There is a lot more to get through with the budget - but you should sleep! - so we will wrap up the blog now and return tomorrow morning when we have all had a chance to let our subconscious mull it over.
There’s a lot more to say - the environment spending, Indigenous spending and university spending leaves a bit to be desired.
Plus, we are still looking at a lot of short term spending measures and what this government is trying to do - beyond winning the next election.
Thank you so, so much for joining us today - I’ll be back early tomorrow for the first post budget parliament sitting day - including question time, so hang on to all that is dear to you for that. And please - think of me. This is a looong week and I am so glad I get to do it with you guys - you make it all a lot easier.
Check out the rest of the budget coverage if you haven’t already - the team has cut through the guff for the stuff you actually need to know -and make sure you give yourself some sort of special treat before you go to bed tonight. You’ve earned it.
We’ll be back tomorrow - until then, please - take care of you.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Matt Rose has also responded:
Environment and climate spending represents less than 1% (0.8%) of the federal budget.
To put it another way, out of every $100 in this budget, 80 cents went to climate, water and the environment.
The Morrison government continues to shovel public money at fossil fuel projects while reducing funds for tackling climate change and the degradation of nature.
The government is throwing loose change at Australia’s climate and extinction crisis.”
Melissa Donnelly, of the Community and Public Sector Union, has criticised staffing cuts to Services Australia and Centrelink, which amount to about 800 jobs.
“These services are absolutely critical to the Australian community and we’ve all seen how critical they’ve been over the past few months, with so many Australians losing their jobs,” she said. She welcomes the budget’s inclusion of about 5,300 new public sector jobs, though warns they fail to reverse the 13,000 jobs cut since the Coalition came to power.”
And another fun tidbit in the budget - the national integrity commission staffing roster (the one that doesn’t exist yet, and probably never will) has gone from 75 to...zero
I mean, there is no real legislation for it, and it’s always been in the never-never, but still. Now it’s official.
Speaking of universities, here is the official first response from Universities Australia’s Catriona Jackson:
Governments across all jurisdictions need to come together with universities to develop a robust plan for the safe return of international students. The plan would mean the safe quarantine of students from low-risk countries.
The sector took a $1.8 billion revenue hit last year. Universities Australia estimates another $2 billion will be lost this year – against 2019 actual operating revenue.
With borders shut until mid-2022 the picture for universities will get worse – with significant flow-on effects for the nation’s research capacity and jobs, inside and outside universities.
Australia’s university sector cannot sustain these losses without serious damage to national productivity and the country’s knowledge base.”
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The aged care package has prompted a mixed response, with some groups worried delays and the lack of strings attached.
There was praised tonight from the Australian Aged Care Collaboration, which brings together six aged care peak bodies including Aged & Community Services Australia (ACSA) and Anglicare Australia.
Patricia Sparrow, speaking on behalf of the group, said: “Tonight, after 20 years and 20 reviews the Australian government had delivered a long overdue comprehensive reform package for aged care.”
Sparrow said the announcements would bring “real hope” to many people, but noted it would take time to go through the detail.
But Carolyn Smith, who represents aged care workers as a senior official of the United Workers Union, said the royal commission had uncovered troubling stories of neglect, and she praised witnesses who had given evidence through that process.
“While the budget might look like a lot of money, we would say this budget still does not have enough money and it’s too little too late.”
Smith said she was concerned that $3.2bn would go to aged care providers “with absolutely no strings attached” and therefore no guarantee it would go to care rather than profits.
The timeframe of October 2023 for an increase in required amount of frontline care minutes was also a concern. “The crisis in aged care is real, it’s here now - it’s here every day.”
The UWU also pointed to the need to increase wages to retain staff in the sector. Smith was joined at the doorstop by aged care workers who spoke of the issues they had faced in the sector, including low pay and conditions.
Also, spare a thought for the university sector - it has been through an absolute horror of a year, was denied jobkeeper, has lost out from the border closures with no international students allowed in, and still doesn’t have a recovery plan.
What it does have, is ‘patent boxes’.
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Oh - and fun fact, we (Australian taxpayers) will be funding some sort of mRna vaccine production facility - but you aren’t allowed to know how much money we are putting into it. That’s been marked ‘not for publication’
Presumably because of some sort of commercial in confidence agreement and the on-going negotiations - but still.
