At a gathering of central bankers in Hong Kong on Tuesday, RBA Governor, Michelle Bullock claimed that household finances in Australia are holding up well, despite 4.25% of rate hikes. The rookie RBA governor appears even more out of touch than her predecessor.
“Households and businesses in Australia are actually in a pretty good position. Their balance sheets are pretty good”, she said.
“We’ve been surprised a little bit on the strength of activity. It’s held up a little better than we thought. That’s meant that services price inflation has held up a bit more. So what we’re observing is a bit more domestic price pressures than we’d expected”.
Bullock pointed to the $300 billion in excess savings built up over the pandemic and rising house prices as reasons behind the resilience in consumer spending.
The reality is not nearly as rosy as Bullock claims. Aggregate household spending is holding up first as population is growing at a record pace because of the Albanese government’s record immigration program, which saw an estimated 500,000 net migrants land in Australia in 2002-23.
Yet, Individual Australian households are cutting back on their expenditure.
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