We’ll leave our live coverage there for the day. To recap on the main events:
- The budget assumes that everyone in Australia will be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of the year. However treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that’s just an assumption – it’s not a guarantee everyone will get two shots by 31 December. About 10% of the population has been vaccinated to date.
- Frydenberg told the National Press Club Australia “cannot afford the risk” of opening the international border. Asked if the federal government would fund purpose-built quarantine facilities as proposed by Victoria and other states, he said responsibility for quarantine rests with the states.
- Scott Morrison is still saying the federal election will be next year.
- Morrison also defended the lack of surplus in the budget and the forward estimates and said he “couldn’t care less about the politics,” a statement which begs being fact checked.
- Opposition leader Anthony Albanese criticised the gap between the jobs-focused rhetoric of the federal budget and the reality of wage growth. Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said the budget shows “real wages are going backwards”. Asked if Labor would spend more if it was delivering the budget, Chalmers said there were ways to “spend more effectively”.
- Labor also said the budget has “fobbed off” key aged care issues.
- Greens leader Adam Bandt also called out the low wages growth. The budget has wages growing at below the rate of inflation.
- Qantas has delayed its planned resumption of international flights from October 2021 to the end of December 2021, based on the federal budget assumptions.
- Peter Dutton had a call with US secretary of defence, Lloyd J Austin III.
- Both NSW and Victoria have recorded no new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19. Victorian health authorities have told anyone who was on a train to the footy on Friday night to get a Covid-19 test.
- South Australia introduced new border restrictions with Victoria, requiring people who were at tier 1 and 2 exposure sites and have since travelled to SA to quarantine for 14 days. People who were at those sites and are not currently in SA are not permitted to enter the state.
- And the Liberal party in Tasmania has secured its 13th seat, ensuring majority government for premier Peter Gutwein.
Thanks for your company. We will be back bright and early in the morning but for now, take care.
Updated
Federal court hears urgent application on Christian Porter defamation case
Jo Dyer, a friend of the woman who accused Christian Porter of sexual assault in 1988 (which he denies), has brought an urgent federal court application seeking to force one of Porter’s barristers off the ABC defamation case.
Porter is represented by Sue Chrysanthou SC in the defamation case he launched against the public broadcaster. Dyer’s application argues Chrysanthou should be removed from the case because she advised her on a separate but related matter.
Guardian Australia understands the matter was heard by duty judge, justice Thomas Thawley, on Wednesday.
Porter’s solicitor, Rebekah Giles, has issued the following statement:
Yesterday proceedings were commenced against Sue Chrysanthou SC in the Federal Court. Sue is briefed on my behalf in my case against the ABC and Louise Milligan. These proceedings seek an order that she be restrained by the court from appearing as my barrister in my defamation proceedings.
It has been widely known for two months that Sue has been acting as my Counsel in this well publicised matter – yet the action has come shortly before court appearances on significant issues in the proceedings and over eight weeks after they were commenced.
I am therefore concerned about the timing of this application. Ms Chrysanthou is one of this country’s pre-eminent defamation advocates. It is a critically important right for any citizen in legal proceedings to choose his or her own counsel.
Guardian Australia contacted Dyer for comment.
Updated
Peter Gutwein's Liberal government in Tasmania secures a majority
The ABC’s election analyst Antony Green has called the remaining seat from the 1 May election for the Liberal party – which means premier Peter Gutwein will be returned with a Liberal majority government.
He said there were not enough votes left to count in the Clark electorate to elect independent Sue Hickey to the fifth spot. Hickey’s defection/sacking from the Liberal party in March was named by Gutwein as the trigger for holding a state election a year early.
The last two spots in Clark will instead go to Liberal Madeline Ogilvie and independent Kristie Johnston, Green says.
Gutwein claimed victory on election night but did not have a confirmed majority until today.
Gutwein government returned in majority. There are not enough votes left in the count to elect Sue Hickey in Clark. The last seats will be Liberal Madeleine Ogilvie and Independent Kristie Johnston
— Antony Green (@AntonyGreenABC) May 12, 2021
Updated
Bert Newton is recovering well in hospital after his surgery at the weekend, according to an Instagram post by his wife Patti Newton.
She wrote:
Thank you everyone for your prayers and beautiful words. Think Alby has stolen Bert’s hair price.
I assume that should be hair piece?
The TV legend and star of the 1995 Australian production of Beauty and the Beast – The Broadway Musical (he was Cogsworth), underwent surgery to amputate his leg.
Updated
If you are interested in hearing more about the university sector’s response to the federal budget, Prof Brian Schmidt wrote a longer piece for Guardian Australia outlining his concerns.
He wrote:
With Australia’s borders closed for the foreseeable future, ANU is the canary in the coalmine. The cumulative effect of border closures on international student numbers will lead to other universities catching up with my university’s budget woes this year, and worse in the years beyond. This will have a crippling effect on Australia’s post-pandemic recovery. Gone will be a large fraction of the nearly $40bn of export income – the majority of which is not spent in universities, but in the broader Australian economy. Gone will be the large supply of skilled but relatively inexpensive labour. And gone will be the leading-edge research capacity our country needs to prosper post-pandemic, a significant fraction of which is supported by international student fee revenue.
It’s absolutely imperative we open our national border and return our international students as soon as we safely can. Universities have plans in place to do this safely and are ready to act. We just need commitment from government to act on them.
Read more here:
The peak body for Indigenous aged care says funding announced in last night’s budget will not be enough to fully address shortfalls in aged care.
Jill Gallagher, chair of the National Advisory Group for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Aged Care, said the $17.7bn investment over five years was much needed, but more was needed.
Funding provided for Indigenous aged care –$557m – comes to about 3% of the total aged care budget. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are 3.3% of the total population but carry a disproportionate burden of disease. Gallagher said:
Funding, particularly for our elders, needs to go beyond being based on population proportions and take into consideration the complexity of needs in the community, if we truly want to close the gap.
She said the $106m commitment for a dedicated Indigenous workforce and $369.9m for aged care infrastructure and support for Aboriginal community controlled organisations was welcome, but would primarily service rural and remote areas.
I’m pleased that the needs of our elders have received some recognition in this Budget. Our elders need aged care assessments and access pathways that are culturally safe, these are best provided by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and organisations.
She added:
Our people live across this country, and 80% live in urban and regional areas. We need to make sure our elders in urban and regional areas are not forgotten or ignored by this government.
Australian National University vice-chancellor Prof Brian Schmidt has told the ABC that if the economic circumstances for Australian universities do not improve soon, vice-chancellors may need to make “rash changes”.
Schmidt said the pandemic was “the biggest financial shock the sector has ever experienced”:
We are in real trouble. In many respects with borders are seemingly to be closed for even longer than I think many of us thought, and the reality is that whether or not you are a domestic student trying to get a place at a university like ANU or you are someone relying on research to drive your business innovation, it is a place and a time where there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of potential loss of capacity going forward.
I think the budget is going to have to do be reconsidered in the coming months and year because otherwise Australia will really be left behind, losing a huge amount of capacity within its university sector.
Schmidt said the university sector had been speaking to the federal government “to try to make sure they understood that the gravity of the situation”.
He added:
That gravity was expanded considerably last night at budget with the announcement that they expect borders to be closed well into next year. That is a huge issue for the entire sector.
For ANU, we made literally decimated ourselves with one in 10 people losing their jobs, and these are some of the best people in the world ... It takes decades to rebuild that capacity.
If we will look at future jobs and growth for this country, the research capacity of universities like ANU will be critical. I am not planning to make any rash changes right now but if things do not get better soon me and all the other vice-chancellors will have no choice.
Updated
To Newcastle now, where a woman has been taken to hospital after she was allegedly stabbed in the chest by a colleague in a cafe kitchen.
More from AAP:
Emergency services were called to Onyx Espresso Bar in Mayfield about 2.30pm after reports the 27-year-old had been attacked.
Detective superintendent Wayne Humphrey told reporters the woman had been hit with a blunt object, before she was stabbed.
The woman was taken under police escort – with the knife still embedded in her chest – to John Hunter Hospital in a serious condition. She is currently undergoing surgery.
A 23-year-old man who worked with the woman was arrested nearby a short time later.
Police expect the man will be charged on Wednesday.
Updated
The Lowitja Institute has called on the federal government to commit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-led solutions in the wake of the budget.
CEO Dr Janine Mohamed said First Nations people and organisations had wanted to see significant investment in the national agreement on Closing the Gap outlined in yesterday’s budget. She said she hoped that spending would be announced when the implementation plan was released in a few months.
Mohamed said the budget was a missed opportunity:
The budget could have been a significant and important opportunity to comprehensively invest in historical truth-telling as called for through the Uluru Statement from the Heart ...
[It] could have been a landmark document that reflected the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic response, in that supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations to lead will bring about much better outcomes.
Specifically, we need to see a targeted investment in research led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and organisations and a prioritisation of our workforce across all areas, including prioritising STEM scholarships for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.
We will not be able to deliver the outcomes required to close the gap without supporting the leadership of community-led Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initiatives.
Mohamed said the Lowitja Institute did welcome the focus on building the Indigenous aged care workforce, support for ongoing Covid-19 responses by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations, and funding for suicide prevention. She also welcomed the National Health and Medical Research Council grant of $10m over five years for a National First Nations Research Network.
Updated
It’s Calla Wahlquist here, less funny than promised but I’ll do my best.
Let’s go to Perth briefly. Western Australian police have issued a statement on an alleged money laundering incident that involved $695,000 in cash being hidden in the spare tyre of a Volkswagen Golf.
I’m not entirely sure how that would work – I’ve no idea of the volume of $695,000 in cash but in my head it’s significantly larger than one spare tyre.
Police say they executed a search warrant on a Volkswagen at a national freight yard in Forrestfield on Monday and found $645,140 in cash “concealed in the spare tyre”. The Golf had been bound for Sydney.
Later on Monday they arrested a 23-year-old man at a motel in Bentley and charged him with laundering property or money from the proceeds of a major crime.
The man had flown to Perth from Sydney on Friday. He appeared in court in Perth yesterday and was remanded to face court again on 18 May.
Updated
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the post-budget reaction day. I am going to hand over to the amazing Calla Wahlquist, who is much smarter than me, and also very funny, to take you through the rest of the evening.
I’ll be back mid-morning tomorrow, as it’s Labor’s budget reply day, which Anthony Albanese will be delivering at 7.30pm and I’ll take you through all of that, so I’m getting a little bit of the morning off.
But you will be well covered, so don’t worry about that.
Thanks again to everyone who joined me today – and enjoy your time with Calla!
As always – please, take care of you.
