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Treasurer flags power bill assistance

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is giving more specifics about how this IMF report may affect the upcoming May budget. He’s flagging the government will be helping Australians pay their electricity bills.

As we say these forecasts about a decline in the economy are because of these cost of living pressures, which is hurting families and pensioners and people right around Australia.

Because they are expected to be persistent because we expect inflation to be higher than we’d like for longer than we’d like and we do need to deal with in a responsible, methodical way those cost-of-living pressures and so we need to do that in a way that doesn’t make inflation worse.

On the view of the International Monetary Fund, the global economy is on an increasingly perilous path. The situation in the world has become more complex and more challenging even over the course of the last few months. And so we won’t be completely immune from that.

The Treasury does expect our own economy to slow considerably later this year because of that combination of a slowing global economy and the impact of higher interest rates here at home as well. So we’ve got a lot coming at us from around the world.

So is it your view that avoiding a recession is still possible but a lot harder now?

Of course, it’s still possible and it’s still the expectation of the Treasury and the Reserve Bank, and a number of other economic forecasters here in Australia.

But we need to be upfront … and say that a slowing global economy matters to us a great deal, and we do expect our own economy to slow considerably the Treasury and the Reserve Bank are not currently expecting a recession here at home.