I hope the Easter bunny was good to you, because chances are the Reserve Bank won’t be.

The ups and downs of interest rates mean more to Australian families than they do to virtually anyone else on the planet because our broken housing market means we’re among the very biggest borrowers in the world. So it’s no surprise the nation’s long-suffering borrowers are desperately hoping the first interest rate cut from the Reserve will be sooner rather than later.

RBA Governor Michele BullockCredit: Bloomberg

But I’ve got bad news: chances are it’s going to be a long time between drinks if you’ve got a mortgage. Forget the Easter bunny – Santa is likely to be checking twice whether you’ve been naughty or nice before there’s any cut in interest rates in Australia.

To be fair, there’s a genuine case to cut rates soon. Most importantly, there’s been a storm of good news on inflation. At just under 3½ per cent over the past year, it’s already well below half of its late 2022 peak. That’s the slowest pace of price pressures that we’ve seen in more than two years.

Better still, if you double the pace of price increases over the past six months, that figure is 2½ per cent, smack bang in the middle of........

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