Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher

MATT SHIRVINGTON (“SHIRVO”), HOST: Well, Australian households will today start benefiting from cost-of-living relief thanks to new financial year measures. The average family is expected to save around $63 a week thanks to Labor’s stage 3 tax cuts, while over 20 per cent of workers will get a pay boost due to a 3.75 per cent increase to the minimum wage. All households will also get $300 off their energy bills. Joining me now is Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, good morning to you. Well, these changes, very welcome relief for many, we need it, every little bit counts at the moment. But what do you say to people who are struggling right now just to make ends meet?

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Shirvo. Look, these cost-of-living measures have been targeted to make sure we are doing what we can to help households with their budgets and the pressure their budgets are under. So, as you say, tax cuts, energy bill relief and also importantly for those on minimum wage, an important pay rise today. So, hopefully people will see that start flowing into their pay packets and their pockets and it’ll just make a bit of a difference for people.

SHIRVO: The big problem is that people need to spend it, right? Because petrol’s up, housing’s up, mortgages, rents, also groceries are up. We need that money to spend. Can you guarantee it won’t add to inflation? Which of course is causing a major issue for the economy at the moment.

GALLAGHER: Yeah well those measures have been targeted to put downward pressure on inflation. So, particularly we’ve seen that with how the energy bill relief rolled out last year. The tax cuts of course are factored in and have been for some time. And, inflation is moderating, Shirvo, from its peak. Obviously we’ve got to keep our eye on it and make sure that we continue to work away at it, but we are seeing you know welcome progress. We’d like it to come down lower of course. But these measures are really to help people in the meantime. And as you know, it’s the number one issue, it’s the number one issue the government’s focused on, and that’s why July 1 is an important date to have that money start flowing.

SHIRVO: Interesting to hear Jim Chalmers kind of backtracking a little bit in terms of inflation, because he was saying that it’s not going to be a straight line to get that down. There’s going to be some ups and downs. Are you concerned that this policy will come back to bite you if inflation doesn’t come down?

GALLAGHER: Well look I mean, in a sense two different things – I think people will welcome these measures and it will make a difference to them as they go through their you know day-to-day cost-of-living, whether it be groceries or petrol or mortgages as you say. But we’ve got to keep an eye on inflation. We’ve seen in other parts of the world; it doesn’t necessarily come down in a straight line. We’ve seen welcome progress. It’s come down from I think the peak of over 8 per cent, now at 4, but there’s more work to do there. There’s definitely more work to do, I’m not pretending otherwise.

SHIRVO: Yeah, we got to get it down to 2 to 3 per cent, don’t we? We’ve still got a long way to go. Minister, appreciate your time.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.