Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I don't speculate on interest rate increases or decisions made by the independent Reserve Bank. I do note that, in this space, there are a lot of opinions, a lot of commentary and a lot of people writing various commentary about what they expect to see. We do not engage in that. The bank is independent. It will make its own decisions, and we don't pre-empt any of that. But the broader point is that inflation has moderated. It is much lower than its peak. It's much lower than what we inherited when we came to government, and we will continue to use all the levers available to us to make sure that we are putting downward pressure on inflation through measures like energy bill relief and through measures like Commonwealth rent assistance—housing and rents, where we're seeing those rates of inflation higher than we would like. Those measures are targeted at that. At the same time, we'll support households facing cost-of-living pressures through our targeted assistance that we're providing through the budget.