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Australian Treasurer Jim ‘Zippy the Pinhead’ Chalmers may have done his PhD thesis (not in economics, it must be noted: Chalmers has not a single economic credential) on Paul Keating, but he can only wish he was Keating. He’s certainly not the Keating of his prime in the ’80s, nor even the relevance-deprived, pro-CCP bully Keating has become today.
Chalmers has neither the economic nous – the coalition so often bipartisan supported the Hawke-Keating reforms because they had mostly sound policy – nor the wit of his golden idol. Instead, he’s a bullying buffoon: a Biff Tannen who fancies himself an Oscar Wilde.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has launched an extraordinary broadside at his Coalition counterpart for “weakness” in convincing his party to adopt reforms to the Reserve Bank.
Mr Chalmers called a press conference in the “blue room” of Parliament House, usually reserved for policy announcements, to attack Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor and his party leader Peter Dutton after failing to find agreement with the Coalition on the RBA reforms […]
last night Mr Taylor said that he was concerned the federal government could seek to stack the RBA board, and the Coalition would not be “complicit in Labor’s ‘sack and stack’ strategy”.
Chalmers isn’t fooling anyone with his bluster. The ‘reforms’ are a transparent attempt to turn the RBA into another government lackey. Having made a fool of himself by furiously unloading on the very RBA governor his own government appointed, Chalmers is now trying to make the independent authority into a toothless lapdog.
All the while, everyone knows, the sinking economy is all down to Zippy’s clueless mismanagement.
Threatening to turn to the vile Greens to get his way only makes Chalmers look even more desperate than ever.
As bullies will, though, Chalmers is picking fights everywhere – fights he’s definitely not going to win.
Miners have accused Anthony Albanese of starting a new class war by deliberately bringing conflict to every workplace through “reckless” industrial relations laws and threatening the economy through arbitrary environmental decisions that risk the viability of nation-building projects […]
The peak mining lobby launched its attack on the Prime Minister at its annual dinner at Parliament House in Canberra after resources executives were left stunned by revelations Mr Albanese’s address to the event would warn the sector that the world would pass Australia by if miners embraced conflict over co-operation. Miners took the comments as a declaration of war against the sector.
Albanese might want to ask Kevin Rudd how well that’s likely to work out.
All the while Chalmers bullies and throws his puny weight around, Australians are having to deal with the reality of his essential worse-than-uselessness. Take, for instance, the latest report from the Queensland Council of Social Service:
Two-thirds of Queenslanders are still struggling to pay their bills, put food on the table or send their children to school due to relentless cost of living pressures, driven mainly by inflation (which is coming down) and interest rates (which aren’t).
An average family – a couple with two children – is currently $116 over budget each week, and a single parent is $156 in the red.
It’s got so bad that some families report not sending their children to school because they can’t afford petrol in the car (although that makes one wonder whatever happened to walking).
And as we report today, weaker commodity prices may have created another headache for the treasurer – a $4.5 billion budget black hole.
National accounts data released last Wednesday showed growth in the economy had crawled to a weak 0.2 per cent for the June quarter, or 1 per cent seasonally adjusted for the year.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the drop in the price of commodities was a key contributor to the anaemic result.
Chalmers simply got very, very lucky in the first year of his tenure, with an unexpected windfall gain, thanks entirely to Chinese demand for iron ore. Chalmers is the gambler who, about to walk out of the casino, finds 10 bucks dropped on the floor – and immediately blows it all straight back on the pokies.
Pity we kids waiting, hungry and cold, in the carpark.