Updated
If you are still struggling to understand what exactly this budget does, Murph has you covered:
Updated
Labor says budget 'ignored' and 'fobbed off' key aged care issues
Labor has accused the the Morrison government of leaving key aged care issues “ignored” and “fobbed off” in its response to the sector’s royal commission outlined in Tuesday’s federal budget.
The opposition aged care services spokeswoman, Clare O’Neil, says the $17.7bn to be spent over five years “falls way short” of what the sector needs.
O’Neil is particularly scathing of the government’s plan to attract enough workers into the industry to support increases to care, arguing not enough has been done to boost wages and conditions.
She tweeted:
“Nothing will really change without reform to the workforce. There was nothing to improve wages for overstretched, undervalued aged care workers.
“How do we attract the needed 700,000 workers to the sector when these workers remain some of the lowest paid in our economy?”
They called it a 'once in a generation reform' but the Government's #agedcare package falls way short.
— Clare O'Neil MP (@ClareONeilMP) May 12, 2021
The Royal Commission gave them a clear roadmap to fix the crisis but they've left recommendations on key issues ignored or fobbed off.
These are my biggest concerns 👇
O’Neil has also warned she does not believe the government’s allocated spend for home care packages will be enough to clear the 100,000-strong waitlist, saying the commitment to fund 80,000 packages means “the maths simply don’t add up”.
O’Neil also criticised the government’s decision not to accept recommendations for more care minutes and requirements for registered nurses at facilities.
Aged care advocates also hold concerns the government’s plan will keep some parts of the sector vulnerable.
Read more:
Updated
Jacqui Lambie is on the ABC – she has spoken about the budget, don’t worry – but she is also giving a cat update – Onslow is still missing.
Lambie rescued Onslow at the start of the pandemic to keep her dad company. She says her dad is beginning to fret, so if anyone in Tasmania has seen Onslow, please let them know.
Updated
Simon Birmingham also said he would like to see the international border open earlier than the middle of next year (which is when Treasury assumes it will reopen).
Government MPs have been saying that for a bit – as always, it will depend on the health advice.
Birmingham:
On the best health advice every time. Like we said, we use the best judgment, health advice, at the time to close our borders to China, then we did the same in relation to Italy, to Iran and ultimately the rest of the world. Now we will take the same safe approach to reopening the borders.
The most important assumption in the budget is we continually suppress Covid-19. That’s what’s allowing Australia’s economy to be back operating at such a strong speed and level of recovery and to have guaranteed so many jobs of Australians. That is why we need to maintain those important protections around our international borders for as long as is necessary there to save lives but also to save businesses and jobs.
Updated
Which makes these comments from Simon Birmingham interesting.
He was asked by Patricia Karvelas why there was no funding for a commonwealth purpose-built quarantine facility in the budget.
Hotels were not built for quarantine. With more concerns about how airborne the virus is, it’s an issue. And there is every chance people will be quarantined upon returning from international travel for the next three years or so.
PK: The prime minister has been quite positive about this Victorian quarantine facility. What sort of timeframe are we talking about for that to get approval?
SB:
We’ve only recently received the proposal from Victoria. We acknowledged that it’s a more detailed proposal than any other ideas that people have come up with and so we’ve committed firmly to work our way through that proposal and to work with the Victorian government ...
PK: Can you give me some indication because obviously to get, you know, the construction under way, you need to have quite a tight deadline for making the decision?
SB:
We’ll make the decision in a timely way. These things we have to work through all the relevant issues with the state government. We have a quarantine system that is highly effective across Australia at present ...
PK: And when there is a leakage it causes maximum disruption.
SB:
Certainly, can you guarantee me any other facility wouldn’t have leakage that could cause such disruption?
PK:
Well, the [commonwealth] Howard Springs facility has had no leakage, at this stage ...
SB:
At this stage. Because a challenge in relation to any international arrivals is ultimately you have human interactions that occur and from human interactions you can end up with transmission by human error or by other factors that occur. Let’s not pretend that there is an absolutely bulletproof scenario short of having nobody arrive in the country and I don’t hear anybody [saying we should].
PK: Do you urge other state governments to do as Victoria has done and put forward a comprehensive proposal like this?
SB:
I think that is a matter for state governments ...
PK: But would you like to see them do it?
SB:
No, that’s a matter for state governments in their judgment. We’ve indicated how we are reacting constructively to their proposals. We are on the budget and haven’t had a lot of questions about that in these interviews ...
Updated
Victorian authorities have confirmed through genome testing that the state’s latest case of Covid was sourced in a South Australian quarantine hotel.
Updated
Simon Birmingham is the latest minister trying to mop up the ‘will we be vaccinated by the end of the year or won’t we’ assumption in the budget.
The assumption that Treasury has made is that everyone who wants a vaccine will have one by the end of the year.
Josh Frydenberg said that would be ‘two’ doses.
Scott Morrison says the assumption is not government policy.
So it’s day one and it’s all a bit of a mess.
Anyways, here is Birmingham with Patricia Karvelas:
PK: Do you expect all Australians to be vaccinated by the end of this year?
SB:
Well, no Patricia. The current vaccines [don’t] extend to children. There’ll always be those who decline vaccines. And it will depend on the take-up by Australians. I urge all Australians to follow the health advice and get vaccines when they’re able to do so.
We have around 170m doses of vaccines the government has contracted for supply and delivery.
We’re expecting to see a real surge in those through the back end of this year. There’s no secret there have been two particular setbacks in the vaccine delivery, the first one being the delayed supply of vaccines contracted to come from Europe. The second one, of course, being the changed advice about the eligibility of AstraZeneca to over-50s. But the plan is for vaccines available for all Australians by the end of the year.
PK: So they’re available but you can’t guarantee that all Australians will be vaccinated by the end of the year?
SB:
I can’t guarantee the behaviour of Australians or choices of all Australians ...
PK: Will every adult who wants to be vaccinated be able to be vaccinated by the end of the year?
SB:
We hope, everything going to plan, Australians who make that choice will be vaccinated.
PK: That’s what I’m trying to nut out – will adult Australians, by the end of the year, both doses, can you guarantee it?
SB:
I appreciate you’re looking for an iron-clad, rock-solid, 100% guarantee. What we’ve seen in the vaccine rollout to date, not just domestically, but internationally, there are complexities involved. We are ensuring there are vaccines for Australians by the end of the year.
PK: With respect, why have it in the budget by the end of the year if you can’t guarantee it will?
SB:
The budget is framed on a number of ways around assumptions that enable you to make those budget expectations. We have framed what we think are reasonable assumptions that will be achieved in the budget but we’re being realistic with Australians as well.
Around the world you will see changes to the vaccine available for children. The Therapeutic Goods Administration will look closely, probably are looking closely, I am sure, will assess that strategy. That may mean a subsequent change to the vaccine strategy. There is the likelihood that booster vaccines will need to be available. Vaccine doesn’t end at a magical point in time. It will be ongoing.
PK: No, but my question was specific about adults, both doses, by the end of the year. You’re saying you can’t guarantee that timeframe. Based on the budget estimates of when people are likely to be vaccinated by, why the six-month delay until the middle of next year until your international borders start opening?
SB:
It’s about taking a conservative approach around estimates. We want to make sure the budget has credibility at all levels. That’s been acknowledged by the ratings agencies and their commentaries around the world about this budget that’s been handed down. The type of assumptions we’ve used to underpin it, be it in relation to opening up the borders or in relation to iron ore prices are realistic, cautious assumptions put in place so the budget has genuine integrity going forward.
Updated
Jacqui Lambie has lost her cat.
(The Mercury first reported this, but it is also on her facebook.)
Unlike when I joked about my dad being kidnapped the other week, this is very real. Onslow has been missing for a few weeks now, and we’re worried for him. So if you see a cat with a suitcase in NW Tasmania, tell him to get his arse back home.
She shares a picture of her ‘pain in the arse’ cat on her facebook page – Onslow, I hope you make it home.
Updated
Mike Bowers has been out and about today:
We’re told Anthony Albanese’s making a ‘zero’ and it was aimed at Peter Dutton.
Still, best to just avoid this symbol now, given its connotations with white power groups.
Updated
Here is where Scott Morrison says the assumptions in the budget are not government policy.
The PM says there is no reference to doses in the budget assumptions about the end of year vaccine rollout. That contradicts what Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said yesterday: "there's the assumption that they’ll get those two doses by that time." #Auspol @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/JHaMgw9rKY
— 𝙉𝘼𝙑𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙍𝘼𝙕𝙄𝙆 📰 (@naveenjrazik) May 12, 2021
Question time ends.
For now.
Updated
Has the prime minister’s office concluded its investigation into whether or not the prime minister’s staff leaked against Brittany Higgins’s partner?
Scott Morrison (who now answers the question, rather than referring to a non-answer he gave months ago):
My chief of staff has continued to progress this matter allowing for due process to be afforded to those involved. He has spoken with members of my office, of the press gallery and others in the course of his work. And I understand he’s assisted in his inquiries and I expect this process to be concluded when all matters have been taken into account including relevant information from Ms Higgins.
Updated
Emma McBride to Scott Morrison:
Page 40 of budget paper number one states: “Slower vaccine rollouts will weigh on recoveries.” Will the prime minister now admit his slow, bungled vaccine rollout is weighing on Australia’s economic recovery? Does the prime minister expect Australians to believe a first-rate economic recovery is possible with a third-rate vaccine rollout?
Morrison:
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, we have seen this a lot from the Labor party over the course of the last 18 months. While we are fighting the virus, Mr Speaker, the Labor party just wants to fight the government, Mr Speaker.
That’s when they’re not fighting each other, Mr Speaker.
Our job is to fight the virus. And in this budget, Mr Speaker, what you see is further commitments, whether it’s to the vaccination program and the securing of vaccines and ensuring that vaccination program is rolling out. What you’ll also notice in those budget papers, Mr Speaker, is that the biggest threat in the short term, Mr Speaker, particularly while the virus is still raging around the world is to ensure that we keep our internal borders open in this country and that is what is noted in the assumptions of Treasury in the budget papers, that we need to keep the broader international borders shut to ensure that we can protect Australia from the Covid-19 pandemic that is raging around the country, and I would have thought, Mr Speaker, that in this place, as we are seeking to vaccinate the country that, there would be bipartisan support for that initiative.
But if those opposite can’t bring themselves in a united national effort to fight this vaccine, then I will let the Australian people judge them for that.
Greater vaccinations at this time compared to comparative countries that are in a situation just like Australia, where we’ve had low rates of cases, let’s go, Mr Speaker. Our vaccination rate is higher than New Zealand, higher than South Korea, it’s higher than Canada, it’s higher than Japan. Those opposite, Mr Speaker, in the middle of a pandemic, seek to undermine and play politics with the health of this nation.
