Australian Prime Minister Albanese delays COP31 trip to manage budget talks amid mounting cost-of-living strain
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put off his flight to the COP31 climate summit by a day so he could chair cabinet meetings on the coming December budget update, as inflation and cost-of-living pressures keep biting households. The government says the recent interest-rate rise makes fiscal savings more urgent.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will remain in Australia on Monday to chair the cabinet’s expenditure review committee ahead of the December budget update, before departing for the COP31 climate conference in Turkey on Tuesday. The delay comes after a recent interest-rate rise, a stark reminder of the economic pressure now being placed on households and of the government’s need to find savings without deepening the pain.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers told a news conference that the conflict in the Middle East is a primary driver of the recent inflation increase, while Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock emphasized that monetary policy cannot influence global oil prices and is aimed at addressing domestic capacity pressures.
Productivity Commission Chair Danielle Wood, speaking to Nine Media, said the commission’s report on business dynamism highlights the importance of including workplace relations in the broader productivity discussion, despite the commission’s terms of reference limiting its focus on tax, workplace relations and mergers.
The government, which has highlighted its record on gender representation in senior roles, now faces the difficult task of finding enough savings without worsening the ongoing cost-of-living crisis for voters already under intense pressure.