Dollar,  Interest Rates,  Backbenchers

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Meeting Of The Ministerial Council For Commonwealth-State Financial
March 30, 2001
Interest rates, housing, dollar, beer, Opposition opportunism
April 4, 2001
Meeting Of The Ministerial Council For Commonwealth-State Financial
March 30, 2001
Interest rates, housing, dollar, beer, Opposition opportunism
April 4, 2001

Dollar,  Interest Rates,  Backbenchers

Transcript No. 2001/030

Transcript

of

Hon Peter Costello MP

Treasurer

Doorstop

Victorian State Council, University of Melbourne, Hawthorn

Saturday, 31 March 2001

1.00pm

SUBJECTS: Dollar, Interest Rates, Backbenchers

JOURNALIST:

The dollar plunged to new lows overnight. What can you do about it? And what is your

reaction?

TREASURER:

I have said on numbers of occasions before, the things that are influencing the

Australian dollar – US dollar exchange rate at the moment are not reflecting economic

fundamentals – balanced Budget, low inflation, low interest rates – are working for

Australia and the exchange rate is not fully reflecting those fundamentals. I also note

incidentally that the Opposition, an irresponsible Opposition, has tried to make political

capital out of that. This irresponsibility of Mr Crean and Mr Beazley is now even

beginning to worry State Labor figures. On Friday night, John Brumby went on Victorian

radio and called on people to stop talking the economy down. Mr Crean couldn’t even

last 24 hours. He was out there today in breach of John Brumby’s call, behaving as

per usual in an irresponsible manner. Now if the Labor Party has a policy on the currency,

it had better tell us what it is. Because rollback isn’t going to do anything. And

handing Australia across to trade union leaders isn’t going to do anything. And its

campaign of sabotaging the Government’s economic policy in the Senate isn’t

going to do anything. So if Labor wants to complain we’d better ask what its policy

is because all of the policy it seems to want to introduce won’t contribute to

economic growth in fact far, much more likely to do the reverse.

JOURNALIST:

Do you think there will be another drop in interest rates then?

TREASURER:

I can’t speculate on the future course of interest rates, but, and I’ve said

before, that we have a low inflation economy, there are no price risks that are emerging

and in the context of a low inflation economy, the Reserve Bank has to meet its target

which is 2 to 3 per cent over the course of the cycle. It doesn’t look as if that is

at risk of blowing out at the moment.

JOURNALIST:

It’s been reported that groups of MPs are meeting to discuss the Prime

Minister’s personal performance. Are you aware of that?

TREASURER:

No I’m not. Thank you.