The leader of the opposition, the Labor party may be desperate, they may be desperate, they may have no answers, they may have no plan, they may have no clue, but I can guarantee the leader of the opposition this. He may wish to fight me, Mr Speaker, but I’m fighting this virus on behalf of the Australian people.
Yup. He is cranky. This is definitely a sore spot. And again, this whole ‘we are fighting the virus’ rhetoric in answer to any question he doesn’t want to answer is getting old – the states and territories have done a lot of the work here. The states and territories have had to step in when it comes to the vaccine rollout. There is a lot of work being done, yes, but the load has been shared. And that doesn’t take away that one of the government’s core responsibilities – the vaccine roll out – has not gone to the plan IT set ITSELF.
Updated
For the record, here is what Josh Frydenberg said yesterday, in terms of that assumption (this was during his budget lockup press conference):
Let me make a few points, the exact wording in the book is about the vaccine likely to be rolled out by the end of this year, to all those Australians who want that vaccine.
And there is an assumption that they’ll get two doses by that time.
Updated
Mark Butler to Scott Morrison:
My question is again to the prime minister. And I refer to his previous answer in which the prime minister said that the budget’s assumption on vaccinations was for only one dose to be delivered by the end of the year. But Josh Butler reports that the treasurer told his press conference yesterday that the budget assumptions are that Australians get two doses by the end of the year. Which is it, prime minister?
Morrison:
The budget papers themselves make no reference to first or second doses, Mr Speaker, makes no reference to either of them.
I have been very clear in the medical advice that we have received that we are working as quickly as we can together with the states and territories to ensure we get as many Australians vaccinated as quickly as possible.
That’s exactly what we’re doing, we’re doing with the states and territories. The vaccination program continues to be rolled out and it will be done so particularly with the support of our general practitioners around the country. That’s our plan. That’s what we’re executing. It’s the next day after the budget, Mr Speaker, and as we come to this dispatch box and talk about economic plans, Mr Speaker, we get questions from the shadow health minister, the shadow treasurer.
Yup, he is getting cranky.
There are points of order on relevance and then Greg Hunt takes over:
Just to add to a little bit. Thank you very much. As the prime pinister said, the assumptions in the budget are very clear in terms of the ability for Australia to have a whole of population vaccination program. Let me deal with this sort of micro [point].
The assumption is for a whole of population vaccination program, and the difference between a first and second shot for Pfizer, which is what we’re doing in the final quarter, is three weeks.
So if you have the whole of population during the course of the year and, this is very simple to understand, if you have the whole of population during the course of the year, if those people who complete their vaccination by 9 December, will be done this year, and if there are those that occur in the last few days of the year then by definition those three weeks will occur on the other side of the calendar. But what does that mean?
It means that our goal is to ensure that the whole of population has the opportunity through supply to access a vaccine this year. And if there are some who choose, because of personal circumstances, to have it in the last couple of weeks of the year and this then means they go into the first week of the next year, that does not affect any of the assumptions. So the answer is very simple. The difference between the two is only the difference of three weeks. And for the opposition to think that that is material or germane is deceptive and inaccurate.
Updated
Mark Butler to Scott Morrison:
I refer to his previous answer in which he said that his budget was based on assumptions not policy settings. If the budget’s assumptions aren’t based on policy settings, what are they based on? And why can’t the prime minister give a clear answer to the question, when will Australians be vaccinated?
Morrison:
Mr Speaker, I’ll ask the minister for health to provide a further update to the figures that I have just mentioned to you about the progress of the vaccination program. But I know it is a mystery to those opposite about how budgets are put together and how they work.
There are assumptions in the budget that Treasury pulled together based on their assessment of the circumstances and that helps them with their assessment of estimates.
That’s how budgets are done. I know it’s been a long time since they’ve been in an expenditure review committee and they don’t have the skills or experience to understand how budgets are put together.
They didn’t do a particularly good job of it when they were last in government.
So it maybe to them, perhaps we could offer them on budgets on how to put it together. There are a lot of training courses we’re providing. Maybe we should introduce a training course to the Labor party, how to prepare a budget. How to engage in responsible expenditure to secure Australia’s future.
Perhaps we should put training programs with the Labor party on how to develop economic policies to support the Australian people.
I’ll allow the minister for health to add further to the answer.
Greg Hunt:
Thank you very much. To add to the prime minister’s answer, the very simple response is yesterday 72,000 Australians were vaccinated. Today 76,000 Australians. In the last week we had 402,000, a record number.
And what we are seeing is those numbers increasing. Over the course of the year we expect to have 40m Pfizer vaccines in Australia. All of these things are, of course, dependent, as Treasury note, on the ability of these vaccines to arrive in the country. Our expectation is that those vaccines will be available, that that supply will be available.
We’re seeing this week a million CSL vaccines being made available, some have to be provision for contingency, for second doses, but we are distributing approximately 900,000 doses this week.
So what we are doing is ensuring that over the course of the year that we do have supply for all Australians to have the opportunity to be vaccinated. What that does is that gives us greater security, greater protection as a nation. The most fundamental of all assumptions within the budget with regards to Covid is that Australia continues to be safe. Of all of the elements, that is the one with the most significant importance.
We are now, on the advice I have today, at 83 days with zero cases of community transmission. And so that assumption looks as if it is going to be a very strong assumption. What we see from that, what we see in relation to the capacity to supply enough vaccines for every Australian who chooses to have that opportunity over the course of the year, they remain strong and clear.
Updated
This is a pretty huge point. Scott Morrison is saying that one of the major assumptions underpinning the budget – that we will be vaccinated by the end of the year – is not government policy.
Now officials yesterday were very cagey about whether it was one dose or two – they were not committing to two, at all. Josh Frydenberg in his budget press conference, during the lockup, said it would be TWO doses – as in fully vaccinated.
The prime minister has been walking that back all morning.
Now he is saying, and a bit snippishly, that the assumption in the budget – which everything in the budget is built on – is not government policy.
That’s fricking huge.
Updated
Mark Butler to Scott Morrison:
My question is to the prime minister. I refer to page 37 of budget paper one, which states a vaccination countryside program is likely to be in place by 2021. Will the prime minister now guarantee that all Australians will be fully vaccinated against Covid by the end of this year?
Morrison:
Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the member I’m sure would know, these are assumptions, Mr Speaker, that Treasury put together in the budget to guide their assessment of the estimates that they prepare.
That is not a policy statement nor is it a policy commitment of the government. It is a Treasury assumption that has been put in place and it makes no reference, I note, to second doses, it only refers to doses. The vaccination program that the government is rolling out in partnership with the states and territories, Mr Speaker, we expect to achieve some 3 million doses by the end of this week.
The numbers in just from yesterday show that together with the states and territories, and in particular our GPs around the country, they are making strong progress, each and every day and more and more Australians are coming, Mr Speaker, to get their vaccinations. Over the course of this week as we move into next Monday, from next Monday, those aged over 50 will be able to go to their GP and receive their AstraZeneca vaccine.
And I courage them to do that, but where we stand right now is just over 10% of the eligible adult population has now received their first dose. Over 30%, about a third of those aged over 70, and about 80% now of the aged care facilities have had their first dose and the vaccination program will continue to roll out in coordination with the plan we have agreed with the national cabinet members in partnership with the states and territories. So we will be moving as quickly as possible based on the supplies of vaccines and I commend the minister of health that we continue to access those additional supplies of vaccines, particularly for the Pfizer vaccines, to be able to bring forward as much as we possibly can to ensure those vaccines will be provided to the under-50 population.
The vaccination program will continue to roll out. It will continue to roll out. The Treasury have made their assumptions around the budget and I can refer members to those assumptions. I would refer members to the government’s policy statements in relation to the timing of the program.
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New restrictions on border entry to South Australia from Victoria
This has just been announced:
The Cross Border-Associated Direction has been updated in South Australia in relation to travel from Victoria. For more information visit: https://t.co/4hsRuEZGo7 pic.twitter.com/fnvQQiqM7a
— South Australia Police (@SAPoliceNews) May 12, 2021
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Luke Gosling now brings back the current deputy prime minister and surely there has to be a limit to this.
Gosling:
I refer to page 153 of budget paper number two. Can the prime minister confirm that – the deputy prime minister confirm that just 1% of the infrastructure funds for the Northern Territory announced in last night’s budget will be spent in the next four years?
Tip Top:
Indeed I do, and indeed the Northern Territory is a vital part of the infrastructure component of the budget. And I speak to those members in the Northern Territory all the time. I speak to them [the NT leaders] and I acknowledge the role they want to build, in needing to build, demanding to build, expecting to build and deserving to have the infrastructure that we are rolling out across the nation.
As I just told the member for Ballarat in the previous question, there is no cut to infrastructure spending.
We are getting on with the delivery, whether it’s in the Northern Territory or anywhere else across the land. Overall infrastructure funding has increased over the forward estimates and has increased since last budget, which was just in October last year, from $60bn over the four years from 2020-21 to $70bn over the four years from 2021-22. Now, $70bn is a higher number than $60bn. OK? I just put that out there.
There is a point of order on relevance. There should also be one on making sense, but apparently that’s not in the practice. He continues:
The Northern Territory will benefit from the additional billion dollars we are placing in the road safety package. I see the member for Solomon nodding. The Northern Territory will benefit from a further billion dollars in funding for the local roads and community infrastructure program. The Northern Territory will benefit from the defence spending that we are doing in the Northern Territory – $760m.
Defence spending has nothing to do with his portfolio. Or the question. So there is another point of order.
Tony Smith tells him to either stick to the question, or conclude his answer, but unfortunately, Tip Top cannot be stopped and he continues:
$150m for phase two of the Northern Territory national network highway upgrades, $173.6m towards the sixth corridor of the Roads of Strategic Importance initiative. That supports the gas industry in the Beetaloo basin. And $0.3m for a development study of the proposed Tennant Creek facility and terminal which I visited not that long ago. When you might ask? We’re getting on with the job. We will work with the Northern Territory government because that’s what we do. They give us their priorities, we invest in them. We do it on an 80-20 basis when it comes to regional areas, unlike Labor it’s 50-50 and that’s why, let me tell you, territory and state governments love when the Liberals and Nationals are in government because they get more value for their infrastructure dollar.
How was that only three minutes?
Updated
This is still very, very slow.
National vaccine rollout passes 2.81m doses - Victoria still building its lead as the jab capital of Australia pic.twitter.com/pelVGwmCyh
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) May 12, 2021
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Catherine King has summoned the current deputy prime minister back to the dispatch box and I really don’t know what any of us have done to deserve this.
King: My question is to the deputy prime minister. The front pages of Australia’s newspapers reported an infrastructure bonanza would be announced in last night’s budget. So why does page 84 of budget paper number one show a $3.3bn cut to infrastructure investment over the next four years? Why announce a splurge but deliver a cut?
