“Usually that would cost me what I just got, two bags, maybe like $60,” Sydney shopper Tayla Parian told 9News today.
“It cost me about $120 this time.”
The Reverend Bill Crews Foundation in NSW is providing more than 10,000 meals a week, along with hundreds of food parcels, as some are pushed into poverty.
“I would like to see the government making sure people don’t go hungry, which is true,” Crews told 9News.
The Reserve Bank raised the official cash rate from its record low of 0.1 percent in May, following suit in June, July and August.
The rate is now 1.85 percent and is expected to exceed 2 percent when the board meets on Tuesday, but the Greens don’t want it to go any higher for now.
“The RBA should pause interest rates at least until the October budget and push the government to provide significant and genuine immediate cost-of-living relief,” argued Senator Nick McKim.
Regardless, economist Chris Richardson predicted an “oversized” cash rate hike of up to half a percentage point, saying it was the organization’s only weapon to combat inflation.
“The Reserve Bank will only stop when it hurts,” he told 9News. “It hurts a lot that we spend less than we spend right now and allow inflation to come down from where it is.”
Drivers brace for pain at the supermarket checkout that will soon be reflected at service stations.
As global oil prices soared due to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the Morrison government halved the tax on fuel in May, slashing 22 cents from the cost of a liter of gasoline.
Unless extended by the Albanian government, that tax break ends on September 28, causing a 25ยข increase once GST is included.
“I also have a child to feed,” driver Dion Karafyllas told 9News.
Parliament returns this week and the opposition will attack cost of living pressures and Labor’s adoption of allowing unions to strike multi-employer wage deals.
“That will take this country back to the dark ages of the ’70s and ’80s,” opposition labor relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said.
The most expensive and cheapest countries in the world in gasoline
But Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor argued for greater wage bargaining power, saying real wages had fallen 3.5 percent as a result of inflation.
“The breathless hysteria about the massive dispute happening because we used a new vehicle to negotiate is not based on facts,” he told ABC Insiders today.
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