And although the fall in inflation has been rapid (and less painful than many feared), it’s always been the “last mile” in the inflation fight that’s been expected to be the toughest. That last mile includes tricky stuff, including booming rents and other housing costs, as well as the likes of insurance bills and education costs.

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What’s more, remember that governments – federal and state – have been handing over subsidies to keep prices down. Electricity prices are a good example: they’d be 13 per cent higher today if it wasn’t for taxpayer subsidies. Yet, those subsidies are temporary band-aids. They’ll eventually have to be ripped off, and their removal will add to inflation. We’re yet to live through that phase.

Besides, you’ll know when interest rate cuts begin to become a possibility in Australia – because they’ll start to happen in other nations before they arrive here. Why? Because inflation in Australia is still travelling faster than in most other nations – and they haven’t yet begun to cut rates. We here in Oz are very unlikely to get rate relief before the Americans do, and yet central bankers over there are describing recent developments in the US fight against inflation as “disappointing”.

But the final nail in the coffin for your hopes of early help on the mortgage front is because of what’s about to happen to your taxes. The political types got excited by the rejig in the stage 3 tax cuts which the government announced a couple of months ago.

If you’re the Reserve Bank, though, it’s not the rejig in these taxes that you’re interested in. The Bank doesn’t care who gets the dollars – it cares about how many of those tax cut dollars are going to get spent. Remember, inflation boils down to too many dollars chasing too little stuff. When the RBA raises rates, it’s taking away your power to spend – and that’s central to driving down inflation risks. So the squeeze on your ability to spend isn’t a bug: it’s a deliberate feature of what the RBA has been trying to do.

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Yet, by the same token, a really big tax cut puts money back into the pockets of the punters at the same time the RBA has been taking it out. Or, to put that differently, tipping over $20 billion a year into potential spending by families in three months’ time is the equivalent of more than two cuts in rates by the Reserve.

That’s an important reason why the RBA is likely to stay sidelined here for some months after rates have begun to be cut elsewhere – it’s because we’re getting tax cuts before we’re getting rate cuts.

I wish I had a happier message for you. I bet the Reserve Bank does too – and the pollies in Canberra, for that matter.

Chris Richardson is an independent economist.