Don't too carried away with interest rates there airhead...

Don't too carried away with interest rates there airhead Charleslew. You've been studying those Sunday tabloids again haven't you?
The latest economic data showed
(1) GDP growth as expected
(2) Inflation low and steady
(3) A burgeoning trade deficit
(4) Housing price deflation in Sydney and Melbourne, which is signalling the cooling of the overall national market
(5) Private sector debt at record levels

Just these facts by themselves militate against any significant further rate tightening. Despite what morons like you believe, any major tightening in interest rates would propell this country towards recession, given:
(1) the saturated level of private sector debt and leverage of individuals and business. I
(2) The continuing pressure a higher dollar (through higher rates) would have upon our terms of trade (particularly silly policy when the govt is pursuing free trade agreements at the same time)

The story is similar in most of the other Western industrialised countries. The English are now talking that this may be the top of their interest rate tightening cycle. America is the same but the mainstream press run interference and lie to protect vested interests in financial markets.

Back to Latham - the right wing economists always say that a Labor government would put upward pressure on wages by allowing increased concentration of power in the labour market (union power), hence inflation, and therefore higher interest rates. From what I have seen, this chain of causation is always overstated by the right. The concept of Labour party=wages rise=inflation is simplistic, competes with other major inflationary influences on the economy, and always lack empirical evidence.