Angus Taylor takes aim at Labor Government's ‘excuses’ as RBA hikes cash rate to 15-year high

Angus Taylor has blamed the Albanese Government’s spending for persistent inflationary pressures after the Reserve Bank raised the cash rate to a 15-year-high of 4.6 per cent on Tuesday.

The Opposition leader said the latest increase could not be be attributed solely to the war in the Middle East and disruptions to global energy markets, arguing inflationary pressures were already present in Australia.

“Interest rates were rising again before the Middle East crisis. And the Reserve Bank Governor made it very clear that there were already pressures in the economy driving up inflation and interest rates before that,” Mr Taylor told the ABC on Wednesday morning.

“This has been home-grown inflation. We have the highest interest rates now of any developed country outside of Iceland.”

Mr Taylor argued the government should be running a surplus to take pressure out of the economy, saying the Coalition would introduce a Budget rule requiring new spending to be offset by savings.

“If all of the spending that the Government has committed to since they’ve been in Government was offset, we would have a $22 billion surplus right now,” Mr Taylor said.

“And we would have much lower interest rates on the Reserve Bank’s own models.”

The Opposition leader also pointed to what he described as waste and unnecessary government spending across corporate welfare, climate and housing bureaucracy.

He said the Coalition would seek savings from those areas if it returned to government, while also targeting fraud in programs including the NDIS.

“There is fraud going on and we know that. We’ve seen that in the NDIS and we’ve seen egregious examples and we’ll continue to work on that in lead-up to the election, of course,” he said.

“But we’ve laid out the very significant savings and laid out the Budget rules that we will follow.”

Mr Taylor acknowledged international factors, including the ongoing disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, were also affecting prices, but insisted Labor had relied too heavily on external events to explain persistent inflation.

“We all want to see the Strait of Hormuz opened up permanently and see oil flowing again, of course. And that is something that we should continue to do what we can to support,” he said.

“But in the end, what we’ve seen is a government looking for excuses for four and a half years.

“Jim Chalmers has been unlucky 16 times... he’s raised interest rates 16 times and each time, he stands up and I’ve stood up following those Reserve Bank decisions most of those times, and each time he stands up and he gives a different excuse.

“You run out of excuses in the end. This is a Government that’s not in control of inflation and interest rates.”