The Reserve Bank wouldn't be weighing up a further cut to the cash interest rate if the economy was strong, federal Labor's new shadow treasurer says.
Jim Chalmers expressed the sentiment a day before the central bank's board will meet to consider dropping the rate below its record low of 1.5 per cent, where it has sat since August 2016.
Economists are expecting the cash rate to hit 1.25 per cent.
"If the government was doing such a good job of managing the economy, the Reserve Bank wouldn't be contemplating cutting rates again," Dr Chalmers told ABC Radio National on Monday.
"What that shows is that the economy is weak, particularly in the people-facing parts of the economy."
Those "people-facing" parts of the economy are wages, consumption and household savings.
Dr Chalmers said he would use his new position to ask the government what it was doing to improve outcomes in those areas.
"The government is wandering around patting themselves on the back for an election victory at the same time as people are faring badly in the economy," he said.
The Australian National University's RBA shadow board, which assesses the economy in the way the real board does, is 50 per cent confident that a rate cut is required, up from 38 per cent last month.
It is also concerned that Australia's relatively high part-time employment rate reflects significant under-employment.
That could explain why the nation's low unemployment rates in the past couple of years haven't fed through to a surge in inflation, the ANU group says.
National accounts data to be released on Wednesday is also expected to show economic growth remained soft in the March quarter.
The market consensus is for gross domestic product growth of 0.4 per cent in the quarter and 1.8 per cent annually.
