Chris Richardson

But some people, of course, obviously have higher wages and salaries than others.

When it comes to the GST, you would be more notably hurting the less well-off.

which is a reminder of why the Reserve Bank always says, well, it wants to fight inflation because inflation hurts the poor the most.

You can think of inflation as the GST keeps going up.

It has an impact on those people who have to spend.

They face higher prices and that hurts the poor the most.

We absolutely can.

Those are different shoulders, basically.

The personal income tax in Australia is

The top 20% of personal taxpayers pay about 60% of all personal tax.

So if you're raising the GST, you're hitting those on low incomes.

If you're raising income tax, you're hitting those on high incomes.

Super is more broadly across wage earners and, of course, the existing way, interest rates, is affecting borrowers.

There's a bit of a temptation, I suspect, for everybody to think, well, I would prefer the lever that is used is the one that affects me the least.

I would describe it as too much money chasing too little stuff, too much demand relative to supply.

And governments have an impact on demand too.

If they spend more, well, that affects inflation.

If they tax more, that affects inflation in the other direction.

So what governments do, state as well as federal, and the other day the RBA governor specifically called out the states, has an impact.

Yes, she does make that point.