Is it the only way?

On 29 September 2026 the Reserve Bank announced a rise of 25 basis points in the cash rate, to 4.60 per cent, effective 30 September. It is the fourth rise of 2026 ¹². The Bank’s reasons put the widening Middle East war and global energy prices first, and said higher fuel prices were partly passing through to other prices on top of domestic capacity pressure ².

A reader is entitled to ask whether raising the cash rate is the only thing that can be done. The answer depends on whose powers are meant. For the Reserve Bank it is, in the Governor’s words: “the only thing we have to address inflation” ³. For the country, on the record, it is not. The government’s own 2026-27 Budget says fiscal policy is “better suited than monetary policy to respond to supply shocks, such as the global oil shock” ⁸. The International Monetary Fund adds that fiscal policy should avoid broad-based subsidies, tax cuts and price controls ⁹.

This article is an inventory, not a verdict. It sets out the main other levers on the record: who holds each, whether it was used in 2026, what the record says each did, and what it costs. Where a source argues against a lever, that argument sits beside it. The questions this inventory raises are published in The grill, article 19 of this series; answers will be added as they arrive.

01One instrument, by law

The Reserve Bank’s job is set in statute. The Board must determine monetary policy in the way that, in its opinion, best contributes to price stability and the maintenance of full employment. The Bank’s overarching objective is to promote “the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia both now and into the future”. The 2025 Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy sets the inflation goal at between 2 and 3 per cent ⁴.

The Governor, Michele Bullock, has been plain about the tool. On 3 February 2026 she said “the interest rate is our only instrument we’ve got” and called it “a very blunt instrument”. On 5 May: “It’s blunt. It does affect people in different ways. But it’s the best way we’ve got of controlling inflation” ³. Asked the same day whether there was a better way to deal with largely oil shock-driven inflation, she said the oil shock was not the sole reason, “we had an inflation problem before this”, and that people often say she must have a better thing than the interest rate: “we don’t” ³.

It’s all we have. And we know that it affects different people differently.

The Bank’s own account of why it works is that it reaches everything. Its transmission explainer says changes to monetary policy affect interest rates, and changes to interest rates affect activity and inflation, with expectations mattering because workers who expect higher inflation may seek bigger wage rises ⁶. Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter said on 8 July, answering an audience question: “They are a blunt tool, but they work because they go everywhere in the economy” ⁵.

How much the tool buys is on the record too. In April 2025 three RBA models and one external model were run side by side. Most of the models put the peak effect of a 100 basis point rise after around one to two years, lowering the level of GDP by ¼ to 1 per cent and year-ended inflation by ⅛ to ½ of a percentage point ⁷. The Bulletin stresses that “the entire future path of interest rates matters”, and it was published before any 2026 rise, so it is not an estimate of them ⁷. THE RORT’s arithmetic, from published figures: the four 2026 rises total 100 basis points, from 3.60 per cent to 4.60 per cent ¹, so the same models’ range for a rise of that size is ⅛ to ½ of a point off inflation at the peak, one to two years on. The Bank has published no estimate of what the 2026 rises do to inflation ⁶¹; four staggered rises that followed three 2025 cuts are not one 100 basis point rise, so this is a rough mapping, not a forecast.

THE RORT’s reading, labelled as analysis rather than a sourced finding: the cash rate acts through interest rates; it does not tax or cap profits. Tools that do belong to Parliament, the government and the regulators. The rest of this article is those tools.

02The Budget’s own sentence, and the referee beside it

The 2026-27 Budget, released on 12 May 2026, contains a sentence that answers the question in its own terms.

Fiscal policy has a range of instruments that can be calibrated for a specific policy response. This makes fiscal policy better suited than monetary policy to respond to supply shocks, such as the global oil shock.

On 29 September the Reserve Bank put the war and energy prices first: “The conflict in the Middle East has broadened and global energy prices are now much higher than had been assumed in the August forecasts” ². The government’s own document says fiscal policy is better suited than monetary policy to respond to supply shocks such as the global oil shock ⁸.

