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Headline inflation forecast to peak lower than anticipated at 4.25%, treasurer says
On to inflation. The budget forecast that headline inflation would peak at 5% this year. As the war in the Middle East drags on, is that still the federal government’s assumption?
That is very, very welcome progress. It does show, I think, it does illustrate the progress that we’re making together in this fight against inflation. Now there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the Middle East and elsewhere. There’s still more inflation than we would like in our economy as a consequence, but we are making more progress than we anticipated.
We desperately need the ceasefire to stick. You know, we can’t have another false dawn when it comes to the Middle East, and particularly the Strait of Hormuz.
There’ve been some really welcome developments on this front, and we’ve seen the oil price come down quite substantially as a consequence. It wasn’t that long ago that a barrel of oil was in the 120s. This morning when I looked, it was in the low ‘70s. So that’s welcome progress.
You talk about certainty, but with that haste comes the risk of unintended consequences, and one of those was this issue of negatively geared properties that are jointly held, when a couple divorce or a partner dies. It’s been dubbed the widow tax. What is gonna happen there?
When the amendments were put before the Senate, we had to make clear that we were working through that issue, and we intend to address it in subsequent pieces of legislation, and that’s the case …
I don’t want to pre-empt the outcome, but in saying that we’re going to address it, I think we’re making it incredibly clear, that we understand that this is an issue that has been raised with us, we intend to address it.