Tip Top:
I have got a media release, thank you member for Watson. I have the media release from the member for Ballarat.
I notice that the ALP have got a little logo they’re now putting on their, next to their media releases, got a three-word slogan, would you believe, all about spin. The three-word slogan we need is this one – securing Australia’s recovery – because that’s what the budget does. But I read the media release closely. I read the media release closely. There is no underspend. There is no cut.
The budget makes for infrastructure rollout $110bn right across the economy. Thirty-thousand additional jobs last night. But I explained to the member for Ballarat yesterday, what we do is we ...
No, no, no, what we do is we pay on delivery. We pay on milestones. It might be the Labor way to pay for a job that isn’t yet completed*. They might have done that in those six sorry, dysfunctional, chaotic years, but we pay on delivery. So we’re getting on with the job. As you heard the treasurer last night. That the new commitments that we have made.
*That’s literally how the government has been handling aged care payments, paying for services before they were delivered. That has been changed only because of a recommendation from the aged care royal commission. The government will now pay at the completion of services for aged care.
Anyways, the loaf of bread that serves as the current deputy prime minister says a lot of other words, but they don’t seem to be in any semblance of order, or make sense. He thanks the media for front pages on infrastructure spend, he guffaws, he says ‘getting on with the job’ like it’s oxygen – but he doesn’t actually make sense. It’s like watching a robot from a 1960s sitcom malfunction.
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The current deputy prime minister has taken to saying “million dollars” like he is a villain in a Bond spoof and yet he still doesn’t manage to approximate having an actual personality.
Tony Burke to Scott Morrison:
My question’s to the prime minister. Will the prime minister confirm this fact? Page 37 of budget paper number one shows a cut to real wages.
Morrison (with a guffaw):
Mr Speaker, the budget papers are tabled and they’re there for all members to be able to note.
I remember the member to the treasurer’s earlier response to this matter when it was raised. And we came off a year last year where inflation actually, Mr Speaker, was negative. And that we have moved into a year, Mr Speaker, where we have seen prices adjust in the following year.
And so it’s not surprising, Mr Speaker, if those opposite think that inflation is going to be running at over 3%, Mr Speaker, then they’d be expecting interest rates to rise as well and we all know from the Reserve Bank that what’s planned.
The leader of the opposition may seek to delve into these things, but what he doesn’t appreciate, what he doesn’t understand, for a leader of the opposition to have spent so much time in this parliament, so much time here, Mr Speaker ...
He says something when he’s made to sit down for a point of order, and Tony Smith pulls him up on it, to which he responds with the parliament equivalent of ‘he started it’ and ladies and gentlemen, this is your parliament.
Anyways, he is allowed to finish, but doesn’t answer the question.
For the record, as Murph and Grogs have been talking about for the last 24 hours – and before that, based on the past – yes, there is a cut to wage growth, which means a cut to real world wages.
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Josh Frydenberg is still giving a LinkedIn rundown with every dixer.
It’s been one of the most consistent things for this government – the treasurer will read out your resume if you ask him a question.
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Jim Chalmers to Josh Frydenberg:
According to page 37 of the budget paper one, workers who have been lucky enough to hang on their jobs through the pandemic will now have their real wages cut. What is the point of an eight-year-old government racking up $1tn of Liberal debt when workers’ wages aren’t keeping up with their bills?
Frydenberg:
It’s surprising to get a question from the member for Rankin on the issue of real wages when real wages to the December quarter were larger than when Labor left office, Mr Speaker. Higher than when Labor left office.
Well we would hope so – that was EIGHT years ago. If wages hadn’t increased in that time, we would be in an even worse position. It’s been almost a decade!
Frydenberg continues:
The reality is that the key to driving higher wages is a tighter labour market. With more people in work.
Now, Mr Speaker, this is an inconvenient truth for the member for Rankin, who always seeks to make politics in this chamber rather than acknowledging the national interest, but half a million jobs have been created since last budget.
Those jobs were lost during the pandemic, by and large – which is when the last budget was handed down. And the government has missed its wage growth targets for years. It has missed its employment targets. And keeping unemployment at 5% – which has been the definition of “full” employment for the last few years has meant that there has been no hope for wage rises. Now the government, and Reserve Bank of Australia, have decided to turn their attention to lowering unemployment to something with a 4 in front of it, wage growth is magically supposed to happen – but according to the budget papers, that won’t be for years.
Wage growth is your pay rises. That’s why it matters.
Updated
Oh god. I just remembered we are going to have to hear from the current deputy prime minister talking about infrastructure.
I can see him reading his answer, getting ready. He’s smiling and making notes. That means there are ‘jokes’.
Please send help.
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Sarah Hanson-Young has sent out this apology:
— 💚🌏 Sarah Hanson-Young (@sarahinthesen8) May 12, 2021
Question time begins
Anthony Albanese to Scott Morrison:
After eight long years of this government how can the government rack up $1tn of debt and Australians get their real wages cut?
Morrison:
The budget the treasurer handed down last night was a plan to secure Australians’ recovery and that, first and foremost, Mr Speaker, means getting Australians back into work. Getting Australians back into jobs. Mr Speaker, I’ll hand over to the treasurer in just one moment.
To the specific issue that the leader of the opposition has raised. As we have known over the course of this last current financial year, Mr Speaker, and through the pandemic period there were many initiatives undertaken by the government, which has had an impact on the how the inflation rate has been impacted as a result of those measures, whether it’s through childcare, and that’s provided timing differences, in relation to technically how these matters are measured. But what I do know is the economic recovery plan that is set out in the budget that the treasurer handed down last night is going to mean more jobs, it will mean more investment and it’s going to mean more support for Australians in work. It’s going to mean lower taxes, it’s going to mean, Mr Speaker, better infrastructure.
Anthony Albanese has a point of order:
Yes, Mr Speaker. It was a very specific question. It didn’t go to the cuts they’ve got to infrastructure over the next four years or anything else. It went to page 37 of budget paper number one.
The new leader of government business in the House, Peter Dutton pops up and relishes his chance to don the Sgt Dutton hat:
Mr Speaker, that is nothing more than a stunt. The leader of the opposition has been warned about it before. There was no point of order. There was no point. Holding up books for the cameras doesn’t substitute for some sort of substantive point. The prime minister was perfectly in order.
(He must have been an absolute BLAST at (what I assume was private) school.
Tony Smith rules the point of order in order and says that maybe Dutton wasn’t listening to the whole question.
Josh Frydenberg takes over and so does the yelling – apparently he has hit his limit of being able to speak into a microphone properly.
Not that it matters – he doesn’t answer the question.
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Tim Wilson is yelling about home ownership in the House and no one is listening, which means it must almost be question time.
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The Victorian higher education minister has also made her views known:
This package deliberately ignores TAFE and public providers.
— Gayle Tierney MP (@GayleTierney) May 12, 2021
It’s another slap in the face for universities, which face a 9.3% funding cut in the budget.
The Morrison Government failed to support universities through the JobKeeper program. (2/7)
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Save the Children Australia deputy CEO, Mat Tinkler is not overly enthused with the budget’s climate response:
The government’s provision for tackling climate change, the greatest challenge of our time, is woefully inadequate.
This gudget neglects Australia’s future and it fails to acknowledge the climate crisis that children in Australia and across our region are already living through.
Children and young people are understandably distressed to see the lack of action on climate change, and are demanding to be heard by our leaders.
Without addressing climate change there will be more extreme weather events; more bushfires, more floods, more intense cyclones and more droughts, for children to survive.
Save the Children welcomes the support for families impacted by the Black Summer bushfires and additional assistance for children’s mental health services. Through our work, we know that children and their families are still dealing with the effects of the bushfires, compounded by the pandemic.
It is important that the needs of children are included in ongoing responses to the Black Summer bushfires and responses to emergencies.
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And there was one part of what Josh Frydenberg said during his Q and A which has made Labor happy – he said it was “a Liberal budget”.
Here’s Jim Chalmers on that:
It’s important we start with something important that Josh Frydenberg said in his speech that we agree with 100%, he said it’s a Liberal budget and it is a Liberal budget and one important respect even with $1 trillion in debt and $100m in spending they still expect real wages to fall, only a Liberal government could spend that much money and still leave workers behind copping a wage cut.
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Jim Chalmers was on the ABC responding to the budget, again:
The big part of the story is getting the unemployment rate down but underemployment and some of the other issues preventing people from getting into work, not just getting into work but having enough hours to support loved ones, the unemployment rate is part of the story, what matters is not how many jobs they forecast but how many secure well paying jobs they deliver, you remember the centrepiece of the budget last year was meant to create 450,000 jobs, it created 1,000 jobs.
I think those kind of jobs forecast we had to see them to believe them, there is an important task to be done, get unemployment down and deal with underemployment and deal with other issues, there is a reason why the budget doesn’t forecast any real wages growth because the other issues have been piling up for eight years and this Budget doesn’t undo the damage of the first seven.
Updated
So not a lot of new there. Which means question time is going to be a copy and paste affair.
Updated
The other question of note?
Why is the border closed for so long?
Josh Frydenberg:
The key factor, the central factor, the only factor for us is what keeps Australians safe. And it’s not simply the rollout of the vaccine, that is a factor for the chief medical officer in making decisions around borders.
They also need to take into account, what is happening with the virus globally, its transmissibility, new variants of the virus, and what it would mean for Australians health and safety.
So I can only comment on the circumstances which we are in today, where there are more than 800,000 new cases, we have to be very careful and cautious, when it comes to opening up our country, we cannot, we cannot avoid the dangers that that may pose right now, and what we must seek to do is protect Australians, their health but also their economic recovery and that is why we will always follow the medical advice on these important matters.
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Budget stays 'true to Liberal party's values and principles', says Frydenberg
What’s in the budget for the Liberal “true believers”?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, this is Liberal budget. Firstly, it stays true to the Menziesian tradition of getting more Australians into home ownership.
There is the first home super saving scheme, there’s the new measures that we introduced to enable single parents with a deposit as low as 2% to get into the first home, and homebuilder has been an enormous success. The budget supports retirees.
You referenced Labor having a tax. This budget allows retirees to money into superannuation at age 60, and putting up to $300,000 into their super. It is abolishing the work activity test for someone aged 67 to 74. We’ve also supported the regions with record amount of support.
Whether it’s infrastructure that’s transport or water infrastructure, or better telecommunications, connectivity, better in bushfire-prone as well as biosecurity and agriculture 2030 project. There is support for families with tax cuts.
It’s only the Coalition who delivered $300bn of tax cuts in the last four budgets and, as I said, has put in place a reform to abolish the whole tax bracket, the 37 cents in the dollar bracket do out, the strength ebb, to create a fairer tax system. At the heart of the budget is the concept of backing the private sector.
