There’s only one thing people want to talk about after last week’s federal budget — and Jim Chalmers knows it

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are yet to announce how they’ll help Australians counter surging energy prices.( ABC News: Matt Roberts)

Jim Chalmers has a regret from the election that he fears will haunt him in the coming months.

He confessed to a journalist that his son had received $20 from the tooth fairy for the last tooth he’d lost.

“I have lost count of the amount of times people have raised this with me in the six or so months [since],” the Treasurer confessed at a post-budget breakfast this week.

Inflation is not just hurting the economy he’s juggling, it’s biting at home with his five-year-old daughter well aware of the precedent that’s been set.

It’s a similar challenge Chalmers faces as he contends with surging power prices, inflation and a public increasingly wanting government support.

The one thing people are talking about

It’s little over a week ago that Chalmers released his first budget, one in which Labor sought plaudits for its restraint.

This new-look government stormed into office with a mandate of change.

Almost six months in — and if focus groups are anything to go by — some of the shine is coming off, according to Kos Samaras, a former Victorian Labor election strategist who now runs the polling company RedBridge Group.

“The one thing people know about the budget are the energy prices,” he told the ABC.

“They raise it unprompted. It’s the only thing they want to talk to us about.

“It is going off like rocket fuel. People are petrified.”

Chalmers’ October budget stretched across five volumes and more than 1,000 pages.

But in the week since, two paragraphs have remained front and centre in people’s thinking.

The budget papers forecast electricity prices would rise 56 per cent in the next 20 months, with gas prices to rise 44 per cent during the same time.

The forecasts were so gloomy that the Treasurer, speaking at a press conference when he released the budget, volunteered that market intervention was a possibility.

That’s code for “we will take action to prevent prices getting that high”.

This is, after all, a Labor government that went to an election with a specific pledge of cutting $275 off household electricity bills by 2025.

Finding a Labor cabinet minister willing to talk about that commitment now is about as rare as finding anyone at the Reserve Bank willing to talk about its no rate rise pledge and how poorly it’s aged.

Pointing the finger

What they have been keen to talk about are the gas companies they accuse of inflicting harm on household budgets.

Industry Minister Ed Husic blamed the price hikes on a “glut of greed” and not a lack of supply. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said she was “angry” at the same companies.

“People in my community are struggling and we have energy companies making billions of dollars in profits who are crying poor and saying they shouldn’t be subject to further regulation,” she said.

Privately a minister told the ABC that the prospect of returning to parliament next week without some concrete measures to drag energy prices down was unpalatable.

This was, after all, a debate initiated by the treasurer when he handed down the budget.

But that’s not to say that Labor is responsible for the current situation.

After almost a decade in opposition and a war waging in eastern Europe, Labor has inherited plenty — but increasingly voters are asking what solutions it has to offer, something Samaras is hearing in his focus groups.

Getting a concrete solution before next week looks unlikely. The treasurer, speaking on Q&A this week, suggested a plan by Christmas was more likely.

He’s not ruling out cash handouts but has repeatedly warned they risk further fuelling the inflation that’s making living in Australia so costly at the moment.

By political correspondent Brett Worthington,  ABC