The referee beside it is the International Monetary Fund. Its July 2026 update says fiscal policy “should avoid broad-based subsidies, tax cuts, and price controls” ⁹. The same update backs the Reserve Bank’s side of the argument in part: where inflationary pressures are judged to be temporary and expectations remain anchored, central banks should keep real rates broadly constant, “which may imply raising nominal policy rates”, and where a technology-led upturn adds demand pressure they “may need to do more” ⁹. THE RORT’s reading: the passage quoted does not tell governments to stand aside; it names which fiscal responses to avoid.

fiscal policy should avoid broad-based subsidies, tax cuts, and price controls

The Governor’s own position is less absolute than “all we have” suggests. On 3 February she said “I’m not going to tell the government what to do with fiscal policy. That’s not my business”. Asked on 5 May about another tool, she said: “Fiscal policy has many more things that it can do” ³. On 5 May she also called fiscal policy “not a very nimble way to address inflation”, but added that when governments are spending a lot and “running up against capacity constraints, then they do need to think about whether or not there’s ways they can help the inflation problem by looking for ways to constrain demand” ³. She did not rule out a fiscal role.

The two institutions have a formal channel. The Statements on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, agreed in December 2023 and July 2025, have the government recognise the role of sound fiscal management. The 2025 Statement says the government recognises “the role that sound fiscal management plays in achieving the Monetary Policy Board’s objectives”, and commits the Reserve Bank and Treasury to work together to enhance their understanding of macroeconomic conditions and of the impact monetary and fiscal policy settings have on them ¹⁰. That is a commitment to shared understanding. It does not commit either side to joint action or to a fiscal rule.

The government’s own budget balance is a lever too. Before the 2026 rises it ran underlying cash surpluses of $22.1 billion in 2022-23 and $15.8 billion in 2023-24; the Treasurer described the second as “entirely due to lower payments, not higher taxes” ⁵⁵. The budget has been in deficit since: $10.0 billion in 2024-25 and $22.3 billion in 2025-26, with a deficit of $31.5 billion forecast for 2026-27 ⁵⁶⁸. The government says its Budget is “helping to take pressure off inflation”; that is the government’s claim, and no fiscal impulse figure is given ⁵⁷. Market economists called the 2026-27 settings “neutral to mildly expansionary”, and CBA’s economists said the Budget “does little to help in the fight against inflation” ⁵⁸. The Budget also funds $5.9 billion of new and amended Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) listings under the heading “Cheaper medicines”; no effect on the CPI is claimed or verified ⁵⁷.

03Gas at home: the price that held

At home, east coast wholesale gas did not follow world prices up during the war. The Australian Energy Market Operator recorded an average of $10.61 a gigajoule in the March quarter of 2026, with March itself at $9.22, “a four-year low”, and $9.08 in the June quarter, the lowest quarter since the June quarter of 2021. A year earlier, in the June quarter of 2025, the average was $12.36 ¹¹. The case that war-driven energy costs reached households has therefore to be made on fuel, not on domestic gas.

What exporters could get was very different. In the June quarter the ACCC’s LNG netback, the export-parity price, was $20.84 a gigajoule against the AEMO domestic average of $9.08. AEMO says international LNG spot prices were at their highest since February 2023 ¹¹. The ACCC’s June 2026 interim report, published on 10 July, found that the war had “so far” had no material impact on east coast gas prices, with one exception: commodity-linked contracts, 12 per cent of 2026 supply, whose average estimated price rose from $11.86 in December 2025 to $16.85 in April 2026. Producer and retailer contract prices for 2026 supply fell but stayed in the $13 to $15 range seen since the 2022-23 crisis. That contract data runs to 31 March, mostly before the war, so it is not a like-for-like comparison with the June-quarter spot prices ¹².

The price lever on the books is a cap. From late December 2022 a $12 a gigajoule cap applied to new east coast wholesale gas contracts from developed fields, and New South Wales and Queensland effectively capped generation coal at $125 a tonne, with the Commonwealth to contribute to the cost ¹³. The temporary cap was then replaced by the mandatory Gas Market Code, which commenced on 11 July 2023 with a $12 “reasonable price” and sunsets on 1 October 2033 ¹⁴¹⁵. The regulations remain in place until new arrangements are implemented ¹⁶.

