: For the first time in four years, the Reserve Bank of Australia has cut the official cash rate from 4.35 per cent to 4.1 per cent, with all the major banks already following through and passing that on to you. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese joins me live on 6PR this afternoon. Prime Minister, welcome back to the program.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: G'day Oly. It's good to be back with you and certainly this is very welcome news for millions of Australians. It's a rate relief that Australians need and that they deserve.
PETERSON: Are you going to be hopping in the car shortly and driving to Yarralumla to pay a visit to the Governor-General?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I'm going off to a school presentation event from my electorate at the moment, Sydney Secondary College, which is the school that my son went to. So I look forward to that. But we know there's more work to do. We know people are still under pressure. We know that we will continue to focus on cost of living. But this is welcome news. This is progress that has been made by Australians and I pay tribute to the hard work that we've all done together.
PETERSON: When you say the hard work we've all done together, is it your Government's policies, do you think, Prime Minister, that has put us in this predicament today or this situation, that the Reserve Bank can now finally move interest rates down?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, governments don't act by themselves. It's the hard work of Australians, I pay tribute to. And it has been a difficult period. We had Covid and then we've had global inflationary pressures. But what we've managed to do is to get inflation down, wages up, unemployment's low, and now interest rates are starting to come down too. So, that's a good quadrella. That is welcome news for Australians, but we know that there is more to do, so we're not getting ahead of ourselves. We want to see more work to be done. We know that the inflationary challenges are still there, but 2.4 per cent is a good headline rate, certainly well within the Reserve Bank band. And that, no doubt is one of the reasons why the RBA moved today. And this will be welcomed by Australians.
PETERSON: When interest rates go up, governments don't take any responsibility. When they go down, they like to do a bit of a victory lap. You can call me cynical, Prime Minister, but why is it that there's no acknowledgement, I suppose when they go up, but when they go down, it is the good work of government, regardless of who's in power in the day?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, of course, interest rates started to go up under the former Government. We inherited an inflation rate that had a 6 in front of it and was going up. Now it's got a 2 in front of it, 2.4 and it's going down. So, that's good news. But I don't say that the Government's done that by itself. That's hard work of Australians and it has been a difficult period right around the globe. This has been a difficult period. That's the truth of the matter. But we continue to fight inflation, we'll continue to help with the cost of living and we'll continue to build Australia's future.
PETERSON: The Governor today confirmed that the increases are here to stay. She said, quote, the impact of high inflation over the past couple of years has permanently increased the price of goods and services. Is there anything else that can be done to change that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we can continue to do is to look at different measures. So, for example, we have introduced a range of measures on supermarkets basically to make sure that some of the practices which are unfair for consumers are stamped out. So, that's one thing that we've done. The second thing we've done, of course, is produce responsible economic management. Not just one, but two Budget surpluses that have contributed to that downward pressure on inflation. The third is when designing cost of living relief, we've designed it in a way 'okay how do we give people help whilst putting downward pressure on inflation?'. So, tax cuts, for example, we readjusted to give people at the low and middle income earners more assistance without increasing the overall size of the tax cuts at $107 billion. Cheaper medicines make a difference for people in terms of their pockets and money that they have, more than a billion dollars has been saved. The wage increases that we've seen, real wage increases over the last four quarters meant that people are earning more and with the tax cuts, they're keeping more of what they earn as well. So, we've designed it in a way that hasn't fuelled inflation and that has made a positive difference. And the Reserve Bank Governor in the past has commentated on that as well as our energy bill relief delivered in partnership there in WA with the WA Government.
PETERSON: We've obviously seen the biggest collapse in our standard of living of any OECD economy. Can that be rectified with today's interest rate cut? Is that something to work on in the coming months, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we'll continue to work. If you look at some of the economies that we compare with in the OECD, a number of them hit double digit inflation. We didn't hit that, it was 6 and rising when we came to office. There were also substantially high spikes in unemployment overseas. Now, we haven't done that here. We haven't cast people aside. Some of the economists, you will recall, Oly, write these pieces saying, 'there needs to be more unemployment,' as if that doesn't impact people. Well, we haven't done that. That's not my Government's approach as well. An economy like New Zealand just across the ditch is doing it really tough. They're in a deep recession there and here we've managed to keep the economy going. We understand that people are doing it tough, but we've made sure that people haven't been left behind and that's been important.
PETERSON: Prime Minister, back to my first question about heading off to Yarralumla. Any further indication about when we might be heading towards a Federal election?
PRIME MINISTER: Oly, you've got an election going on over there, I know, with my friend Roger Cook. You know, I'll continue to work. We've had ERC meetings the last couple of days, putting together a Budget. We continue to work. We had a Cabinet meeting yesterday. We'll continue to govern and at some stage on May 17 or beforehand, I'll go to Government House to have the election called. But this is one of the reasons why I am a firm believer in four year fixed terms. Unfortunately, you need a referendum to get that done and it's been tried twice and failed both times. It's so easy to get a no vote when it comes to a referendum and that's what's happened, unfortunately. But it'd be better if this speculation wasn't there. Certainly people have known that March 8 was the date in WA for a long time and that provides some stability and some common sense, in my view.
PETERSON: Will we see you here again before the WA election on the 8th of March?
PRIME MINISTER: You will.
PETERSON: See you then, Prime Minister. Thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: See you then Oly.
PETERSON: That's Anthony Albanese joining us live on 6PR this afternoon, as interest rates have been cut.
