Share
When Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was in his Canberra office four weeks ago and was told the unemployment rate had – again – fallen faster than anticipated, to 5.6 per cent for March, the Treasurer became confident that he could pull off the great budget pivot.
For months, Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia had privately been nudging the government not to turn off the fiscal support too sharply after the $90 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy finished.
The “official family” of public policy economists believed the government should get more ambitious on its unemployment target and aim to reduce the jobless rate below 5 per cent to get wages growth accelerating and inflation rising.