New treasurer Jim Chalmers has been in multiple briefings since Sunday, and the message he sends in this podcast is that he is not going to try to gild the economic lily with the Australian community.
He intends to deliver a “pretty blunt, pretty frank” assessment of Australia’s challenges in an economic statement to parliament soon after it returns in June or July.
Chalmers highlights two particularly “spiky” bits of Australia’s inflation problem that are under “extreme pressure” at the moment – power prices and the building industry as the cost of materials rise.
