These rate hikes will hit harder than 2023, and the PM can’t spend his way out of it

September 29, 2026 — 3:58pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

This cycle of rate hikes will hit Australians harder than the one they endured in 2023.

With a depleted budget, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will find it harder to repeat the election spending playbook he used to see off ex-Coalition leader Peter Dutton against the new threat from One Nation’s Pauline Hanson.

Voters were complaining about the cost of living crisis post-pandemic, when the COVID stimulus was still sloshing around the economy and helping people tread water.

That’s now gone. And although Australians’ savings buffers are in OK shape, the share of mortgages on fixed rates has fallen from about 40 per cent then to around 5 per cent now.

Tuesday’s unsurprising hike takes the cash rate to a 15-year-high of 4.6 per cent. The newly hawkish RBA is signalling that more rate hikes could come. The current rate is the second highest in the advanced world outside of Iceland and significantly higher than nations such as New Zealand and Canada where policymakers accepted more job losses to curb inflation.

RBA hikes interest rates to 4.6 per cent in 15-year high, open to........

© Brisbane Times