What the record says it did is thin. Treasury forecast, and did not measure, that the caps would cut inflation by about half a point in 2023-24, and that without them the average family would pay $230 more on its electricity bill ¹³. No after-the-fact evaluation was found. Energy Minister Bowen claimed in October 2023 that the caps had a “significant impact” in limiting the worst impacts of the invasion of Ukraine on power bills; that is the minister’s claim, and THE RORT did not read the Australian Energy Regulator’s own attribution ¹⁷. AEMO’s figures record the 2026 price.

The other side is in the government’s own review. The Gas Market Review of December 2025 says stakeholders indicated that the reasonable price mechanism “has not been sufficient to put downward pressure on prices in the context of tight supply conditions”. It notes that in 2023 netback prices dipped below $12 a gigajoule but east coast spot prices “remained clustered around $12/GJ, suggesting domestic market dynamics may have inadvertently prevented prices from adjusting down” ¹⁵. The Review recommends phasing the reasonable price out ¹⁴.

A replacement is coming. On 7 May 2026 the government set a gas reservation scheme at the equivalent of 20 per cent of exports, from 1 July 2027, respecting export contracts entered into before 22 December 2025. At 10 September 2026 the legislation was at exposure-draft stage ¹⁶.

04Fuel: cut, then reversed

The fuel excise cut was the war-linked lever. On 30 March 2026 the Prime Minister announced the halving of the excise, saying: “The spike in fuel prices as a result of the war in the Middle East is hurting Australians and causing financial stress.” It cut fuel by 26.3 cents a litre from 1 April to 30 June. On 2 April the states funded a further 5.7 cents from extra GST revenue, 32 cents in total, plus GST, taking the rate to 20.6 cents, so the excise was cut by more than half. The government also tasked the ACCC with stepping up fuel price monitoring and issuing on-the-spot fines, and the ACCC warned retailers on 2 April ¹⁸.

The cut then wound down. From 1 July it became a 16-cent discount, and it ended at midnight on 2 August, as the Treasurer confirmed that day ¹⁸. The ABC’s table puts the rate from 3 August at 53.7 cents after indexation ¹⁸. The Budget costs the enlarged package at $2.9 billion ²⁰.

The measured effect shows in the ABS figures. Automotive fuel fell 7.0 per cent in April after rising 32.8 per cent in March, a fall the ABS says “includes the halving of the fuel excise on 1 April”, and it was still 23.5 per cent above February, before the conflict ²¹. Fuel fell 10.9 per cent in June, which the ABS put down to “some stabilisation in the Middle East” lowering world oil prices, with excise relief having lowered fuel in April and May ²². The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said he anticipated the cut would lower headline inflation by half a percentage point through the year to the June quarter of 2026; that is the Treasurer’s claim, and THE RORT found no ABS decomposition of the cut’s effect. Economists warned it could add to inflation through demand ¹⁹.

Then it reversed. Fuel rose 7.5 per cent in July, which the ABS put down to “higher world oil prices and the partial unwinding of the federal government’s fuel excise relief measures” ²². The Reserve Bank had said in August: “The roll-off of the fuel excise reduction in July and August is expected to boost retail fuel prices and quarterly headline inflation in the September quarter” ²³. The ABS publishes the September-quarter CPI on 28 October ⁵⁴.

The June-quarter outcome came in lower than forecast. Headline inflation was 3.9 per cent, which the Bank said was “substantially lower” than the 4.8 per cent it expected in May, “primarily” because of weaker fuel and travel prices, in part “lower retail margins for petrol” ²³. Treasury’s Final Budget Outcome, published on 28 September, records the same 3.9 per cent, “materially lower” than the 5 per cent forecast in the Budget, reflecting lower-than-expected petrol prices and “subdued pass-through of broader cost pressures from the Middle East conflict to consumer prices” ²⁴. Neither passage apportions the shortfall to the excise cut.

05Electricity: rebates move measured inflation both ways

Energy bill relief is a lever that works on the measured index in both directions. In July 2024 Commonwealth and state rebates led to a 6.4 per cent fall in electricity prices in the month, against a 0.9 per cent rise without them ²⁵. The Reserve Bank said in November 2024 that headline inflation was expected to be “temporarily” within the target range, “owing primarily to cost-of-living support measures” ²⁵.

