Carrington Clarke

Did you think her answer was fair enough?

And what do you think that means?

Obviously, Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, was paying a lot of attention to what Michelle Bullock was saying yesterday.

Do you think they're aware of that and will it change the type of policies that the government brings down when they hand the budget down next week?

One of the things Michelle Bullock kept saying yesterday is the supply shock, the energy supply shock that we've seen has been a real hit to people's incomes.

Australians are poorer because of the interruption of energy supply, because it's made everything more expensive.

That's led to higher inflation.

That's a real income cut.

And the people who are most vulnerable to that are obviously the people who

who don't have money saved in a bank account where they're getting higher interest or they don't have the savings buffer to allow them to get through this situation.

And so that's why they are in part so focused on inflation, trying to deal with inflation, because she says, yes, there's a big focus, obviously.

And we always say when we're announcing the interest rate hikes about how this is going to hit borrowers, people with mortgages.

Well, there's also a segment of the population who doesn't even have a mortgage because the

they don't have the income to be able to service it.

And they're the ones who get really hurt by high inflation.

So that's part of the reason that they are so focused on it.

But also, Michelle Bullock, once again, it pains to say, we only have this one instrument.

We only have the blunt instrument of interest rates in order to try to deal with demand pressure.

The government does

have other tools at its disposal.