The Reserve Bank didn’t just lift the cash rate 25 basis points today, from 3.6 to 3.85 percent. Rate rises are never popular, and politicians knows exactly who wears the pain first: mortgage holders, renters and small businesses watching repayments and input costs squeeze their margins. That happened today, and there may well be further rate rises to come….IF Labor doesn’t reduce government spending. Jim Chalmers needs to show genuine spending discipline, not clever rebranding, off-budget tricks or one off savings that disappear the next year. If Labor won’t make hard calls at a macro level, households will be forced to keep making them instead, at the micro level.

Source: Daily Mail February 03, 2026 08:21 UTC