Mr Chalmers promised a basic “bread and butter budget”, with the inflation monster looking more and more like Freddie from Elm Street; anything else would be unreasonable. If the government were to pour money into the economy now, the December forecast inflation peak of 7.75 per cent risks blowing out. The Treasurer also let servo owners know that with millions of litres of low excise fuel sitting in their tanks, fuel prices should not jump overnight. Mr Chalmers should know servo owners don’t listen to such reasoning, so we all expect fuel to go up.
