Good afternoon. Inflation dived last month to its lowest rate in three years as household budgets started to feel the impact of the Albanese government’s cost-of-living relief and cheaper petrol – but the Reserve Bank will wait for a more sustained drop before it starts cutting interest rates.
Headline consumer price inflation in August was 2.7%, the slowest increase since August 2021, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, called the numbers “heartening”, saying the government’s cost-of-living policies were “an important part of the story but not the whole story here”. The shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, said Australia “remains close to the back of the pack in dealing with our core inflation”.