John Brogden, the chair of Lifeline Australia, has praised the mental health funding. He told reporters at Parliament House:
“This is an extraordinary budget for mental health.”
Brogden pointed to the funding for a new 24/7 Indigenous mental health helpline, which he hoped would “stem the tide” of higher suicide rates among Indigenous Australians.
He also said there was funding to help support bushfire victims’ mental health, saying Lifeline was still receiving between 200 and 400 calls a day from people affected by the Black Summer bushfires.
Brogden said the budget appeared to be focused on “the middle” who fall through the cracks of the current mental health system, as recently highlighted by a Guardian Australia series.
And as always, here are the six graphs you need to understand the budget from our graph overlord, Grogs
It’s the Lammo the government doesn’t want to get rid of just yet - and here is Sarah Martin to explain it to you - much like Andrew Laming’s number in the House at the moment, the government is hoping it will get them over the line come the next poll.
Independent MP Zali Steggall says the budget is ‘short term’ relief.
And she is not happy with the environmental spending:
The Treasurer talks about being the custodians of the continent but there is barely funding to protect the environment and certainly not enough to see Australia reach net zero by 2050.
Australia is facing several crises. Biodiversity loss is accelerating, the global heating is worsening, oceans are acidifying and still overflowing with plastics. Communities are being flattened with successive, unprecedented disasters that are predicted to become more frequent and more severe. Yet the scale of these challenges has not been met with any urgency in this budget,” she said.
There is some small expenditure for responding to inevitable climate fueled disasters but the several hundred million dollars over the next decade is not enough to protect or prepare Australia for the climate impacts, which are projected to cost the economy an estimated $39 billion per year by 2050.
Any positive work to reduce emissions is also being undone by the Government’s continued ‘Gas-Fired Recovery,’ detour. This budget sees several hundred million in handouts for the Gas Industry. This is not in line with the science which is calling for a phase out of fossil fuels.
Details in the budget were also fuzzy around exactly where the $1.6 billion over 10 years put aside for the emissions reduction will go. Additionally, if you compare this to infrastructure spend of over $110 billion from the last several budgets it is a drop in the bucket.”
Georgie Dent, who has done A LOT of work on what is needed to fix child care has also responded:
“This budget falls short of delivering the long-term, systemic change that is needed to urgently improve the safety and economic security of all women.
The $1.7 billion funding for childcare is more headline than substance. While recognition that affordability of early education & care is a problem for families is welcome, this funding is spread out over three years and isn’t enough to deliver the essential reform needed to our early learning and care system.
Not one Australian family will receive the relief from childcare costs announced today until next year and disappointingly 750,000 families will miss out all together.
The Federal government will continue to fail women and children unless it delivers high quality early childhood education and care universally accessible to every Australian child.
Appropriate and secure funding for the workforce that delivers early education and care is vital. We urgently need the development and implementation of a National Early Childhood Education and Care Workforce Strategy.
Investing in early childhood education and care boosts educational achievement, helps increase workforce participation especially by women and gives children the best start in life.
In addition, the failure to expand paid parental leave is a missed opportunity. Australian parents have access to the second least adequate paid parental leave scheme in the OECD and women, children and families bear the cost.”
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And for the ‘right on schedule’ budget response - the nothing if not predictable IPA, which is not happy with the spending.
From its release:
Tonight’s budget confirms that gross federal government debt will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in Australia’s history. Gross federal government debt is now equal to 45% of GDP, which is more than double what it was during the Whitlam-era.
“This is a budget that Labor would have been proud to have delivered. It commits Australia to permanently higher spending, higher taxes, and higher debt, without offering any economic reform,” said Daniel Wild, Director of Research at free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.
Total gross government debt is now the equivalent to $37,500 per person – a staggering 1,300 per cent increase since the eve of the Global Financial Crisis.
“It will not just be our children paying back this debt, but our grandchildren and future generations.”
“The Coalition appears to have given up making the argument for economic reform and smaller government.”
“The proposed income tax cuts are illusory because the government is committing to higher taxes as a result of higher debt. The only way to have sustainable and permanently lower taxes is through sustainable and permanently less spending.”
I mean, bless.
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So there has been a lot to go through tonight - so what is the main takeaway?
Well, it’s a buffet budget - a little of everything. But it is also a placeholder. A lot of the measures the government is touting are only in the short term. Which means they can be pulled in budgets in the not too distant futures.