When the rebates ran out, the measured index jumped. Measured electricity prices were up 37.1 per cent to October 2025 and 37.0 per cent in the 12 months to February 2026, against 5.0 per cent and 4.9 per cent excluding the rebates ²⁵. The ABS attributes electricity’s 6.1 per cent annual rise to July 2026 (22.4 per cent to June) “largely” to the ending of Commonwealth and state rebates ²², and says the fall from 22.4 to 6.1 per cent was mainly due to the timing of rebate payments in 2025 ²².

THE RORT’s reading, labelled as analysis: measured electricity inflation was 37.1 per cent in the 12 months to October 2025 and still 37.0 per cent to February 2026, either side of the Reserve Bank’s first decision of 2026, on 3 February. That is timing, not proof that the Bank raised rates because of the rebates; the Bank also cites trimmed mean inflation.

The relief itself was time-limited. The Commonwealth Energy Bill Relief Fund extension paid relief from 1 July 2024 to 31 December 2025, with total funding of $5.3 billion. The agreement’s formal end date is 31 December 2026, but nothing found says relief is paid in 2026 ²⁶.

06Competition levers

A cluster of measures aims at how markets behave rather than at demand. The Food and Grocery Code became mandatory on 1 April 2025 for supermarkets and grocery wholesalers earning over $5 billion (ALDI, Coles, Metcash and Woolworths), with penalties up to the greater of $10 million, three times the benefit or 10 per cent of turnover. It mainly governs retailer and supplier conduct ²⁸.

From 1 July 2026 excessive grocery pricing by very large retailers, those with more than $30 billion in revenue, currently Coles and Woolworths, is prohibited under the Food and Grocery Code regulations and enforced by the ACCC. The test is whether prices are “significantly excessive” against cost plus a reasonable margin; the maximum penalty is the greater of $10 million, three times the benefit or 10 per cent of turnover ²⁷. No enforcement outcome under it has been checked.

Since 1 January 2026 merger notification to the ACCC above thresholds has been mandatory and suspensory, with 50 notifications and 108 waiver applications in the first quarter. The Treasurer tied merger reform to grocery prices in October 2024 ²⁹. The Unfair Trading Practices Bill passed on 2 July 2026, banning subscription traps, undisclosed checkout fees and manipulative online design from 1 July 2027. For financial services the government is only exploring “further alignment” of protections with ASIC and the states and territories, so the ban does not yet squarely cover banks ³⁰.

The government’s 30 March fuel package lists among its measures: “Passed new laws to double penalties for petrol companies for price gouging”. That is the government’s claim; THE RORT did not fetch the law ¹⁸.

The ACCC’s supermarkets inquiry, released on 21 March 2025, found ALDI, Coles and Woolworths to be “some of the most profitable supermarket businesses among global peers”, with average product margins up over five years, and made 20 recommendations. It did not allege price gouging or recommend divestiture, according to The Conversation’s reading of it ³¹.

07APRA’s levers

The prudential regulator has tools that limit lending, but they are framed around financial resilience rather than inflation. The 3-point serviceability buffer was kept in 2024 and 2025, and APRA’s Chair said the current level “has not been restrictive on new credit to the household sector”. From February 2026 lending at a debt-to-income ratio of six or more is capped at 20 per cent of all new mortgage lending, a limit APRA says is unlikely to bite on owner-occupiers in the near term ³².

08The profit-side levers: what was not used

Australia already has a bank-specific levy. The Major Bank Levy, in place since 1 July 2017, is charged at 0.06 per cent a year on certain liabilities of banks with more than $100 billion in liabilities. At the Parliamentary Budget Office’s May 2024 costing it captured five banks: CBA, Westpac, ANZ, NAB and Macquarie ³³. It is a levy on liabilities, not on profits. THE RORT did not re-read the Act for any change since, so the 0.06 per cent rests on that costing and on no change having been found. ANZ alone booked $230 million for it in the March 2026 half ³³. A 2024 PBO costing of a 10 per cent increase, requested by Senator Canavan, came to $495.8 million over the forward estimates; it was not legislated ³³.

