Newsroom

February 6, 2024

The Queensland Premier’s call for the Reserve Bank to reverse the direction of interest rates is another empty populist gesture by an ALP apparatchik unprepared to confront his federal counterparts for failing to help Australians with the cost of living, said Robbie Katter.

The Leader of the Katter’s Australian Party and Traeger MP said the Australian Labor Party had shown no fortitude in confronting the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) over the dozen rate rises which have plunged millions of Australians into a cost of living crisis.

“It’s all well and good for the premier of Queensland to lob a few soggy squibs in the general direction of everyone’s favourite villain, the RBA, but where was the premier when the federal treasurer purposefully severed any authority government has in relation to monetary policy in this country?” Mr Katter asked

The Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced legislation last November which make it impossible for the government of the day to intercede in interest rate decisions by the RBA.[1]

Mr Katter said, following the move, the Australian people are entirely helpless in the face of the relentless pursuit of a monetary policy aimed at squeezing the life out of workers and the middle class.

“The RBA is an unelected shadow government which has tremendous power to control the economic interests and outcomes of millions of Australians, yet the federal government chose, at the very height of the RBA’s zero-inflation zealotry, to make that power absolute and unassailable.

“For the Queensland premier to ignore the role of his own party—the party of Chifley and Curtain—in not just putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum, but giving them the keys to all our homes—is unfathomable,” Mr Katter said.

[1] RBA interest rates: Jim Chalmers to axe power to override rate rises (smh.com.au)