BROADCASTS.com

So the Reserve Bank call unfolded the way we thought. There was no change - for now.\xa0

The \u201cfor now\u201c is the trouble.\xa0

Where once Adrian Orr stood in front of us and told us 5.5% was it, it now isn't. To be fair to some of us that have been saying it for some time now, it was never going to be.\xa0

Let us not forget that at 5.5%, we are way higher than many other central banks. Australia, which is also in a holding pattern, is barely over 4% and they are barely over 4% because they didn\u2019t fire hose the economy the way Adrian did, watched and egged on by the Finance Minister. And they certainly didn\u2019t hand out gargantuan pay rises to compensate for the fact we had no workers, so the workers we did have held their hands out big time.\xa0

Between the printing of the money and the astonishing adherence to a closed border, we can fairly comfortably say now that of all the economic mistakes that were made around Covid, when it came to the economic part of it, although we were doing roughly what everyone was doing and we were doing it with alacrity.\xa0

We printed more per head of population than just about anyone, we held the border closed longer driven by the mad belief that all the Jobseeker Support locals would fill the gaps, and when they didn\u2019t, six, seven, eight, nine and ten percent pay rises were needed.\xa0

Everyone everywhere has, and is, paying some sort of price for how we handled the pandemic. But we are paying a particularly severe one.\xa0

The trap we are now in is because we didn\u2019t buckle down and bite the economic bullet last year, and now the borders are open and the wages are up and the house prices are rising, we have shifted our inflationary behaviour from printing and wage rises to immigration and housing.\xa0

Our Reserve Bank whacked the rates up fast. But the Government spent like drunks and counteracted it and at every stage, instead of taking our medicine, we stalled and procrastinated and tried to find excuses.\xa0

And now 5.5% won't be it.\xa0

Not only is the economy broken, it'll be broken for longer, to a degree the election will fix the political incompetence, but the question for the rest of us is - just how long do you want the pain to go on for?\xa0

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.