A bigger levy has a cost. The PBO assumed that 75 per cent of any increase would be passed on to consumers “through mechanisms such as increases to fees on banking products, increases to interest rates on mortgage products, or decreases in interest payments on savings” ³³.

No 2026 proposal for a bank windfall tax or a higher bank levy was found. The Greens took a bank levy increase to the 2025 election: the PBO costed their “Big corporations tax (banks)” as raising the Major Bank Levy to 0.08 per cent per quarter, from 0.015 per cent, plus a levy recouping Term Funding Facility benefits, improving the fiscal balance by about $35.1 billion over the forward estimates ³⁴. That is a 2025 costing of a party policy, not a 2026 proposal or a vote. THE RORT found no Senate vote on a bank windfall tax in 2026: a search of the Senate Journals for “bank” and “levy” returned one documents entry, dated 11 August 2026, and no motion, amendment or division. The House was not searched for this ³⁵.

On gas and coal, the ABC reported on 20 March 2026 a Prime Minister and Cabinet document asking Treasury to model “new levy options” on windfall gas and thermal coal profits, stating: “Energy producers should not benefit from high international prices at the expense of domestic customers” ³⁶. A later ABC article, on 10 May, reported that the Prime Minister “killed off the move, concerned it could upset the trading partners Australia is relying on for fuel”; that is the reporter’s characterisation, not a government quote ³⁷.

In the May Budget the government, in the ABC’s words, “refused calls for a broader 25 per cent tax on gas exports”. The Treasurer said it was “not proposing any changes to the existing tax arrangements” and that “I know that people would like us to go further but there are good reasons to prioritise fuel supply and gas reservation” ³⁷. The Prime Minister said on 29 April: “The middle of a global fuel crisis is the worst possible time to jeopardise these partnerships, or the investment that underpins them”, reported in the ABC’s live blog. SBS reported him on 24 April saying gas companies “pay around about $22 billion” and that “you need to acknowledge the tens of billions of dollars of investment that occurs in order to have that gas extracted”. On 18 June the Treasurer told 7.30: “When it comes to arrangements around gas taxes, that’s not something that we’ve been working on” ³⁸.

THE RORT found seven recorded divisions on a 25 per cent gas export tax in 2026, and every one was lost. In the Senate: 12 March, 13 to 34 on an amendment to the Greens’ amendment; 31 March, 10 to 26; 1 April, 12 to 32; 29 June, 10 to 33; and 12 August, 11 to 30 on an urgency motion. On 12 March, Labor, the Coalition and One Nation voted down the Greens’ 25% export tax amendment, 13 votes to 35. In the House of Representatives on 2 June, 9 to 71: the government’s members voted it down and the Coalition did not vote ³⁵.

What each side of the Senate’s gas tax inquiry recommended is in the additional comments to its 7 May 2026 report, because the committee “has not been able to reach agreement on a set of recommendations” ³⁹. The Greens recommended replacing the petroleum resource rent tax on gas profits with a flat tax of at least 25 per cent on gas export revenue. Senator David Pocock recommended a 25 per cent tax on the value of gas exports, “simple, permanent, based on export revenue rather than profit”. Labor senators recommended that Treasury or the Productivity Commission evaluate the proposals after the crisis has passed and once gas reservation is designed, aiming to avoid “damaging vital regional relationships or undermining Australia’s energy and national security”. Coalition senators recommended “no arbitrary taxation such as a windfall levy on gas exports”, because “Australia needs an increased tax take, not an increased tax rate” ³⁹.

What a gas tax would touch is not simple. The petroleum resource rent tax raised $1,416 million in cash receipts in 2025-26 and $1,661 million on an accrual basis ²⁴. PRRT is a profit-based tax on petroleum projects, oil included, and it is not the whole government take: company tax, royalties and excise also apply. Treasury officials told the committee that after the Ukraine price spike oil and gas producers ran down accumulated tax losses, “and that’s what’s led to that increase in tax paid”, and that further price pass-through “would also directly translate through to higher corporate tax paid” ³⁹. The committee itself found that a lack of timely, transparent entity-level data makes revenue, profits and PRRT liabilities difficult to understand ³⁹.