It’s the budget you give when you think you might be losing the next election and you are not quite sure who to target, so you target everyone with something, that is also just putting things back which were missing.
Labor will be using the ‘secret cuts’ line. A lot. A long with how much did you really get for all that debt. Plus - there was a line in that Chalmers/Gallagher press release about 21 extended or new “slush” funds for a total of $4bn. Expect that to pop up as well.
Sam Mostyn, president of Chief Executive Women, said the budget has taken a “welcome focus” on women. She praises the childcare reforms, but says she is disappointed they do not come into force until next year.
Mostyn says she’s also disappointed that paid parental leave has not been dealt with in this budget, but welcomes the spending on preschool and the focus on women’s safety.
“We are also pleased to see that the government has acknowledged that women’s safety is a huge priority for this country, and that there is a pernicious issue facing women and children, and young women in particular, across the country and to see more money to be directed to women’s safety is welcome.”
Remember how we heard based on the OECD figures that we went from spending 33c per $100 in national income on foreign aid to 19c per $100?
Well, it hasn’t gotten much better.
From the budget release:
Foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne:
Australia will provide $4.0 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2021-22 with an ongoing focus on health security, stability and economic recovery in the Indo-Pacific, including $1.44 billion for the Pacific and $1.01 billion for Southeast Asia.
The Morrison Government’s funding for foreign affairs, trade and tourism is aimed squarely at building a more secure and resilient Australia while furthering our interests abroad. A region that is healthy, prosperous and stable is ultimately good for the Australian people, their security and their living standards.
In recognition of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our region, the Government has announced temporary and targeted measures to supplement the ODA budget.
This includes an estimated $319 million in additional ODA in 2021-22, including $163 million to support our neighbours to access safe, effective and affordable vaccines; $100 million to address the economic and social impacts of the pandemic in the Pacific and Timor-Leste; and $56 million to address these impacts in Southeast Asia.
Australia will also provide $37.1 million over two years from 2020-21 for a COVID-19 support package for India, with an initial package of essential medical supplies including ventilators and oxygen concentrators
Updated
Helen Dalley-Fisher, manager of the Equality Rights Alliance, says the budget has taken a few small steps forwards for women.
She welcomes the childcare measures announced in the budget and the focus on aged care.
The reintroduction of a women’s economic statement was also positive, she says, but the overall budget structure does not help women.
Dalley-Fisher calls for a return of gender-responsive budgeting. “50% of OECD countries either have or are in the process of adopting gender-responsive budgeting,” she said.
“We need a budget that actually consciously asks the question across every line item: how will this affect women?”
Adam Bandt, the leader of the Greens, has slammed the federal budget, saying it gives too much to billionaires and major corporations.
“It’s champagne for the billionaires and real pain for everyone else,” he says.
The budget included $30bn in spending for the coal and gas sector, including $1.1bn in new money. He says the spending will fast-track the climate collapse.
Bandt say the Greens will move to amend the budget bills to retrieve money from corporations who received Jobseeker, despite remaining profitable during the pandemic.
That would bring $1bn in revenue back into the budget.
Greens senator Nick McKim says the budget “bakes in climate catastrophe” by sustaining the coal, oil and gas sectors. McKim also criticises the ongoing maintenance of negative gearing, which gives $8.5bn to property investors at the expense of those trying to get into the housing market.
The Change the Record coalition has criticised the Morrison government for delivering a “shameful” budget that fails to live up to promises around closing the gap and does not address deaths in custody.In a joint statement, the coalition of First Nations justice organisations says the budget offers inadequate funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal and family violence prevention services, failed to reduce barriers to Aboriginal children and families accessing support services and failed to reduce barriers for Aboriginal NDIS participants trying to access adequate disability support.
Co-chair Cheryl Axleby said the budget was “shameful”.“It is shameful that after seven deaths of our people in less than two months there has been no plan from the Commonwealth Government to address the crisis of Black deaths in custody. There is no funding in the budget to address the mass-incarceration of First Nations peoples by establishing a National Justice Reinvestment Body and no funding to support states and territories to raise the age to keep primary school aged children out of police and prison cells. This is not a budget for the future, this is a budget that entrenches the inequalities and injustice of the past.”
Antoinette Baybrook, the. head of the National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services, Antoinette Baybrook, said there is a national crisis of violence against First Nations women but the budget has “failed to meet this crisis with the funding we need.”