I said it in my speech last night, eight out of every 10 jobs in Australia are in the private sector. And we want the private sector to feel confident to invest, the hire and grow.
That is what the business investment incentives are about, the lost carry back measures are about. That is what measures like regulatory change around the AA and the ATO are all about. So, this budget stays true to the Liberal party’s values and principles, but it also responds in the middle of a pandemic.
If you want to quote Doyennes of the Liberal party, whether Menzies, it could be Howard, as Australia’s second longest serving prime minister, and as he said to me very clearly: “At times of national crises, there are no ideological constraints.”
And if I walk into the wilderness one day and know that I have done my small bit to help a generation of Australians avoid long-term unemployment, what the economists call the scarring of the labour market, I will be proud of that. It’s not about me. It’s about them.
And the fact that we have seen half a million jobs being created since the last budget alone, the fact that the unemployment rate today is lower than when we came to government at 5.6% and the fact that Australia is the first major advanced economy to see employment levels where they were at pre-pandemic is something that we can all be proud of, but we also know the job is not done and that’s why last night’s budget was the Morrison government’s plan to lock in the recovery and ensure Australians are all better often.
Updated
Asked about the wait migrants are being forced to undergo before they can access government payments – FOUR years – something that will impact carers and parents the most (and one of the only savings measures in the budget) while still relying on migrants to come to Australia, Josh Frydenberg says:
There are a number of measures in this budget that are actually providing additional services to migrants. Some of whom have obviously gone home. Some of the temporary migrants went home during the course of the pandemic.
And others have stayed. We do continue to provide those economic supports. But when you reference net overseas migration, it does go down but then it actually rebuilds.
It rebuilds to just over 90,000 in ‘22-23, which is when we said in the budget we have an assumption that the border will gradually reopen.
And then it gets as high back to where it was pre-pandemic at around 235,000 a year. In the budget, there are a number of measures designed to provide additional support to refugees and migrants, as well as, of course, supporting net overseas migration, when it is safe to do so.
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Quarantine responsibilities rest with the states, says Frydenberg
Q: In your budget speech you talked about making Australia more resilient. One way is quarantine. You have talked about $5m for the Howard Springs centre in the Northern Territory, but there are calls for a bigger capacity in quarantine. In last night’s budget, for instance, there’s $200m for the myGov website, $300m for an online health record, there is $500m right there. What’s the priority – a bigger website or a bigger quarantine capacity? Why do we not have a commitment in last night’s budget for bigger quarantine? Why do you not build a second Howard Springs?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, as you know, the Victorian government has put a proposal to the federal government about new quarantine facilities in that state. And the prime minister has indicated that we are working through that particular application. We will respond in due course.
But also don’t forget that the quarantine responsibilities as decided through national cabinet quite early in this pandemic were going to rest primarily with the states.
Yes, we’ve got Howard Springs, but the primary responsibility had been resting with the states. Now, by and large, our quarantine system has been effective but for the ends in Victoria, where there was a catastrophic failure. No one wants to see a repeat of that. We had the Jane Halton review. The states have done further work to strengthen the quarantine systems, but with respect to new federal investments, in quarantine and the states, the first proposal that we’re looking through is the one from Victoria and we will respond to that in due course.
Q: Are you open to proposals along similar lines from other states? Would you back those?
Frydenberg:
Again, other states can propose whatever issues they see fit. We will – whatever proposals come from states, we would consider them again in due course through the proper processes.
Q: Given the need for presumably an exponential increase in the quarantine capacity, shouldn’t this have been something that was actually sort of considered in the budget and discussed at greater length with the states to be included in the budget?
Frydenberg:
Well, the most comprehensive proposal has come from Victoria, and we are working that through our internal processes. But like I said earlier, this state quarantine systems, outside of Victoria, and they have obviously worked to improve their system, has been largely very effective and the bulk of the heavy lifting with respect to quarantine has been done in New South Wales who have been taking two, three, four times the number of people than other states have been. Yet, that is the state that hasn’t gone into a lockdown at all across the whole – the whole state hasn’t gone into a state-wide lockdown over the course of the pandemic. It is a credit, not just to their leadership but their quarantine system.
Updated
Q: Treasurer, before the budget, there was a lot of discussion outside and within government about whether the legislated rises in the Superannuation Guarantee, the staged raised up to 12%, should remain or be removed or changed. The government in the end decided not to interfere with those rises. Can you promise that after the election this will be a forever position of the government?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, our position has remained consistent, that these are legislated increases. With the 9.5 going to 10%, as you know, from mid this year. But the thinktank, which is your name sake, the Gratton Institute, and also the Reserve Bank and others had commented about the adequacy of retirement incomes with a 9.5% SG. And so that debate was happening independent of government.
That debate was also kicked along by the Callahan report into retirement incomes. Which found that increasingly people are bequeathing quite a large sum of money at the end of their lives, having accumulated it through their lives.
And so there was – and there is – a real issue about the adequacy of retirement incomes, whether it’s at 9.5, 10% or even a higher rate. Our position remains consistent. That is legislated and we didn’t announce changes.
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The issue with the tax cuts is that the low and middle income tax offset has always had an end date, whereas the stage three tax cuts, which are for the highest income earners, continue on – which is not exactly fair when you think about it.
Updated
Q: Labor’s making noises today about LMITO [low and middle income tax offset] shouldn’t be turned off at the end of next year. Especially in light of the stage 3 tax cuts coming in. Will this be the last year for the LMITO to be rolled over regardless of election timing? Are the stage 3 tax cuts still affordable?
Josh Frydenberg:
Two questions there. Firstly, we can only make decisions on the facts that we have right now. And that is that we needed to put in place the $8bn additional year of LMITO, the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset.
It is a physical stimulus in order to support aggregate demand and, therefore, support job creation. And if you are a tradie or a nurse or a teacher earning between $48 and $90,000, you get a thousand – just over a thousand dollars in your pocket at the end of your tax year.
That’s a significant boost to household income. But it’s not a permanent feature of the tax system. What is going to be a permanent feature of the tax system is having one big single tax bracket between $45,000 and $200,000, having abolish did 37 cents in the dollar tax bracket.
That is stage 3 of our tax plan. And it is affordable. And it will create a stronger system. The Labor party have not said if they are committed to stage 3, even though at the time it passed through the Parliament they said they supported our tax cuts.
But if they were to abandon stage 3 or propose to abandon stage 3, it would mean that somebody on $80,000 a year – so, very much a middle income earner – would be $900 a year worse off.
And what we’ve done with stage 3 is ensure that the progressive nature of our tax system remains. So that the top 5% of income earners are paying a third of the overall tax burden. That is before stage 3 and that is after stage 3.
And if you’re earning $200,000 a year, you are earning four times as much as somebody who earns $50,000 a year, but if you earn $200,000 a year, you will pay eight times as much tax after stage 3 of our tax plan is the implemented.
So, we’re very much maintaining a progressive tax system, but what it does do is ensure that 95% of taxpayers pay a marginal rate of no more than 30 cents in the dollar. It’s a significant reform. It is affordable, it’s already legislated. So it’s in the numbers in the budget papers, as issued yesterday. But it is a much better way forward than extending the LMITO indefinitely.
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Australia can't 'afford the risk' of opening international borders if it compromises health, says Frydenberg
To the questions!
Q: You have talked in the speech about keeping the momentum going and we have got a competitive advantage at the moment in that we have suppressed the virus. But the prospects of that advantage being continued is disappearing as countries start to open their borders.
For 40 years we’ve heard about the need to be an open economy. The AI Group’s Innes Willox today was being a gilded cage in this budget, it is basically an economy that’s looking in on itself. When will we know – when will we have a clear road map out of how the government plans to gradually open the economy?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, as we’ve said repeatedly, we will open the international borders when it’s safe to do so.
And that means basing our decisions on the medical advice. What we have seen is an increase in the number of case, new variants and issues about the transmissibility of the virus.
And we cannot afford to take the risk right now to open our borders in a way that would compromise the health of Australians. So, we’re unapologetic about putting the health of Australians first.
Ultimately, this is primarily a health crisis with a very severe economic impact. And our economic recovery would be put in doubt if we weren’t able to successfully suppress the virus. Treasury make a number of assumptions in this budget. They are not policy decision, they are assumptions, about how we contain new outbreak, when the international borders open, when the vaccine is rolled out.
When you speak to Treasury about the impact of those assumptions on their economic forecasts, the most important one is our ability to contain the spread of the virus here in Australia when we have outbreaks, which is inevitable.
And so we cannot compromise our health position and our ability to contain that spread by having any more cases than otherwise would eventuate through a proper quarantine process.
So, from our perspective, whatever established a working assumption in the budget that international borders open gradually from the end of next year – from the middle of next year. We will start to take more student cohorts, smaller student cohorts from the end of this year.
But, again, they are merely assumption, not policy decisions. And if the medical advice is different to that, on either side of that decision, from mid-next year, then we would follow the medical advice. But you’ve seen here recently in Australia the lockdown in Western Australia from just a few cases. We saw what happened in Victoria. An extended lockdown would very much damage the recovery. And we can’t afford to go back there.
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Josh Frydenberg is delivering the traditional post-budget press club address – it’s nothing more than the budget speech so far.
We’ll bring you what he says in the Q and A which is coming up very soon.
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Thoughts and prayers.
🎼Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end... https://t.co/Tgkwy2DcRl
— James Jeffrey (@James_Jeffrey) May 12, 2021
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And here is Simon Birmingham answering the same question on the Nine network.
Never let it be said the man can’t deliver a line (these are separate interviews at different times, in case it wasn’t immediately clear).
Covid-19 has been the biggest global economic shock since World War II. And of course, countries came out of World War II facing significant debts and with a significant challenge in terms of how they recovered. In Australia, we recovered in that post-war period by growing our economy strongly, by getting record numbers of people into jobs. And that’s the strategy we’re deploying for the post Covid era as well. Yes, to keep us safe and to save business and jobs across Australia, we’ve had to spend significantly to get through this crisis, and we still are. Europe is facing a double dip recession right now, and that’s why there’s another $40bn worth of Covid response measures in this budget alone to keep Australia safe in managing the pandemic. But our plan is to keep our economy strong through Covid and stronger still beyond it by growing jobs in sectors, through our digital economy strategy, through advanced manufacturing investments, through our Agriculture 2030 plan, through skilling Australians to create a more productive workforce and investment incentives for businesses, and this is all about making sure we have people in jobs, not on welfare, good paying jobs, productive economy, because that’s what generates the revenue that enables us to fund those services and to keep those debt levels under control.
