Coalition claims ‘sugar hit’ policies hint at early election
Liberal senator and shadow finance minister Jane Hume is also on the early election train, telling the Seven network:
Certainly, it does feel that way, doesn’t it? As I said, all those little sugar hits in there [the budget].
But the one that was really surprising was the $13.7 billion for billionaires, for people that are running companies that are into critical minerals and hydrogen.
That just seems a very strange use of taxpayers’ money. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of providing billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies for these companies, we simply got out of their way by making our industrial relations system simple, that was more energy in the system to bring prices down acceptably and we reduced approval times?
We want critical minerals and hydrogen but we don’t want to subsidise it with taxpayer money, particularly in a cost-of- living crisis.
According to the Australia Institute, fossil fuel subsidies in the last financial year hit $14.5bn. Not sure anyone who owns or runs a coal or gas company is doing it particularly tough either.
Key events
So the opposition will be supporting the $300 energy rebate, but what about the tax credits for critical minerals and green hydrogen?
Peter Dutton:
We don’t support it because I think we should be helping, frankly, Australians who are struggling at the moment, to find a house. We’ve got people living in cars and in tents.
The Prime Minister had nothing to say about that yesterday.
The Treasurer had nothing to say about it last night.
You’ve got 1.67 million people coming in over a 5-year period under this government. It’s unprecedented*. Not under any previous Liberal or Labor Government have you seen immigration levels this high and that means that with an 11-year low in building starts, you are seeing people lining up 30, 40 deep to find a rental property. People can’t buy a house at an auction for love nor money and this Government spent $315 billion more, which has driven up inflation and therefore interest rates.
*The coalition’s last budget forecast a higher rate of migration.
Given Peter Dutton said the government is trying to “buy” an interest rate cut, and Dutton wants people to have interest rate cuts, isn’t an interest rate cut a good thing no matter how it happens?
(To be clear, “buying” an interest rate cut is a political line – we are not saying it is happening.)
Dutton:
I just don’t think that’s the case. On the one hand, you’ve got the Reserve Bank governor saying there’s an inflation problem and it’s home-grown, which means that – that’s code for saying in the last two budgets, Labor policies have driven up inflation and therefore interest rates.
You’ve got every credible economic commentators overnight saying this is a disastrous budget, that they’ve pan the budget and on the other hand, you have Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers saying everything is OK, there’s nothing to see they’re and inflation is going to come down, which is contrary to Reserve Bank predictions.
They trumpet the fact that they’ve got a surplus in this Budget but they’ve been bequeathed that from the Coalition management of the economy, two years in surplus and every year after that, under Labor management, you end up with huge deficits and additional debt that Australian taxpayers will have to pay.
Does Peter Dutton believe that the $300 in energy relief should go to high income earners?
I don’t think so. I don’t understand why you and I on high incomes need to get that assistance.
Frankly, I think the money would be better provided by way of support to those more in need but the government, as was the case for Labor in Queensland facing an election, they’re splashing out cash because they know that they’ve got a huge problem on their hands for the average household in Australia, they’re $35,000 worse off under this government and people are paying thousands more each month for their mortgage in many cases and I think this is a Band Aid on a bullet wound and the government’s made a really bad situation for Australian families over two budgets and last night they made it worse.
(The Queensland situation he is referencing is the $1000 in energy rebates the Labor government announced at its last budget)
Might be worth pointing out that while Dutton is against $300 going to wealthier people as they don’t need the assistance, he was also against changing the stage three tax proposals, which were going to give people earning over $180,000 almost $9,000 in tax breaks.
‘Inflationary budget’ will make life harder for families – Dutton
Peter Dutton is next up on the ABC interview carousel and he is READY with his lines.
Will the Coalition support the $300 energy rebate?
We will, but we need to be honest about it. The fact is families and small businesses have faced thousands of dollars’ worth of increases in energy bills and this will be welcomed by some but it won’t compensate for the effect of the renewables-only* policy the government has implemented.
A lot of businesses at the moment are doing it tough and they’re passing costs on to consumers, which is why we’re seeing a problem with inflation.
Yes, the government wants to buy itself an interest rate reduction coming up to the election but really, as most credible economic journalists have pointed out, this is an inflationary budget and it will make it harder for interest rates to come back and it will make it more difficult for families and small businesses for longer.
*The government is backing in gas to 2050 and beyond in a strategy it announced last week.
Adam Bandt was also asked about the green subsidies and said:
Labor’s future made in Australia is a future for coal and gas past 2050.
They’ve put up in lights they’re spending on climate measures –‘$5 billion for new climate spins’ – but $50 billion in fossil fuel subsidies.
You can’t have your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. So we’ll be having a look at this package when it comes to parliament.