“We have been clear, to provide the crucial front-line services our women need, our 14 family violence legal prevention services require an additional investment of at least $28 million per year. The 2021 Budget delivers less than a quarter of that vitally needed funding, and contains no dedicated funding for our National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum, denying First Nations women a voice shaping the policy decisions that affect our lives.”
Updated
That’s it for Jim Chalmers - he heads off to Sky as well
Leigh Sales: Do you think Australia has enough workers, and workers with the right skills, to achieve what you said would be the ideal 4.5% or 4.5% unemployment?
Jim Chalmers:
Two issues there - there are structural issues preventing people from taking up those opportunities, as well as unemployment and underemployment. There’ve been big apprenticeship cuts over the last eight years, skills mismatches, adaptation of technology, concentrated and cascaded disadvantage. A lot of things are preventing people from grabbing opportunities in the economy. Structural issues have gotten worse over the last eight years of this government, and need to be addressed.
Leigh Sales: What’s going to be the path out of debt for Australia?
Jim Chalmers:
There’s a combination of things, Leigh. Principally - first and foremost - we need to get the economy growing so that we can get that debt as a proportion of the economy down. That’s important. At some future point, a government of either political persuasion will need to think about budget repair. Absent from the budget today is any sense of how this record trillion dollars in debt - many multiples of what the government inherited from Labor - there’s no sense of a plan about how the government will get that back under control.
Sales: What do you mean by budget repair? Increased taxes? Cutting spending?
Chalmers:
I think it’s broadly acknowledged there are three ways to repair the budget. Growth, spending, and revenue. Some combination of that - governments of either persuasion will have to contemplate that at some point. The government’s gone silent on it not because they don’t want to cut back the budget, but they don’t want to tell us how until after the election.
Sales Is it fair to say you don’t believe that debt will be entirely paid back by purely relying on economic growth?
Chalmers:
I think that’s the first task. It remains to be seen what kind of budget we would inherit and the best way to get that debt to more manageable levels. We said there’s a case to support the economy, jobs need to be the priority over debt, but we will be left with an extraordinary amount of debt, many multiples of what the coalition inherited.
At some future point, governments will need to think about how that is paid back. First priority is there is to get the any growing. Governments of either persuasion will have to consider other measures too. I think the government has a plan in their back pocket to cut the budget severely but won’t talk about it until the election.
Leigh Sales: Unemployment’s forecast to fall to 4.75%. What target does Labor think the economy should aspire to?
Jim Chalmers:
First of all, that target’s largely disappeared from the budget papers. It was a speech that Josh Frydenberg gave a couple of weeks ago about getting to full employment, almost entirely absent from the budget tonight. We’ve said for some time part of the task here is to get closer to full employment, whether that’s 4% or 4.5%. There’s a bigger story there as well - underemployment. That’s been a problem in this economy for eight long years of this coals government.
If you don’t address underemployment, you won’t get people back into work sufficiently to those wages growing again. Wages growth has been missing from the economy for eight long years, and the budget today actually has real wages going backwards despite $100 billion in new spending and $1 trillion in debt. I think that’s an admission of failure.
Sales: Given where the economic indicators are at - better than expected - does Labor think the current magnitude of government spending is appropriate?
Chalmers:
There’s two aspects to that. Of course the economy’s recovering. That’s a good thing. It’s a credit to the Australian people who did the right thing by each other in limiting the spread of the virus. We’ve been entirely consistent throughout and said, when the economy is weak, there’s a role for government to step in, even if that means some additional debt. We’ve been responsible, constructive and consistent about that throughout. You need to have actually something to show for that debt. Our concern is that this government’s racked up $1 trillion in debt and they don’t have enough to show for it*.
(*The economy did recover a lot quicker than expected, so there is something to show for it - but this line is important, because this will be Labor’s line in next few days - and leading up to the election campaign - did the government get enough bang for its buck in terms of the spending, given the debt)
Sales: Come on, something to show for it? The economy’s performing belter than any country in the world and we’re basically COVID-free.
Chalmers:
The credit if that overwhelmingly belongs to the Australian people. I know Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison will try and claim credit for it, but Australians overwhelmingly limited the spread of the virus. That’s a good thing but 2 million Australians are unemployed or without enough hours to support their loved ones. The Treasurer might want to talk about the economic engine roaring back to life, but Australians know that that engine has a number of gears and almost 2 million Australians are still stuck in reverse.