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Here is Simon Birmingham this morning on why debt and deficit no longer matter to the party which demonised those two words for the best part of two decades (he’s speaking to the Seven network):
Look, these are unprecedented times. The Covid-19 pandemic has been the biggest shock to the global economy since World War Two. And obviously there were big debts left after World War Two that took a long time for countries to be able to move beyond. What we’ve done is managed to keep Australia’s relative competitiveness very strong. In the UK, the US, Japan, they all have debt as a share of their economy, many multiples what ours is. We’ve managed to keep Australia coming into this pandemic with lower levels of debt as a share of our economy and coming out, we will still have lower levels of debt as a share of our economy. And as long as we can keep that growth going and create more jobs, then we’re confident in being able to manage that debt while ensuring that we support the fixing of our aged care system, the delivery of improved mental health services, fully funding the disability insurance scheme, as we promised to do.
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Suspicious package found in Canberra
There are reports police have declared parts of Canberra around London Circuit an exclusion zone after a suspicious package was found in the area.
London Circuit, Knowles Place and University Ave in the city are all closed off.
Authorities are responding to a suspicious package discovered on London Circuit in central Canberra 12 May. Officials have established an exclusion zone, encompassing parts of London Circuit, University Avenue, and Knowles Place. Evacuations are possible in nearby buildings as a precaution.
Increased security is likely to remain in the area until authorities give the all-clear and investigate the incident. Police have advised drivers to avoid the area. Lingering localised traffic disruptions are likely until the investigation concludes.
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Andrew Leigh spoke to ABC radio Canberra this morning about what Labor plans to do with the stage three tax cuts (which are already legislated in a bill that went through with Labor’s support, even as it spoke out against the stage three cuts (the argument was Labor had to support the whole package to get the low and middle income cuts passed).
Leigh:
We’ll be making our announcements on what we do on those tax changes as we come to the next election. There’s been quite significant parameter variations in terms of the budget bottom line, even leading into this budget. The previous budget had iron ore price at $55. It’s now $200. The changes in unemployment and growth have affected the budget bottom line as well, so we’ll be making our decisions as we come into the next election guided by Labor values and guided by where the budget is at the time.
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Qantas has delayed its planned restart of international flights, after an assumption in Tuesday’s federal budget that Australia’s international borders will only significantly reopen in the second half of next year.
The airline will adjust its planned international flights from end-October 2021 to late December 2021 – when the budget assumes vaccinations will be complete – with a Qantas spokesperson saying the airlines remains “optimistic that additional bubbles will open once Australia’s vaccine rollout is complete to countries who, by then, are in a similar position”.
“But it’s difficult to predict which ones at this stage,” the spokesperson added.
A Qantas statement said:
This planning assumption will allow the Qantas Group – and Australia – to be ready to take advantage of pockets of tourism and trade opportunity as they emerge in a post-Covid world.
We will keep reviewing these plans as we move towards December and circumstances evolve.
In the meantime, the Qantas Group will continue to provide critical repatriation and freight flights overseas, and support the recovery of travel at home. The resurgence of domestic travel remains the most important element of the Group’s recovery.
We will reach out directly to any customers with a booking between 31 October 2021 and 19 December 2021, however recent levels of uncertainty meant international booking levels were relatively low. Again, please note that Trans Tasman flights are unaffected.
A high number of calls to our contact centre is resulting in long wait times. We continue to add more resources in response but encourage customers who are not travelling in the next 24 hours to please wait for us to contact you directly regarding these latest changes.
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Here is the US read out of the call Peter Dutton and the US secretary of defene, Lloyd J Austin III had:
I had an excellent call with Australia’s MoD @PeterDutton_MP. The Unbreakable Alliance has faced all challenges in its first 70 years, and we stand ready with our Australian mates for the challenges of the next 70 and beyond, strengthening the #FreeandopenIndoPacific. pic.twitter.com/1K4bqO2DzH
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) May 12, 2021
The Law Council of Australia is happy with the funding awarded to the federal court.
From its release:
The government has announced that it will provide $123.8 million over four years to support the reform of the family law system and improve access and safety for children and families. This funding includes:
- $60.8 million over four years from 2021-22 to reform family law case management processes;
- $29.0 million over four years from 2021-22 to improve information sharing between the family law and the family violence and child protection systems;
- $26.9 million over four years from 2021-22 for increased legal assistance funding for family law matters in South Australia and increased judicial and court resources in the South Australian family law registry; and
- $6.3 million in 2021-22 to the Family Violence and Cross Examination of Parties Scheme.
Such measures will assist the pending and growing caseload and backlogs in the federal courts.
It will also improve the ability of the courts to process and resolve matters in a timely manner and reduce extreme personal pressure on judges as they try to meet demand.
The Law Council considers that further improvements to sustainable funding levels could be achieved through the Australian Government consulting closely with the federal courts and tribunals and the legal profession, in order to undertake a full review of the resourcing needs of the judicial system, incorporating the challenges and benefits that have been identified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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NSW reports no new locally transmitted Covid cases
NSW has recorded no new local cases of Covid overnight, though four people in hotel quarantine have been diagnosed.
Staff members prepare vaccines at a New South Wales coronavirus disease (COVID-19) mass vaccination hub as it opens at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney. Photograph: Reuters
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The Coalition of Peaks – a representative body of more than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled peak organisations and members – have declared this a “a wait and see” budget, saying they are unsure how the money will “trickle down” to community-controlled organisations on the frontlines.
It is “still uncertain and risky whether our community-controlled sector will receive the funding it needs to deliver much better services to our people,” said the lead convenor of the Coalition of Peaks, Pat Turner.
Detailed funding relating to Closing the Gap was not announced last night, so the full scope of funding commitments remained to be seen, she said, but there were “promising investments in crucial areas that affect our people” including aged care, Indigenous skills and jobs, mental health and women’s safety:
Our main concern with every commonwealth budget is how the funding will trickle down and benefit our people on the ground. Too often, our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations, which are responsible for delivering many of the services in our communities, have been left with inadequate funding to service our people.
My hope is that our community-controlled organisations are not just left with the crumbs from the budget table.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had a “legitimate expectation” that there would be a boost in funding in all areas of Closing the Gap, she said.
The government is investing more than $700m to improve health and ageing outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including better mental health services. It has set aside $79m over four years for crisis and support services under the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy.
There will be $26m over four years to better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children who have experienced or experiencing family violence, with $17m for the Family Violence Prevention Legal Services.
The government has announced it will scrap the controversial CDP or “work for the dole” scheme in remote communities, but details on what will replace it are yet to be confirmed.
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I just love it when equals find each other – enjoy Malcolm Roberts debating a papier-mache head.
For your viewing pleasure: @MRobertsQLD debates the finer points of climate change with a man wearing a giant paper-mache Scott Morrison head. "Where's this climate emergency?" #AusPol @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/NNqQqmucBO
— 𝙉𝘼𝙑𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙍𝘼𝙕𝙄𝙆 📰 (@naveenjrazik) May 12, 2021
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That’s after a man who was in hotel quarantine in South Australia subsequently returned to Victoria and tested positive.
So far, no one else in his close contacts have tested positive for Covid, but urgent checks are being done. If you have any symptoms, you know the drill.
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People who were on the train in to the footy are also being asked to isolate.
That’s the Craigieburn to Southern Cross service, which left Craigieburn at 5.28pm and arrived at 6.07pm on Friday.
That’s as well as the Flinders Street to Craigieburn service that left at 10.20pm that same night.
Martin Foley:
This applies to anyone in any carriage and anyone who may have got on or off that particular train.
We are working with both Metro through their data and given that it was the aftermath of the Richmond-Geelong game, we are working with the AFL to get messages through all of their clubs and data that our friends from Metro and public transport are able to provide us, get that material out to what we would expect to be many hundreds of people on that train.
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Victorian health authorities are asking anyone who was on the 10.20pm train service between Flinders Street and Craigieburn on Friday night to get tested for Covid and isolate until they receive their results, after the service was identified as a tier 2 exposure site.
Health minister Martin Foley said authorities were “working with AFL clubs to reach their members in what we expect to be many hundreds of people on that train”.
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Victoria is making more moves in the fertility space, as AAP reports:
The Victorian government will spend $70m to establish publicly funded assisted reproductive services.
The money will help establish a public sperm and egg bank for the first time.
It is estimated the state budget spend will help the 15% of families who want to have children but struggle to conceive.
The head of reproductive services at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Prof Kate Stern, says people who live in regional or rural Victoria, or LGBTI people, or Indigenous Victorians often can’t access fertility services.
“They just can’t access treatment for so many reasons, but mainly it’s not affordable,” she said.
Health minister Martin Foley said he did not expect to see push back from the private sector in response to the announcement.
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Lols
My prize for the most sneakily misleading graph in the budget docs - this one on education spending pic.twitter.com/51UcwYrQ4m
— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) May 12, 2021
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Marise Payne has attended the re-naming ceremony of a room in the Washington embassy.
From her office’s release:
Today I was honoured to open the Dame Enid Lyons Room at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.
Dame Enid was the first woman elected to the Australian House of Representatives and also the first woman to serve as a member of the Cabinet. She served as the member for Darwin (now the seat of Braddon) in Tasmania from 1943 until her retirement in 1951.
Over the course of her political career, Dame Enid made important contributions to improving the lives of women, including playing a role in the extension of child endowment payments and pension support, and enhanced access to health care.
On display adjacent to the room is a book written by Dame Enid in 1965, So We Take Comfort. Dame Enid’s grandson, Peter Lyons, donated this book to the Embassy.
Although Dame Enid’s family were unable to join the event, Mr Lyons provided the following message:
“When she visited Washington in 1935, my grandmother could never have dreamed that she would be remembered with such an honour 86 years later.
“To any young women and girls seeing this magnificent room, I hope you draw strength and inspiration from the life she led; the way she overcame many daunting obstacles and her vision of a society which was open, encouraging and fair to all.”
The Australian Embassy’s room naming project is part of a broader initiative across the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, honouring the achievements of women within Australia’s diplomatic service and the work and lives of women who have made significant contributions to our international relationships.
Previously, Dfat named rooms after famous male diplomats and...flowers. The shift to naming rooms after women coincided with Frances Adamson’s move to the secretary role.
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Lidia Thorpe has responded to the budget:
This is a budget for billionaires – they get tax cuts and the big corporations get handouts. But as usual, Aboriginal people – the First Nations people of this country, the oldest living civilisation on the planet – miss out. We’re used to being ignored by this government and its systems.
There’s been more Black deaths in custody, and 476+ since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, some thirty years ago. But there’s still nowhere near enough funding the programs that keep our people out of the colonial legal system in the first place – programs that provide stable, culturally appropriate housing, mental health and family support services.
We can’t trust these people to take care of Country. Look how much damage they’ve done in the past two hundred years.
It’s even more disappointing that the same government that allows big corporations to desecrate our Country and our cultural heritage sites has only given loose change for heritage ‘protection’. They should stop destroying our heritage in the first place.
