The IMF says we need to make ‘urgent choices’. But are they choices the Albanese government is willing to make?

Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese. Greg Jericho writes Albanese’s government will ‘thank the IMF for confirming that the best way for a government to lower inflation is to lower prices of things such as energy and petrol’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The IMF on Tuesday released its latest World Economic Outlook, suggesting “Resilience Under Strain, Urgent Choices”. But the choices are ones a government wishing to win an election would likely ignore.

The IMF, as a rule, always sees a need to cut spending and lower taxes. Given its history of lending money to countries in severe debt, that’s no shock, and, even if the austerity it prescribed ruined lives, the IMF is very much in the Margaret Thatcher “the medicine is harsh but the patient requires it” mould.