Jim Chalmers responds to the budget
Jim Chalmers has now stepped up for the traditional after treasurer interview interview with the ABC to give Labor’s line on the budget:
Leigh Sales:
This is a budget that one could imagine Labor delivering - government spending going to aged care, childcare, the NDIS, mental health. It doesn’t leave you anywhere to go with your economic policy in an election year.
Chalmers:
Well, their heart’s not in it, Leigh, and I think the Australian people have learned not to take too seriously watt the government announces on budget night. They know there’s barely a relationship between what they announce and what’s actually delivered.
Sales: Whether their heart’s in it or not, they’ve announced that spending.
Chalmers:
They’ve done that for political reasons, Leigh, to cobble together political fixes to try and get them through to an election before reverting to type. There’s still important differences between Liberal and Labor when it comes to the budget. We’ve still got a higher priority on cleaner and cheaper energy, social housing, proper investment in goods, secure, well-paid jobs, and the rest of it for all the reasons Casey [Briggs] [previously] ran through. There are still important differences between the parties.
Updated
Michele O’Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, has blasted the budget for doing “nothing” about unreliable, insecure jobs and low wages growth.
O’Neil told reporters the government seemed to have no interest in addressing these crisis, even though they needed to be tackled in order to secure a fair and inclusive economic recovery.
O’Neil said the treasurer failed to mention the problem of underemployment, and the government continued to ignore Tafe.
She questioned the government’s priorities, saying it was spending $17.9bn on a business tax measure known as “temporary full expensing extension” but only about $1bn on women’s safety. And she said the aged care response did not go far enough.
Tourism and other business groups have sounded the alarm about the impact of extended closure of the international border.
Margy Osmond of the Tourism and Transport Forum told reporters at Parliament House that Australia could become the “lost kingdom”:
“This is a budget that leaves the tourism industry high and dry with nowhere to go.”
Osmond said the prospect of the international border staying closed until at least mid-next year would leave many tourism businesses with “no option but to send up the white flag and surrender”.
She called on the government to give the tourism a clear timeframe on the border reopening.
Ken Morrison of the Property Council cited the strong economic rebound but also raised concerns about the constraint of low population growth and closed borders. He said Australia risked being caught in a false binary between keeping the border open and closed. He said if the border was to stay closed until the middle of next year, quarantine capacity needed to be ramped up.
Jenny Lambert of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry was mostly positive about the budget, but also raised the border uncertainty issue.
Innes Willox, Australian Industry Group chief executive, is broadly supportive of the budget, but wants the border open “sooner rather than later”.
He says the budget “flicks the switch” from emergency pandemic measures to longer term recovery. The economy is recovering quicker than thought, he says, making the investment in skills and training, housing construction, and business incentives welcome.But he has concerns about the mid-2022 border opening forecast. He says all of the positivity in the budget is dependent on the border re-opening and the resumption of migration.
“What we are hearing loud and clear from business is that they need the border to be open sooner, rather than later.
“It’s impacting them in a range of ways. They’re finding it difficult to get staff into the country. They’re having difficulty to get people in to repair and replace equipment. They’re just finding it difficult to move around.”
Updated
And that is where the interview ends. The treasurer is on Sky News now, where he is explaining why spending $17bn over five years on aged care is better than spending the $10bn a year the aged care royal commission said was necessary for proper aged care.
Updated
And then we get to the debt, where Leigh Sales basically asks Josh Frydenberg to spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-i-c-a-l
Sales: The budget notes that you’ll start to pay back Australia’s debt when the economic recovery is secured. It makes no mention of how that will be measured, the timing of it, or any target of it whatsoever. How is this possible - debt as far as the eye can see - when, for a decade, the coals did not stop railing about the evils of leaving future generations to pay off debt?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, let me remind you when we went into this crisis, we had delivered the first balanced budget* in 11 years.
(*the government *almost* got the budget back in balance (based on a lot of heroic forecasts and austerity measures, but it didn’t quite get there and it definitely didn’t bring about a surplus, despite Scott Morrison’s memorable wrangling of grammar ‘I said we brought the budget back into surplus next year)
Sales: But - no, I don’t want to get back into the back in Black thing, and I’m surprised you raised it, actually, but let me make the point - as you well know, Treasurer, the coalition’s rhetoric on debt was that it was pure evil. And now you’re arguing, when it’s needed, that you embrace it. It’s a total shift in rhetoric.
