Chalmers can’t shift any blame on to Trump or Bullock – even if they deserve it

The gloss might be starting to come off One Nation, but the government shouldn’t get too excited yet because voters clearly believe that Anthony Albanese and Labor are to blame for the cost of living crisis affecting Australians.

This month’s Resolve Political Monitor did contain some good news for Labor: Albanese’s preferred prime minister rating has risen by three percentage points to 32 per cent and Labor’s primary vote is up one point.

But on the economy, the issue that decides elections, Labor is wearing most of the blame for voters’ economic pain.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has spent the past month defending his economic record and arguing that government spending is not the main culprit for persistently higher headline inflation and the fourth interest rate rise this year.

And it is true the government is only partly to blame for the cost-of-living crunch. But that rate hike, along with the global economic headwinds sparked by wars in Ukraine and Iran, fuel shortages, food price rises and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs (to name but a few issues), is hurting Chalmers, Albanese and Labor.

And governments usually carry the can for voters’ economic pain, fairly or unfairly.

Fewer than one in 10 voters expect the economic outlook to improve in the next month, while only a quarter expect it to improve over the next year. In contrast, 45 per cent of voters think the economic outlook will get worse in the next month and 42 per cent feel gloomy about Australia’s economic prospects for the next year.

The cost of living is streets ahead of any other single issue as a voter priority, as it has been for most of this decade.

Some of the details on cost-of-living pressures contained in this latest Resolve Poll make for excruciating reading for the government.

Asked who they held most responsible for the high cost of living, 46 per cent of people nominated “the federal government including its last budget”. That is up 6 percentage points since March and 10 points since October 2024, when the question was first asked by Resolve.

Only 4 per cent of voters blamed the Reserve Bank as being primarily responsible for cost-of-living pressures, even though the bank raised interest rates less than two weeks ago. In October 2024, that figure stood at 12 per cent.

How Labor must miss former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, who served as a reliable punching bag for the first 18 months of the Albanese government, when rates were being ratcheted up from historic COVID pandemic lows.

The current governor, Michele Bullock, has her hands on the lever that raises interest rates. She has not been afraid to raise rates still further, but she seems to have escaped the anger. Voters seem to understand that the governor is acting to curb inflation by the only means available to her – and unlike her predecessor, she has been guarded with her predictions.

The only consolation for the government is that the number of people blaming global factors for inflation has doubled from 13 per cent two years ago to 26 per cent now.

But that’s still only just more than half the percentage of people who blame Labor.

The days of being able to blame the Morrison government or the central bank are long gone.

Albanese and Chalmers have been in power for more than four years now and voters have made their minds up about who is to blame now for the inflation crisis: it’s Labor, by a street.

The government has time to turn around this perception by the time the next election is due, but it would want to get a move on now.

Because once the perception sets in that this Labor government is addicted to spending (as the Coalition claims) and that it is profligate with taxpayers’ money (as One Nation claims), reversing it will become nigh on impossible.

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