Independent senator Jacqui Lambie was one such critic,who accused the government of “chucking money left,right and centre”.
And economists warned that Labor could not “subsidise its way to lower inflation” because the budget spending would flow through to demand and put pressure on the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates higher for longer.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked about this earlier on ABC’s7.30,and he said it was about simplifying the delivery of cost of living relief.
The simplest way to deliver this relief is via energy bills. Once you go beyond providing it to people on pensions and payments who were our priority in the last budget,then it makes sense to go broadly.
Some of the cost of living package is broad. Every household gets energy bill relief and every taxpayer gets a tax cut and there’s targeted cost of living help.”