EDITORIAL: Get on with it and call the Federal election now

It’s been a long three years for Australians.

A cost-of-living crisis has a way of stretching time beyond its usual bounds.

Perhaps it is more helpful to measure time in rate rises than in years — 13 since May 2022 and 12 during the life of this Parliament.

Anthony Albanese now appears to be waiting for a rate cut to finally call time on this Government.

Money markets are putting the probability of a rate cut at more than 85 per cent. That’s likely overblown. The true odds of Michele Bullock and the Reserve Bank lowering the cash rate to 4.1 per cent on Tuesday are probably closer to that of a coin toss.

There are valid reasons for and against a rate cut.

Inflation remains outside the RBA’s target band of 2-3 per cent, though it is in retreat.

Unemployment remains low, strengthening the case for the RBA to hold its nerve in defiance of overwhelming political pressure and expectation.

The US, where inflation is on the march again just a few months after the Federal Reserve cuts rates, provides a cautionary tale to the RBA about the dangers of dropping rates prematurely.

The Prime Minister desperately wants a rate cut so Australians start to forget the financial pain they’ve suffered across the past three years of his Government before he has to ask them to give him another go.

So we sit in a holding pattern, waiting for Ms Bullock to emerge from the RBA meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

Enough with the games. It’s time for Mr Albanese to call an election.

Australians are ready for a reset.

They want a government that governs.

Instead, they have a Government transparently biding its time, waiting for the right moment to maximise its chances of clinging to power.

It’s a waiting game that threatens to backfire on Mr Albanese.

Voters are fast losing patience with Labor.

That was made crystal clear at Lake Illawarra on Friday, where voter frustrations boiled over in awkward scenes.

Mr Albanese was there to announce money for a family support services centre.

But he struggled to be heard over the jeers and boos of residents from the sidelines, accusing the PM of not supporting the regions.

Will this be Mr Albanese’s Cobargo moment? Scott Morrison never recovered from his icy reception in the bushfire-ravaged town during the brutal summer of 2020.

Voters aren’t yet as turned off by Mr Albanese now as they were by Mr Morrison in the lead up to the 2022 campaign.

But there’s no doubt his Government is on the nose and the stink is only growing the longer this interminable quasi-election campaign drags on.

The longer Mr Albanese waits — for a rate cut, for Donald Trump to grant Australia a lifeline on aluminium and steel tariffs, for the anti-Semitism crisis to somehow resolve itself — the more voter frustration grows.

Enough with the waiting around. It’s time to get on with it.