Racist colonial rations, also known as the “Cashless Debit Card”, will of course, continue under this government.
There’s not enough in this Budget to take care of the huge number of kids in the system with disabilities, like FASD. These kids should not be locked up in prisons. We need diversionary programs and support services that are self-determined by our people.
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Scott Morrison was asked about the $4bn in what Labor is calling slush funds on the Seven network this morning, and was asked whether Labor was right:
No.
The only opposition I’m focused on at the moment is the pandemic, that’s what I’m fighting. Because it’s the pandemic that threatens people’s health and threatens people’s jobs. And that’s why this is a pandemic to combat that. I’ll let others focus on the politics.
As prime minister, I have to lead the country through this pandemic, and that’s the opposition that can take away things from people in this country – their health, their jobs, their economic security.
So this budget is very focused on addressing that pandemic. That plan now is over $300bn, keeping Australians in work, protecting lives and protecting livelihoods. We’ve done well up to this point as Australians, and with government supporting Australians. We see Australians as the answer as to how we come through this pandemic and we’re backing them in with investment incentives, with lower taxes, with health services that support them get through this very difficult time.
That’s the opposition, that’s the challenge, that’s who I’m fighting.
I’ll let the Labor party fight amongst themselves.
That’s not exactly an answer to the question. Plus, I don’t think anyone could deny that it has been the states and territories who have done the heavy lifting during the pandemic – from hotel quarantine, to border closures, and now to the vaccine rollout (which was meant to be the federal government’s responsibility, along with aged care, but the states were called in to fix it).
Also, the Labor party isn’t perfect...but it’s not exactly fighting amongst itself at the moment (Joel Fitzgibbon will always Joel Fitzgibbon).
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Former PM Malcolm Turnbull is having some fun with the retweet button today.
. @TurnbullMalcolm: “We are way out of step” on #climateaction. US & UK are chastising Aust. It’s only politics & Murdoch spin at work when we could be doing so much & it makes great economic sense. #auspol #smartenergy21 pic.twitter.com/L6NqpzOHlC
— Blair Palese 🌎 (@blairpalese) May 11, 2021
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Here was some of Katy Gallagher’s take on the budget:
It was a budget put together with an eye on an election – not an eye on the Australian people. And we can also see in this budget secret allocations of funding hidden away for a rainy day for when it suits the prime minister.
$9bn in decisions taken, but not announced. And, of course, reverting to tie up their favourite way of using taxpayer money which is to funnel it into grants and rort funds to use in an election campaign to win seats and do favours for their mates.
And what we saw in this budget is 21 separate new or topped up grants programs costing around $4bn. Twenty-one of them.
Now, this is their favourite way of funnelling money into seats that they want to win or MPs and senators that they want to reward or giving money to people they want to give money to – public funds. And I’ll give you two examples.
The Building Better Regions Fund. Since the 2019 election – 90% of that funding has flown to Coalition seats. Well, that got $250m of public funds funnelled into it. The Community Development Support Grants Program got an extra $50m.
Again, 70% of that since the 2019 election has gone to government MPs and senators to their electorates. So this is the way they operate when it comes to public money.
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Both shadow finance minister Katy Gallagher and shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers noted that while the low and middle income tax offset has been extended temporarily for one year, the stage three income tax cuts for middle to high income earners will be permanent.
Chalmers said:
We’re just pointing out the fact that under this government if you’re a low and middle income earner this additional tax relief is temporary. But if you’re the highest income earner you get a big tax cut a couple of years down the track forever. We’re entitled to point out the difference in their approach. We have said, and Katy has said, we’ll make our views clear on income tax broadly and these components between now and the next election.
Chalmers also signalled that Labor will aim to spend more than the Coalition in aged care. He said it was “extraordinary” that despite spending $17bn the government had still “fallen short” of funding all the royal commission recommendations. In particular the workforce issues had been “ignored”.
Chalmers said the royal commission findings – including maggots in wounds of elderly residents – was a “disgrace” and the government has gone “some but not the whole way” to fixing it.
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The contradictions there that Jim Chalmers is talking about is whether or not everyone who wants a vaccine by the end of the year will receive the necessary two doses. We aren’t getting the bulk of the Pfizer vaccines deliveries until the last quarter. Then it has to be rolled out, and then everyone scheduled in for their next shot (and delivered).
It’s a giant ask, given what we have seen so far, and Scott Morrison is already leaving a lot of space for that not to happen. Asked this morning if every Australian would be fully vaccinated by the end of the year by the ABC this morning, Morrison said:
No.
There are assumptions that go to the rollout. They are not policy settings. We will continue to roll the vaccine out, as we have been, and accelerating it. From next week we will see over 50s being able to go to GP clinics all around the country, to our GPs. We will soon hit 3 million Australians vaccinated. We’re already over 10% of the adult population that is eligible for the vaccination. Over 30% for those aged over 70. We will continue to do everything we possibly can to ensure we’re progressing that vaccination program.
But, more importantly, when it comes to our economy, the reason our economy has been able to perform strongly is when we shut those borders, we have allowed our domestic economy to continue to grow. That is what is driving or jobs growth. So it is important we secure Australia from the incursion of Covid-19 into the country and it is important we keep Australia within our borders open as possible, because it’s those closures internally that can really risk Australia’s economic recovery. And so we need to keep creating that confidence, keep providing that support. Australians have done incredibly well during the course of this pandemic. We need to keep going, we need to keep going further and this plan for our recovery will ensure that we stay on that course.
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What does Jim Chalmers think of the Treasury assumption everyone who wants a vaccine will get one by the end of the year, given the delays in the rollout?
Chalmers:
We want the vaccines to be rolled out quickly and effectively and safely as soon as possible.
We want as many people to be get vaccinated as possible. It is the key to opening up the economy.
We want it to succeed, and when it comes to confidence – we want the Australian people to have the capacity to be confident about the rollout of this vaccine.
But this has been a shambles from the beginning. All of this over promising and underdelivering.
On Sunday, we had the prime minister and the treasurer contradict each other.
We’ve had in the last 24 hours, the treasurer and the prime minister contradict each other. It’s remarkable that in the budget, they had an opportunity to come clean on the costs and consequences of the prime minister’s vaccination debacle. They didn’t take it.
We still are none the wiser. It’s more confusing now than it was before the weekend what the government’s vaccination target is and what that means for the economy.
And all of us know that we are hostage to the prime minister’s incompetence on vaccines and quarantine.
The economy will not properly open up until they get this right. They’ve given us no confidence that they’ve made any progress towards getting it right.
Meanwhile, other countries are vaccinating millions of people a day and we can’t even meet the most basic objectives that the prime minister has set out for himself.
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So would Labor spend more or less than the Coalition?
Jim Chalmers:
We think that there are a number of opportunities to spend more effectively to invest in the future of this country. Among the many deficits in the budget last night, there was a deficit of vision.
The difference between us and them when it comes to the budget.
Obviously, the level of debt matters. The deficits matter. The credibility is shredded when it comes to those issues, given the campaign they’ve run for much of the last decade. But we think when you look at the budget, all of the rorts that Katy [Gallagher] mentioned over a long period of time, there’s clearly a case to spend the money more effectively. Not just what it means for employment, but underemployment and getting wages going in this country again.
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We have mentioned a few times that Labor will be trying to make the debt an issue this year, as we head towards an election. Which is a strange choice, because government debt has never mattered as much as previous (mostly Coalition governments) have told people, and it’s something that Labor itself railed against following the GFC. Here’s how they are doing it – Jim Chalmers:
It’s not just the level of debt that matters but what matters is the account of the spend. And this is a government which is absolutely addicted to rorts and waste for political purposes. This budget was designed wholly and solely with an election in mind, and not to set the economy up, and particularly working people up, for the future.
And that’s the difference between what we’re talking about and what the government’s talking about. We think that the investment could have been made more effectively. We’ve said repeatedly over some time that there’s been wastage in some of the government’s programs. If that money was spent more effectively, we’ll have more to show for the government’s $1 trillion in debt.
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Adam Bandt: “This Budget is built on wage cuts. It’s tax cuts for billionaires and handouts for big corporations, but real wage cuts for workers and poverty for the unemployed.”
This is the basis for Greens, Labor, unions saying real wages are being cut. Inflation > wage growth.#auspol #ausunions pic.twitter.com/IGF9b66EOy
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) May 11, 2021
Grogs has also been writing on this:
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Labor’s Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher will hold a small press conference at 10am to discuss budget reaction.
The Greens will hold a similar presser at 10:40am.
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And along with the fact the international border is expected to remain closed for another year at least (a whole other year – which means stranded Australians have up to a year to wait to come home) there is also the issue of wage growth which doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it should.
For me these are the most important number out of the budget - slower wages growth than ever before, and nothing predicted over 2.5% till 2025.
— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) May 11, 2021
Remember the RBA says wages need to grow above 3% in order to get interest rates to rise https://t.co/6HBeBZMKqM pic.twitter.com/qLZ7es4Dw4
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There was nothing in the budget (again) for dental.
It’s kind of amazing how little fuss there is about an entire section of health being excised from universal healthcare. If you have ever needed to get to a dentist and can’t afford one, so have had to wait for a publicly funded position, you know just how detrimental to your health and life lack of access to good dental care is. I grew up with the school dental van visits as my only access to dental care and have had to rely on dental vouchers more than once.
The president of the Australian Dental Association New South Wales (ADA NSW) Dr Kathleen Matthews wants people to think about the impacts of a lack of access to dental care, particularly given the focus on aged care:
More than six out of 10 over-75s in Australia suffer from gum disease, while more than one in three Australians aged 75 and over have complete tooth loss.
The royal commission into aged care quality and safety heard distressing evidence of older patients going without basic dental care such as toothbrushing and denture cleaning.
Sadly the budget has failed to address the oral health needs faced by older Australians.
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And you can catch up on what happened with Andrew Laming (I mentioned a little bit below) here:
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Mel Davey has all the info on Victoria’s latest Covid case – no new restrictions as yet, but it is a watch and wait situation (the good news is that so far, the man’s close contacts have tested negative).
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Jim Chalmers says budget shows 'real wages are going backwards'
The thing with this budget is that the next financial year is pretty hunky dory – but after that, the economy is predicted to contract. Economic growth is forecast to slow, and wage growth is low. Loooow.
The election has to be held in the next financial year. So whenever we go to the polls, things will be looking a little rosier than what is meant to be coming beyond June 2022.
Here was Jim Chalmers on that this morning (speaking to ABC radio):
The government’s priority is to do whatever’s necessary to cobble together enough political fixes to get them through an election.
It’s remarkable that they spent $100bn. They wracked up a trillion dollars in debt, yet still we have real wages going backwards, still got the aged care funding falling short of what the royal commission recommended.