Industry and the government have stated their cases on the record. Woodside’s chief financial officer, Graham Tiver, told the committee on 24 April, of an export tax on top of existing taxes: “If you were putting that on top of PRRT, if you were putting it on top of corporate income tax, I’m not sure how any project would survive” ⁵⁹. Resources Minister Madeleine King, asked on ABC Radio National on 24 April about the Greens’ claim that the investment could be considered free, said: “It’s clearly an absurd proposition” ⁶⁰. She told SBS the same day: “We’ve got to remember what those billions of dollars of investment has delivered for the Australian people” ³⁸.

09What other countries did

Other countries used other levers, and some used the cash rate as well. Japan raised its policy rate to about 1.0 per cent on 16 June 2026, by seven votes to one, citing the fast pass-through of higher crude oil prices in business-to-business prices, and to about 1.25 per cent on 18 September, by seven votes to two ⁴¹. Japan’s consumer price index was 1.9 per cent in August (1.7 per cent excluding fresh food), below 2 per cent “due to factors such as the effects of the government’s measures to reduce the household burden of higher energy prices”, and its energy index was 0.7 per cent lower than a year earlier ⁴¹. Japan’s energy subsidies held its measured inflation down. Its central bank raised rates as well.

In Europe, Bloomberg reported in September 2022 that France would budget a net EUR 16 billion to cap 2023 household and small-business power and gas price rises at 15 per cent, partly funded by power producers reimbursing windfall revenues ⁴². The Tax Foundation reports that the EU’s 2022 energy package paired a solidarity contribution on fossil fuel surplus profits with a revenue cap on inframarginal generators, expected to raise about EUR 140 billion together, EUR 25 billion of it from the contribution. The contribution collected about EUR 6.85 billion for 2022, under 30 per cent of what was expected. It was a revenue measure to fund bill relief, not a demand tool ⁴³.

Bank taxes spread further. An IMF staff working paper, which is not an IMF Board view, counts 12 of 27 EU countries introducing new bank taxes since 2023. It says EU bank profits since 2022 were “mostly driven by the delayed pass-through” of the rapid monetary policy tightening to deposit rates and are likely transitory. That is EU evidence, not a finding about Australia ⁴⁴. Italy in 2023 imposed a one-off 40 per cent tax on net interest income more than 10 per cent above its 2021 level, which most banks avoided by putting 2.5 times the tax into capital reserves; Rome had expected under EUR 3 billion. Spain collected EUR 1.2 billion from a surtax in 2023, Hungary EUR 640 million in the first year of its tax, and Lithuania EUR 250 million from its excess interest tax ⁴⁴. Italy’s government justified its tax by saying household and business borrowing costs had doubled while depositors’ returns had not; European bank shares had their biggest daily fall since the March 2023 Credit Suisse turmoil on the announcement, with Intesa down 8.2 per cent and UniCredit 7.2 per cent, Al Jazeera reported ⁴⁵.

The costs of such taxes are on the record too. The IMF staff review warns that bank taxes tend to raise loan rates, cut lending, lower deposit rates and raise fees; that “the cost of bank taxes may be particularly likely to fall on households as their demand for bank services is less price-sensitive”; and that these effects may be especially pronounced in concentrated markets. It suggests locking temporary profits in as bank capital instead ⁴⁴. The Tax Foundation reports that the European Central Bank objected to bank windfall taxes in Spain, Lithuania and Italy on credit-supply and resilience grounds ⁴⁴.

The Bank of England, which held Bank Rate at 3.75 per cent at every 2026 meeting (in September by six votes to three, with three members voting for a rise), wrote in its September Minutes that monetary policy “could not influence global energy prices, but was being set to ensure that the economic adjustment to them occurred in a way that achieved the 2% inflation target sustainably”. It projected inflation of about 3.75 per cent in the December quarter, and judged that “weakness in economic activity and soft labour market conditions would help to contain the strength of second-round effects from higher energy prices” ⁴⁶. The Reserve Bank’s 29 September statement, by contrast, describes Australia as still having “pressure on domestic capacity” ². Other central banks’ choices are context, not justification.