We’ve got to take this as a package (along with the gas plan). The Greens support growing our critical minerals industry and green metals.
So does that mean in-principle support for the tax credit plan?
We’ve always said for example, the best job for a coal miner is another mining job. And so if we can find jobs for people who work in Queensland, for example, on either critical minerals project, we support that, but you’ve got to look at this as a package.
They’ve buried the money for gas in the back of the budget. The strategy is for coal and gas past 2050 Labor’s trying to hide that.
Our job when it comes to parliament is to say to Labor if you’re serious about tackling the climate crisis and growing green jobs, you can’t also be opening new coal and gas and keeping coal and gas past 2050.
And the fine print in the budget papers, shows Labor wants coal and gas past 2050.
Bandt says Labor ‘doing nothing about unlimited rent rises’
Greens leader Adam Bandt also spoke to the ABC a little earlier this morning and he had a bit to say about inflation as well:
Well, clearly the government is taking this approach because they say that will help them get inflation under control.
That is a sign that if they can do that for for energy, they can do it for rent, and I think it’ll be very difficult to start getting inflation under control if Labor keeps backing unlimited rent rises.
Again, the Reserve Bank has said rents have gone up. We’ve seen going up potentially by $46 a week. It’s a main driver of inflation, and yet Labor is doing nothing about unlimited rent rises.
And on housing, Bandt said:
We know that the billions of dollars in handouts that are going to help people who’ve already got three homes going to buy their fourth, fifth and sixth are pushing property prices out of reach of first home buyers and making life tough for renters.
Labor has failed to take on the big problems Labor’s failed to make price gouging illegal. They failed to stop unlimited rent rises, and it’s going to leave lots of people don’t further behind.
The next budget is scheduled for March, because the election has to be held by May. Anthony Albanese says that remains the plan (but both can always be moved) but repeats the same line as Jim Chalmers (almost word for word) when it comes to being asked about the politics of the budget. He then turns political:
Look, we’re focused on the economy and getting the settings right.
We’ll leave the political obsession to our opponents, who last night were saying they’d oppose making things here, oppose Australian jobs. No wonder they are known as the opposition rather than an alternative government, because they just oppose everything
Asked about the money for critical minerals and green hydrogen in the budget (for which Daniel Hurst has you covered, here), Anthony Albanese says it’s value for taxpayer money “because production tax credits reward success”.
They encourage investment and they reward success. That’s why we’ve put in place those mechanisms. This is about Australia seizing the opportunities in the transformation in the global economy. We can get this right.
There’s no country that is better positioned than Australia to take advantage of the fact that we have all the resources under the ground that will drive the global economy this century – copper, lithium, nickel, we have the lot of them. We also have – not so much this morning in Canberra – but we have the best solar resources in the world as well.
We can do that to create green hydrogen, to manufacture more things here, to create secure jobs and to grow our economy.
Is Anthony Albanese (who also holds an economics degree) hoping Michele Bullock and the RBA receive this budget favourably?
Albanese:
Our job is to get our settings right, to look after fiscal policy. We’ve done that. Michael (Rowland, the ABC host), you’ve been doing this for a while, but I tell you what – during the previous government, would you have been out here for 10 years and you wouldn’t have been talking about surpluses because they didn’t deliver one.
They delivered mugs, but they didn’t actually deliver a surplus, because they treated Australians like mugs.
They didn’t do the hard work. We’ve done the hard work.
PM says budget will moderate inflation
On the inflation prediction (the budget forecasts inflation will fall to 3% by the end of the year, which is back within the RBA’s target range; the RBA doesn’t forecast that happening until the end of next year), Anthony Albanese says:
We are basing that assessment and Treasury and Finance, on the advice that we’ve received, in part based upon the experience.
And if they are wrong?
Well we know that they didn’t get it wrong when it came to the energy price relief plan.
The opposition got it wrong by voting against it. As they voted against all of our cost-of-living measures that we’ve implemented.
We have brought inflation down from 2.1% in the March 2022 quarter – where it peaked – and then we had the Frydenberg budget that pushed a whole lot of money into the economy, a whole lot of cash payouts occurred then. And we’ve dealt with that.
We had to turn that around and we’ve done that.
So inflation is currently at an annual figure of 3.6%. That’s lower than the figure that was estimated in the mid-year forecast at the end of last year. So we know inflation is moderating. There’s more work to be done. But this budget will assist that process.
Back to the ABC and Anthony Albanese is next up on the interview carousel. He is asked the same questions as Jim Chalmers about giving the $300 energy relief to everyone, including wealthy people, rather than means testing it and gives pretty much the same answers.
He is then asked how can the government be so confident energy supplies won’t just increase the price of energy and says:
Well, we know this works, because we’ve done it. And it’s been effective. It made a difference to people. It put that downward pressure on prices, but it also had an impact on moderating inflation.
