David Taylor

Drive past a petrol station now rather than

certainly in Sydney, rather than the price of petrol unleaded being at $1.60, it's at $1.20 for regular unleaded.

That's a practical example of walking away with $20 otherwise that you wouldn't have.

So it's all good.

But I think what is being discounted here is a sense of anxiety and panic about what's around the corner.

And doing that doesn't relieve that.

So the Prime Minister came out last week for an address that was then rebutted by the opposition leader.

And again, it's about calming folks down.

And whether that works or not, it's up to the individual.

But the government is looking at this from a pragmatic financial point of view and a psychological point of view.

And I suspect that, I don't know, but I suspect the government is doing as much as it sees it can at the moment.

But with the fact that there is a structural deficit and we have almost a trillion dollars worth of gross debt.

So there isn't much fat to cut out in terms of paying for relief, financial relief in terms of the budget.

And then you're left with the economic situation, which is the inflation was already elevated.

Now, 3%, 4% inflation, people thinking about that might think, well, 3% to 4%, I think we can probably cope with that.

Well, central banks around the world have said, no, 2.5% inflation is what will lead to everyone feeling happy and jolly.

three to four percent to start off with underlying inflation and then moving up to sort of four or five or six which is what treasury and some economists are forecasting will ultimately happen here uh is going to be problematic so you've got that an already elevated level of inflation inflation moving higher

You know, job vacancies look okay at the moment, but unemployment could easily deteriorate from here.

And then you've got that awful low growth, high unemployment, high inflation environment, which the central bank can't deal with in terms of money printing because inflation is already high.

And the federal government's got very little fiscal maneuvering.