Chris Richardson

Now, to be clear, you can have governments giving us handouts of some kind.

So, for example, the cut to petrol taxes that we have at the moment, governments can do that without having an impact on inflation.

because what they've done there is to give us some money that we will spend and hence tend to put up inflation.

They can just take some money out.

Otherwise, they can lower other spending.

They can raise taxes.

So governments can walk and chew gum, if you like.

They can give us some cost of living relief so long as they offset it otherwise.

It would, but less than you think.

So a couple of years ago, there was a lot of excitement about the supermarkets.

And I remember doing the calculation at the time.

if the supermarkets had the same profit margins during COVID as they had before COVID.

And I forget the exact answer, but the answer is it makes spectacularly little difference to the living standards of Australians.

Now, that's not to say that we shouldn't have good competition laws in Australia.

We absolutely should.

But it's a little too easy, I suspect, to blame businesses to the extent there are rip-off profits out there.

They tend to be collected more by our miners who are getting that money from foreign customers.

Though, again, there's the separate issue of do we get enough tax for some of our natural resources?

Well, it is a sensible question, and it's a great one.

And to be clear, my view is not a majority one.