I recognise and respect the independence of the Reserve Bank, and we meet or talk regularly, formally, informally, about all of the challenges in our economy.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has noted today’s inflation increase was lower than expected.
“We know that Australians are under pressure, and we know that rising global inflation and interest rates are making this harder. So, in the face of all of this heightened global instability, it was encouraging to see underlying inflation moderate in the month-to-month figures,” Chalmers said.
“In monthly terms, headline inflation more than halved, and underlying inflation halved. It is the case that today’s result was below the median market expectation, but consistent with the increases we’ve seen in inflation around the world. We already had an inflation challenge in our economy, but the war in the Middle East is making it worse, and that’s why, from an economic point of view, the end of the war in the Middle East can’t [come] soon enough.”
David Shoebridge has vowed to return hope to politics, saying the Labor Party was responsible for living standards going backwards.
“I tell you what: as you travel around the country, the call I’m not hearing is, “What do we want? Gradual change. When do we want it? In due course,” the incoming Greens leader told journalists.
“That is the dead politics of Labor. It’s the dead politics of the Coalition, and when you really test it, it’s the dead politics of One Nation.”
He said Australians were desperate for change.
“We’re going to deliver that sense of hope and opportunity that Australians are begging for,” he said.
“They don’t want another meaningless message being delivered by some Labor hack that they know isn’t going to change their lives.”
New Greens leader David Shoebridge has dismissed One Nation’s surge in popularity as a sugar hit, saying the Greens would fill the vacuum left by Labor.
“One Nation have this short-term sugar hit, building on feeding off people’s quite legitimate anger, but their policies are being tested,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“Their non-policies are being tested, and what we are going to do, collectively as the Greens, is fill the policy vacuum that’s been left by the Labor Party.”
Shoebridge said the party would explain the connection between politics and the cost-of-living crisis hitting Australians.
“We will point out the failure of the Labor Party, but we will point out what the solutions are. We’re not punching down on migrants. We’re taking on the 1 per cent that have bought our parliament. They’ve bought the Labor Party. They’ve bought the Liberal Party. They’ve bought One Nation. Well, they bloody well haven’t bought the Greens.”