They still haven’t undone all the damage they have done over the last eight long years of their government. The politics should be secondary here, genuinely. They should be secondary. We want to get a good outcome for people. One thing that worries us, even if some investment in some areas is welcome – mental health for example – we have a station where after all this debt, and all this new spending, which has been committed for political not economic reasons. At the end, what are we left with? Real wages are going backwards in the government’s own budget.
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In case you were wondering, no, there was no funding for the “drums” of war in the budget. Not even for drum pads. No synths of war either. The budget was decidedly silent on that proclamation from the would-be defence secretary, Mike Pezzullo.
Rex Patrick though has some thoughts on a “more proactive”, indeed offensive [cyber] strategy including:
- Publicly naming the Chinese government as a major source of cyber attacks and attributing responsibility for specific intrusions.
- Imposing targeted sanctions against individuals and organisations involved in the Chinese state’s hacking and cyber warfare programs.
- Imposing a direct diplomatic price for cyberattacks that can be attributed to the Chinese state or its proxies by progressively expelling Chinese diplomats and consular officials from Australia.
- Being prepared to use Australia’s significant offensive cyber capabilities to retaliate in kind, including targeted intrusions and actions against Chinese state-owned enterprises operating outside China, Chinese communist propaganda outlets and Communist Party controlled United Front organisations.
Another focus should be on exfiltrating data from Chinese state agencies that highlight the Chinese state’s systematic human rights abuses and the rampant corruption that pervades the top echelons of the Communist Party power structure.
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Scott Morrison defends lack of forecast surpluses in budget
Speaking to the Nine network this morning, Scott Morrison, a former treasurer and owner of the phrase “I said we brought the budget back to surplus next year” (wonder if he has considered turning that into a NFT) was a little defensive about the lack of forecast surpluses in the budget:
There’s not one scheduled and foreseeable within the next decade because of the significant investments we’ve had to take.
This wasn’t a choice, this is something we had to do. Josh Frydenberg and I constantly ... It has nothing to do with philosophy, it has to do with a pandemic. If Australia didn’t take the actions it did – as John Howard told me himself, there’s no politics or ideology in a pandemic, there is just government needing to do what we need to do to save lives and livelihoods and that’s what we’ve done.
I couldn’t care less about the politics*. I care a lot about people’s jobs, about their health and doing what is necessary. The only opponent I have right now is the pandemic. That’s the opponent I’m focussed on. That is the fight Australia is in and as Australia’s prime minister that is the fight I’m focussed on.
*Not going to lie, I did choke on my coffee at this point.
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On 4BC Radio, Scott Morrison has responded to Queensland treasurer, Cameron Dick, who complained Queensland had been dudded.
Morrison said that Queensland is getting 27% of infrastructure spending, above its level of 20% of the population.
Asked if the budget sets aside $5.8bn for the Olympics, Morrison confirms that the commonwealth will share expenses with the Queensland government.
He stops short of saying it’s set aside in the budget because it’s not, it’s a contingent liability.
Morrison defended the size of the deficit, explaining that the $311bn spent or to be spent on health and stimulus measures was needed to get Australians back into work and protect their health.
In a dig at the Queensland government’s lockdowns, he said the federal government had “underwritten” those measures by providing payments to keep Queenslanders in jobs.
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I am just reading through the Hansard to catch up on what went on in parliament while we were in budget lock up, and it looks like Labor moved a motion to have Andrew Laming removed as chair of the Employment, Education and Training committee – and the entire government voted against it.
That keeps Laming in the role (with the extra $22,000 or so that comes with it).
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Anthony Albanese says budget 'is a plan for for Scott Morrison’s job'
Labor has refined its budget response since last night – here was Anthony Albanese speaking to the Nine network this morning:
There is a gap between what the treasurer says and what the budget papers show. The treasurer just spoke about wages. It shows that real wages will actually go down, having stalled for eight long years of this government. He spoke about infrastructure investment. They say $10bn of extra infrastructure investment. The budget papers show that there is a cut of $3.3bn over the forward estimates, over the next four years. The treasurer spoke about a plan for jobs. This is a plan for Scott Morrison’s job, no one else’s. There is no long-term plan here. The treasurer spoke about state governments potentially closing borders. And we know they have opposed all of that, but they are closing our border until mid-next year because they haven’t got their act together on the two essential jobs they had this year to get right – the vaccination rollout and quarantine.
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We covered this off last night – but just in case you missed it, the budget is also setting aside about $500m to expand Australia’s detention centres – including Christmas Island. That’s because Covid has made it really hard for the government to deport people like it usually does, so we have even more people in detention than usual. Christmas Island, currently home to a young family that just wants to go home to central Queensland, is being “hardened” to be able to handle riots.
So yup. That’s something we are doing (along with making migrants wait at least four years before they are able to access government payments in one of the only saving measures to be found in the budget. Oh and in case you were wondering, no, the government is not going after companies which profited from jobkeeper. That would be crazy!)
There is no money in the budget though, for federal quarantine facilities.
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The tourism sector is another industry which is not too happy with the budget – while airlines get a continuing leg up with subsidised flights, not everyone in the sector benefits – and the news in the budget (or the assumption as it’s called) that the international border will remain closed for at least another year has left many tourism operators tearing their hair out.
Here was Josh Frydenberg’s response to that while speaking to the ABC:
Well, there was a very substantial package of announcements that we have made to support the aviation, the tourism sector, as well as the arts and the entertainment sector.
And last night, with international education providers.
All of whom have been affected by the border closure, but also the overall health restrictions that have been put in place. The 800,000 half-price airfares have helped the regional communities like you indicated in Cairns.
Most popular ticket out of Melbourne is to go up north to Queensland for people to take advantage of those half-price airfares. When it comes to that international border closure, again, that’s an assumption – not a policy decision.
It’s an assumption that borders will gradually reopen from next year. But important to that is how the virus is being contained or, indeed, spreading around the rest of the world. We’ve seen the terrible images out of India. We know that there are new variants of the virus and so, those sort of issues will be factors in the mind of the chief medical officer when they’re providing advice to government.
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Scott Morrison is still saying the election will be next year.
Things would be so much easier if there were actually just fixed dates, so we didn’t have to do this dance in the last year of every electoral cycle. Anyways, if they win the next election, it will have been 12 years since the last Labor government – and yet it is amazing how much Labor is still to blame for what’s happening!
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Ok, cool, but there is a looooong way to go – will we all get the double dose?
Josh Frydenberg:
Again, it’s an assumption based on the best medical advice at this time.
What is really key to our economic recovery and the momentum continuing is that we are able to successfully suppress the virus when there are new outbreaks.
We’re not seeking to eliminate the virus. You can’t do that. It’s stubborn, it’s deadly, it is all around. What we can do, though, is manage those outbreaks effectively when they occur.
That’s why the premiers need to have a proportionate response and that is why it is really important that we remain vigilant – that we extend the health measures in last night’s budget – around telehealth, around respiratory clinic, around GP services and, of course, the procurement of vaccines. More than $3bn in last night’s budget.
So it is critically important that we suppress the virus because this is first and foremost a health crisis that is having a severe economic impact.
That is a textbook non-answer. Start by repeating the answer from the question before and then move on to something related to the subject, but completely unrelated to the question, and finish with a motherhood statement. Classic of the genre.
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So can Josh Frydenberg guarantee that everyone who wants a vaccine will have their double dose completed by the end of the year?
He tells the ABC:
Obviously, our focus is to roll out the vaccine as fast as possible, and that assumption in the budget last night was based on the best medical advice from the chief medical officer.
And we’ve seen more than 400,000 people receive a dose over the course of the last week. That’s up from the week before. Around 10% of the population has already been vaccinated. Around 30% of the population of those aged over 70.
So we’re getting more supply online. We’ve got around 5,000 contact points set around the country, including GPs and other state and territory based clinics. That is all designed to ensure that we get the vaccine out as fast as possible to as many people as possible.
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As I mentioned, the post-budget interviews are happening from the prime minister’s courtyard this morning – usually the treasurer and the PM head out into the lawns and go from tent to tent to speak with the hosts of the breakfast TV or radio shows who have flown to Canberra for the budget – but Extinction Rebellion, protesting the lack of action of climate change, are outside the parliament, which has kept Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg inside the parliament.
(Which means we all miss out on one of the most awkward photo ops of the year as they walk out and then back in and do some sort of weird overly enthusiastic elbow bump or something. Tragic.)
The line today is a continuation of what we heard last night – the budget supports the recovery, debt doesn’t matter because it’s been a huge economic shock which dwarfed the impact of the GFC and that makes it totally different (even though Labor’s spending response during the GFC is what kept Australia out of recession) and it addresses what the government said it was going to address.
Labor though, still seems to be smarting over the Coalition’s attacks following the GFC and has decided to follow a similar line – it’s questioning the responsibility of the “trillion dollar debt” and will be pushing that line hard.
Just remember money is very, very cheap for government’s to borrow at the moment. The interest in the repayments is loooow. And a government budget is not (and never has been) like a household budget. Still, Labor is banking on people still being uncomfortable with the debt, and will be working it for all it can.
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Good morning
Hello and welcome to post budget reaction day, where all the nitty gritty details of the budget begin to emerge, as the government works triple time at its sell.
You’ll hear a lot more about the university sector and spending for the environment today – both of which missed out on any major increases, at a time when it’s pretty crucial.
Extinction Rebellion have already staged a protest outside the parliament which has kept the prime minister and treasurer inside the building – usually they would be outside doing the rounds of breakfast TV and radio interviews on the lawn. Not today, though.
The budget is also based on the assumption Covid is under control in Australia and everyone who wants a vaccine will have one by the end of the year. So a lot has to go right.
Plus, it’s not exactly what you would call a “women’s budget” despite the hype – the tax write offs and concessions are worth about 10 times what the government is doing to subsidise second children in child care – and that won’t start until 2022.
So there is a bit to go through (as always).
Thank you so much for joining us – Mike Bowers is already out and about, and Katharine Murphy, Daniel Hurst, Sarah Martin and Paul Karp will be joining you soon for their take on the budget. Plus, we have question time. Huzzah. You have Amy Remeikis with you for most of the day. I know how much you miss the comment section – truly, we do too, and we are doing our best to keep it open for as long as we can. For those who have missed it, it comes down to legal issues – we are legally responsible for everything which is published on the site and our social media, including comments (according to recent court decisions) so when we talk about ongoing court cases, we have to be extra careful – and that usually means switching the comments off. We’re doing it to keep everyone safe, but we understand it is frustrating. We don’t take the decision lightly, I promise.
Anyways, I have already hit the coffee pretty hard – so it should be an interesting day. Ready?
Let’s get into it.
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