Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has celebrated his success over the weekend in overtaking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the polls by heading to his local pet store and strangling a basket of puppies. ”It’s important that we don’t just dwell... Read More ›
tax cuts
Coalition backbenchers worried about the pathetic polling of their leader, the Dark Lord Peter Dutton, have spent the day googling how to polish a turd in anticipation of shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor challenging for the leadership. ”It was always a... Read More ›
The Reserve Bank is pushing up interest rates to take money out of our hands.
The first increase in the current round will add about A$65 a month to the cost of paying off a $500,000 mortgage.
The second will add a bit more. If, as the bank’s forecasts assume, there are another four such increases this year, that’s a further $275 a month, and so on.
The point, in the words of the Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe, is to “slow the economy, to get things back onto an even keel”.
In a helpful video, the Governor explains that rate rises take money out of mortgagee’s hands directly, make it harder to borrow, make people “feel less happy”, and hit the prices of houses and other assets so people “don’t feel as confident and they don’t spend as much”.
We are about to find out whether we’ll lose a tax break worth up to $1,080 a year.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says he hadn’t “made any final decision” on the A$7.8 billion per year low and middle income tax offset ahead of next month’s budget.
He also says it was never intended to be “a permanent feature of the tax system”, which is true enough.