10Proposals on the table

Some alternatives are proposals, not policies, and each has an owner. In 2022 the Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss, an advocacy source, argued for alternatives to rate rises: a windfall tax on gas and coal, used to cut education or child care costs, and a bigger bank levy ⁴⁷. His words: “imagine if we didn’t just introduce a windfall profits tax on the gas and coal industry, which is making bumper profits off the back of Putin’s brutal war, but used it to push down the cost of education or child care.”

In 2026, Josh Dowse wrote in Yahoo Finance on 4 May that the super guarantee could be varied around 12 per cent as a third lever: “when inflation is running you might nudge the 12% up a little to constrain demand.” It is an opinion column, not a costed proposal. Compulsory super began partly as a trade-off for restrained wage rises under the Hawke government ⁴⁸.

The Greens said on 3 July 2026 that they wanted “a minimum 25 per cent gas export tax”, citing unattributed “new analysis” that gas companies were expected to receive an additional $18 billion windfall “over the next year” ⁴⁰. The $18 billion is an unsourced claim by a party, not the Greens’ own named modelling. The $17 billion a year that Senator Pocock and the Greens cite for a 25 per cent export tax is advocates’ modelling: Senator Pocock’s comments attribute it to modelling commissioned by Future Group from the consultants Arthur D. Little, “consistent with” separate analysis by the Australia Institute. It is not an independent costing ³⁹.

11The case against the alternatives

Every lever above carries a cost, and the record has arguments against most of them. Price controls have a poor record: the United States’ 1971 to 1974 wage and price controls “only temporarily slowed the rise in prices while exacerbating shortages”, in the Federal Reserve’s history. A Baker Institute brief in 2023 argued that Australia’s gas cap would reduce investment and production and that taxing the value of the resource would be better than a cap ⁴⁹. The Gas Market Review’s own stakeholders said the reasonable price mechanism had not been sufficient in tight supply ¹⁵.

Windfall and bank taxes are passed on. The PBO assumed 75 per cent of any bank levy increase would be passed to customers ³³, and the IMF staff review warns the costs may fall on households ⁴⁴. Most Italian banks avoided the 2023 tax by putting 2.5 times its amount into capital reserves ⁴⁴.

Rebates and subsidies move measured inflation. Rebates moved measured electricity prices down and then up ²⁵. The IMF says fiscal policy should avoid broad-based subsidies, tax cuts and price controls ⁹. The Bank for International Settlements says in its Annual Economic Report of 28 June 2026 that policymakers “must prioritise price stability”; its staff research, which states staff views and not the BIS’s, finds that oil shocks can be more than twice as inflationary when expectations are above target, that “an energy price surge combined with a loose fiscal position tends to be followed by higher inflation”, and that prompt responses cost less where activity is resilient ⁵³.

Timing matters. A US textbook says monetary policy can be set faster than fiscal policy but works slowly, while for fiscal policy “the impact lag may be shorter” ⁵⁰. Most of the Bank’s own models put the peak effect of a rate rise after around one to two years ⁷. Fiscal restraint carries its own burdens too: a Senate committee, citing NATSEM, found that the 2014-15 Budget’s burden “falls most heavily on low and middle income families with children” ⁵¹.

Some tempting levers are not levers on the Bank’s own analysis. The Reserve Bank says slower migration would cut demand but also supply, “such that there will not be a material effect on the degree of spare capacity in the economy and therefore inflation” ⁵².

So is the cash rate the only thing that can be done? On the record, no. The Reserve Bank holds one instrument and says so. The government holds several, and used some in 2026: a fuel excise cut that has since rolled off, and competition measures that took effect in 2025 and 2026. It has set a gas reservation scheme to start on 1 July 2027. According to the ABC, it considered and then dropped a windfall levy; it refused a 25 per cent gas export tax that lost every one of the seven recorded votes THE RORT found in 2026. Each of those choices has reasons on the record and costs on the record, and both sets are above.

If it’s a rort, we cover it.