Daniel Ziffer

Now, it is possible that we get a number that's completely shocking and is much lower than people expected.

Maybe that does change the RBA decision-making.

But as you also point out,

The last RBA decision was line ball.

It was just one swing vote on that board that determined that they hiked interest rates at that point.

Now, Michelle Bullock says, everyone agreed that we need to hike interest rates.

It was just a question of when, though other people have pushed back on that concept because obviously the decision is either to hike or not hike.

It's pretty binary.

Exactly.

But the question will be whether or not that swing vote potentially is the person who says, wait a minute, let's wait until we get the next data.

But the consensus from economists when you read through there, through most of the notes that I've read, says they will be too concerned about getting behind these price rises because it is much harder to deal with the inflationary genie once it's out of the bottle.

But what we will get... In fairness to them on that, Dan, I think the idea is that they do not want people to be individually targeted if they are the people hiking interest rates.

I mean, I can understand how fired people get.

And that leads into the budget deliberations.

So the Reserve Bank will be making its decision later

Next week, the week after, the federal budget will be handed down.

It will be in response to whatever the settings are that the Reserve Bank has put together as far as interest rates are concerned.

But you're absolutely right.

The government does have options available to it when it comes to how much it spends, where it spends it, what it cuts, how it taxes.

And that's a whole other issue that they will be wrestling with.