Michele Bullock’s ‘dentists and haircuts’ inflation claim comes back to bite her

Narinder Jessy writes: I agree with RBA governor Michele Bullock (“Get your teeth into Michele Bullock’s puritan lifestyle tips — if you’ve got any left”) and have decreed that in my house from here on we shall not dine out. We will repair broken shoes with surplus plastics and rubbers collected at bulk rubbish collection days and we will cut each other’s hair. The bedroom door handle shall be the precision tool to be used for tooth extractions. In fact, we should stop sending kids to school as well so we can all be as blissfully ignorant as she.

Maybe she can try telling the diesel truck FIFO operators bragging about their salaries on TikTok that they should not spend their $300,000 salary plus bonuses on jet skis, five-star holidays, highly inflated pub food and Ford Raptor utes with all the bells and whistles. Of course the mining companies have nothing to do with it — they’re just there to pillage and perfect the art of tax avoidance.

Seriously, how do people like this clown get to command the two-track lever on interest rates and ruin people’s lives? I saw a woman in the supermarket crying at the potato chips section because she could not afford the $9 for two packets of crisps that her kids would like. This is real and it is happening.

Robert Barton writes: I note that tickets to attend Bullock’s Australian Business Economists dinner address cost $250 for members and $275 for non-members. Isn’t that a teensy bit inflationary — especially if you had to get your hair done beforehand!

Dave Tyler writes: Finally someone has had the courage to really identify one of the key drivers of inflation: frivolous dentistry. Now that Bullock has spoken, hopefully people will stop making impulsive dental appointments and perhaps consider do-it-yourself dentistry kits. Until now they haven’t been selling particularly well, although they recently overtook second-hand nose flutes in popularity.

Robin Prior writes: It occurs to me that we are in a death spiral of Reserve Bank governors. As they leave, each governor picks someone less competent than they were to make their legacy look good. So Phil Lowe, he of the rate predictions, picked someone who makes him look like a forward-thinking prophet. Bullock will presumably pick someone with dentures. When will it end?

Frank Dee writes: A bit more than a century and a half or so, back when anaesthetics were invented, the upper classes of England thought it best that the lower classes should not be allowed to access any pain control for, say, amputations of limbs, childbirth or dental work. The poor simply did not feel pain in the same way that the more sensitive upper class experienced it, and anyway, pain should be the lot of the poor, as God intended. 

Come 2023 and Bullock has shown us how far we have come.

Timothy and Mary Greene write: Anyone in leadership who would make such a comment either in jest or earnestly is out of touch and it does not bode well for the office of governor or leadership in general. 

People are doing it tough. I paid for an elderly woman’s groceries recently — she didn’t have enough money for the cashier. She certainly didn’t look as though she’d stepped out of the hairdresser or the dentist, and I suspect insurance is not her priority if she can’t afford to eat. Oh, I know! She must have a cat as the groceries included cat food. But on second thought, I wonder if that was for a cat.

The comments made by Bullock deserve the contempt with which they are reported in your article. I am, however, delighted to see Bullock clearly doesn’t use a hairdresser, but I imagine her teeth are okay as this is biting advice.

Ray Schriever writes: I’d like to thank Bullock for sharing her insights with us, the great unwashed. On that note, I wonder why she didn’t include soap? Perhaps an underlying belief that the general populace doesn’t use it?

I must admit to owning two pairs of thongs. This gives me the option for both casual and formal occasions. Unfortunately, what seems to happen is that my casual/work ones often wear out or break before the formal pair gets any serious use so they are then demoted to being the casual pair. In fact, I don’t get to business meetings, formal dinners or events that include Bullock as guest speaker so most of the wear incurred on my formal thongs is from when I’ve worn them because my casuals are in the washing machine with my two pairs of shorts and three shirts.

I have been harbouring at least three teeth that, while not having decay, are a little fractured or broken as the result of old age. It’s refreshing to know that my negligence in getting my teeth repaired (primarily because I can’t afford it) is contributing to the economic well-being of the country and that I’m doing my bit to fight inflation.

Let’s face it. The economic plight of the nation and the culprits involved in our instability are clearly the clients of orthodontists. I would suggest that this is already known by the Reserve Bank and that it is, as we speak, developing a strategy that will ensure all those kids with straight teeth in private schools will soon have a mouthful of raggedy pegs just like the kids in public schools.

Anne Barrie writes: Is she so out of touch that she doesn’t understand that in the real world, dentists, hairdressers and other small businesses have to contend with increased rents, utilities, insurance and wages and to make a living? Telling people it’s their fault for using these services and thus causing inflation strikes me as being out of the Alan Joyce playbook. By implying that Australians shouldn’t be using such services it seems to me that all she is doing is making sure they don’t survive — but then maybe that is what she wants: increased unemployment.

Jacqui North writes: According to a recent Grattan Institute report, 16% of Australians can’t afford to go to the dentist when they need to. A third of us have untreated tooth decay. 

Bullock described inflation as “increasingly homegrown and demand-driven”, and by way of evidence she said an indicator that “inflation is being driven by domestic demand is that it is increasingly underpinned by services. Hairdressers and dentists, dining out, sporting and other recreational activities — the prices of all these services are rising strongly.”

The first thing that should be noted is, well done to Bullock for realising that our inflation problem is homegrown. But there’s nothing “increasingly” about it — it’s been homegrown since Australian companies began using the cover of imported inflation to jack up prices and increase profit margins. Not that Bullock wants to accept this — that’s why she added “demand-driven”. Inflation must always be the fault of ordinary households, not businesses.

Mark Phillips writes: It is about time Labor bit the bullet and extended Medicare to include dentistry. Dental costs are astronomical and the rebates from health insurance are microscopic. 

Roger Clifton writes: There is no point bleating about it, insurance premiums must increasingly burden the economy. As emissions continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, so must the disaster damage. While we continue to make excuses for any level of fossil usage, we must increasingly and inevitably take the resulting punishment. It should be hurtful to realise that we are inflicting the same punishment on our descendants deep into the future.

Linda Ault writes: Now that I am looking at ways to balance my budget with a view to having sufficient funds to live not totally impecuniously to an old age, I have to agree that it is a dire choice of what one does with one’s hair and teeth.

Before I retired, and believing I had sufficient funds to be able to look after myself in my later years, I did possibly overspend on stylish hairdressers. It was an ego thing, I would think. Now I am reduced to the “cheap choppers”, as I unkindly refer to them. A short haircut costs only $20 and after a week it looks snappy to me! 

Dentists are a very different story. Their fees are exorbitant, and their service doesn’t reflect the charges they inflict. Living in Brisbane it is difficult to get on the 12-month waiting list and take your life into your own hands and go to a public dentist. But with the scurrilous dentists I’ve gone to in the past I am now taking the advice of other retirees who have been able to get on to the waiting list and am doing just that. It seems the service public dentists provide are far superior to those I’ve previously used and so I am quietly waiting.