No treasurer wants to be That Guy – the politician who rails against wage stagnation in an election campaign only to find himself at the dispatch box in the House of Representatives a couple of months later, telling voters inflation hasn’t yet peaked and real wages won’t actually increase for at least another 18 months.
But Jim Chalmers found himself in that position on Thursday when he delivered the first ministerial statement of the 47th parliament. Inflation would peak at close to 8% in the December quarter before slowly moderating. Because it would take until 2024 for inflation to return to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target range, real wages would not start growing again until 2023-24.