Labor taking free-to-air TV away from people, Lambie says
Also on the Seven network, independent senator Jacqui Lambie thinks that the issue of free to air television is going to be what pushes the government to the edge.
They are pushing people towards pay TV. The international cricket, Amazon has that. If you want to watch that you have to pay for that service. I tell you what … if you think that you will be able to watch Bluey for free, you are kidding yourselves.
The first thing, you will have to go searching for free TV and unless you have subscriptions to things out there, a lot of it is not … you won’t be able to watch it. So that’s really worrying. So now they’re coming after our toddlers. They’ve done nothing for our youth, now you’re coming after our toddlers and taking Bluey away from them!*
… I don’t think the government understands much at all. We’ve seen the chicken-feed budget, a bit of money here and here, a Band-Aid budget that will deflate very quickly.
If they’re not going into an election in November they’re going to lose very badly by May next year,** especially with interest rates going over. There is only one in every 10 Australians in the last six months have bought one of these new TVs that are actually able to do this properly. But seriously, taking free TV away from people … it’s just disgusting. I think they’re completely out of touch.
*Bluey remains on the ABC. There is legislation to update anti-siphoning laws, but there is yet to be a full solution in what is the streaming era:
**On the election front, the pathway for Labor to hold majority government is quite slim. There are redistributions in Vic and NSW which are going to be announced quite soon and that, combined with an expected swing correction in WA, will mean Labor will start the election either two or three seats behind the 2022 result. That doesn’t mean that the Coalition will take power. But the smart money is on a minority government with supply support from independents.
Coalition claims ‘sugar hit’ policies hint at early election
Liberal senator and shadow finance minister Jane Hume is also on the early election train, telling the Seven network:
Certainly, it does feel that way, doesn’t it? As I said, all those little sugar hits in there [the budget].
But the one that was really surprising was the $13.7 billion for billionaires, for people that are running companies that are into critical minerals and hydrogen.
That just seems a very strange use of taxpayers’ money. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of providing billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies for these companies, we simply got out of their way by making our industrial relations system simple, that was more energy in the system to bring prices down acceptably and we reduced approval times?
We want critical minerals and hydrogen but we don’t want to subsidise it with taxpayer money, particularly in a cost-of- living crisis.
According to the Australia Institute, fossil fuel subsidies in the last financial year hit $14.5bn. Not sure anyone who owns or runs a coal or gas company is doing it particularly tough either.
Matt Canavan also thinks the election will be called before Christmas because that is when Treasury has predicted inflation will drop to 3% and “that won’t happen”, so Canavan thinks the government will “need to get ahead of that”.
Governments tend not to hold elections over holiday periods for quite obvious reasons (it makes people angry) so that would mean November, when the global attention will be on the US presidential elections. The UK elections have to be held before January 2025, so that poll is expected to be held very soon.
Queensland will go to the polls in October (and the third-term Labor government is expected to be wiped out, with the LNP leader David Crisafulli on track to be the new premier) and WA is scheduled for a March 2025 election.
All that is to say with so many elections in the works, an election before Christmas – before any interest rate cut (if they are coming) – is highly unlikely.
LNP senator Matt Canavan has put his economist hat back on (his job before he entered politics, as much as he likes to cosplay as a coal miner) and told the Nine network the government should have cut spending if it wanted to rein in inflation.
Asked whether or not he would say that on the campaign trail, Canavan takes aims at the subsidies for renewable energy projects:
I think people are willing to, to right now, they want a government that is going to make tough decisions. These are tough times for people. And people understand that tough times, you need to make hard decisions. And this is a government that’s clearly not capable of making those hard decisions.
I mean, the $300 last night [for energy relief] is costing $3.5 billion. It’s a big cost, but the green investments they’re making are $30 billion. Yeah, we can’t afford that. It’s ridiculous. And that’s the sort of thing that should be cut.
Jim Chalmers said he had briefed RBA rovernor Michele Bullock on the budget, but has not spoken to her since he delivered it. He said she and the RBA board would “make their decisions independently” about interest rates but believes he has done his part to lower inflation.
Asked how the budget isn’t expansionary (the same question he received last year), Chalmers says:
Two things about that. First of all, the spending next year is driven largely by extending things like health programs and the cost of living package which will put downward pressure on inflation.
That is next year.
In terms of the deficits, we inherited deficits as far as the eye can see, we turned two of those deficits into surpluses. And we have got the deficits down over the forward period too. We made something like $215 billion in budget improvements, saving us a mountain of interest on the debt that we inherited from the Liberals and Nationals.
And so we have made really good progress – and I think any objective observer would acknowledge that.
