Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie has made an impassioned plea for urgent action on the cost of living. Source: News.com.au.
The country has been hit by high fuel prices and a run of interest rate hikes as the Reserve Bank tries to combat sticky inflation.
Senator Lambie said on Sunday that the situation in her home state was “horrible”.
“We’re the sickest, the oldest, the poorest down there in Tasmania,” she told the ABC’s Insiders, adding that she had not seen such “financial strain” since the Covid pandemic.
She said “the more pressure you put under people, that financial pressure, it makes them angry, and sooner or later they snap.”
The call for action comes as Labor scrambles to find savings in the upcoming Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in a bid to reduce public demand – one of several factors driving up inflation, according to the Reserve Bank.
But government MPs have reportedly come out against any meaningful cuts.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth – who sits on the cabinet committee responsible for reviewing expenditure – refused to “pre-empt what will or won’t be in MYEFO”, but insisted Labor was committed to “responsible” spending.
“But of course, you do not want to have cut the essential services that Australians provide,” she told News24’s Sunday Agenda.
“When we talk about government services, we’re talking about the aged care services that people rely on, the healthcare services that people rely on.
“So, of course, we’re going to be responsible, effective, and efficient, and we want to deliver those services in the most effective and efficient way.
“But we need to also deliver, and people expect government to deliver this.”
Ms Rishworth also played down the thousands of recent job cuts that swept major Australian companies last week, including the 2500 positions axed at National Australia Bank.
She said the losses were “really difficult for people that have been affected” but that it did not suggest Australia was sliding into a recession.
The joblessness rate is at 4.7 per cent, according to the latest data.
FULLS TORY
Australians will ‘snap’ without urgent cost-of-living relief, Jacqui Lambie warns (By Joseph Olbrycht-Palmer, News.com.au)
