Act before it’s too late: Economists hit out at political shrug over S&P warning
S&P is warning Australia's AAA credit rating could be at risk from election spending. Economists think it'll take a crisis to get politicians to listen.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have dismissed warnings from S&P over Australia’s credit rating, as top economists raise concerns that it will take a crisis to force politicians to repair the budget position.
The first question Albanese faced at his press conference on Tuesday morning on the election trail in Queensland was about the S&P report, which said both Labor and the opposition have engaged in debt-fuelled election spending promises that could eventually risk a downgrade from the current AAA credit rating.
Albanese immediately pushed the concerns back onto rival Peter Dutton.
“One of the things we’ve done is put our costings out there. The other side haven’t,” he said. “And the costings that we released … actually made the budget bottom line better. We’ve improved the budget bottom line by $207 billion since we came to office."
He quickly handed over to Chalmers, who said the ratings agency should be “reassured” that the election campaign would end with the budget in a better position than when it started five weeks ago.
