Move FM Australian News

CANBERRA, Australia: Australia’s centre-left Labor government has announced that it is allocating $9.84 billion over the next four years to ease the cost of living crisis for families and businesses.

The plan aims to directly ease price pressures and inflation, which has eased in the first quarter but is still at a 30-year high at 7.0 percent, it added.

In the budget, Canberra announced financial assistance for more than 5 million low-income families, small businesses, and struggling pensioners.

In a statement ahead of the federal budget announcement, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, “The centerpiece of the budget will be cost-of-living relief that does not add to inflation. People are under the pump. We have carefully calibrated and designed this budget so that it takes pressure off the cost-of-living, rather than add to it,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

Chalmers added that the budget would be restrained, to not add to inflationary pressures.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of Australia warned that due to low productivity growth and rising energy prices and rents, risks to inflation were on the upside.

The budget, when delivered on Tuesday night, revealed Australia’s deficit sharply shrank as tax windfalls from commodity exports increased its capital.