Frydenberg:
You’re raising a historical case. Let me raise one with you. When we went into the pandemic, we had successfully balanced the budget for the first time in 11 years by getting welfare dependency down to its lowest level in 30 years. Now, COVID hit - even after the drought, and even after the bushfires, we were still on track for the surplus. But then COVID hit. And as I said earlier, this has been the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression*.
(The GFC would have been the most significant economic shock since the Great Depression for Australia, except Labor spent enough money to keep the economy afloat. And then the Coalition never stopped slamming Labor for spending the necessary money to keep Australia out of recession. Good times)
Sales: So sometimes debt is warranted?
Frydenberg:
There are no ideological crises or constraints. We spent as required. As we grow the economy, as we’ve seen in tonight’s budget, we get a dividend from more people being in work - so higher income tax receipts and lower welfare payments. That is going to help ensure that our debt-to-GDP - a key measure of our fiscal sustainability - res over time.
Leigh Sales: On that, say, $10 a day - how do you know, though, that, say, the JobKeeper plan that went into dividends and bottom line in some cases - how do you know that the $10 will actually filter through to residents, that it won’t be put in the pockets of aged care providers?
Josh Frydenberg:
Again, we’re putting in place a new regulator who will work closely with the sector. We’re putting hundreds of extra audits every year. There’s going to be new powers for the regulators, a more coordinated system to ensure that the money being spent is getting to the residents.
Sales: One of the things you want to prioritise is innovation. You want a thriving gaming industry, medical research, biotech and so on. Yet there’s basically nothing in this budget for universities, which are reeling from the loss of international students. How can the government be serious about cutting-edge innovation in research without a serious injection of money into universities?
Frydenberg:
Firstly, there is $19 billion a year going to our universities. We actually guaranteed that base funding from domestic students to universities through the pandemic. Tonight, I said in my speech that, as a result of our measures, we’ve announced through the pandemic an extra 30,000 university places. Last year’s budget - which was just over six months ago, Leigh - I announced an extra $1 billion for research. So we’re deeply committed to that sector.
But what we’d also like to see is - and it’s happening right now across the country - is close collaboration and coordination between our universities and our industries. Because take an area like medical technology and biotech - CSL, a great Australian came - has been driven by research done at the University of Melbourne and through our universities more broadly.
Tonight, we’ve announced a new innovation called a Patent Box* where patents that have been registered in Australia and derive income for a particular company can be taxed at a lower concessional rate at around 17%. And because we’ve developed wi-fi here in Australia, the bionic ear, the cervical cancer vaccine, we want to see more commercialisation here in Australia of those technologies, and putting in place a patent box that is in place in other countries like Singapore and France and the Netherlands and the UK is, I think, a step towards that goal.
*This is the worst term and it keeps being raised like we are in an episode in Utopia. Basically, it means that universities will get to keep a bit of profit from the stuff they invent.
(Overall though, universities are ABSOLUTELY suffering, and it is not going to get better)
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Leigh Sales: If I can ask in detail about aged care - there’s $17.7 billion extra in here over the next five years. If we can go back to first principles - isn’t the core problem here that it’s a sector that’s being run for profit, so there is an in-built incentive to deliver the bare minimum care allowable in order to maximise profit?
Josh Frydenberg:
Firstly, there’s a large not-for-profit aspect to the aged care sector as well. But I would challenge that assumption. I would say to you that the people even working in the for-profit aspect or sector with respect to aged care are deeply committed to their residents, are deeply committed to the highest quality care that is provided.
Sales: Look at what we’ve seen, Treasurer. My point, I guess - if you can give somebody, say, a $6 meal of chicken nuggets and frozen carrots, what incentive is there to give them a $12 meal of roast chicken and fresh vegetables?
Frydenberg:
Well, in terms of what we’re trying to do with the residential sector, what we’re seeking to make more sustainable for the longer-term - and we’re increasing the base funding by an extra $10 per resident per day - that’s going to be welcome by the sector. We’re increasing the amount of time that’s required from carers and from nurses to spend with residents.
We’re releasing 80,000 new Home Care Packages - they’re Level 3 and Level 4 packages, predominantly, and that’s going to be of great help to people who need it. And we’ve got 33,000 new training places for those in the care sector, as well as a whole host of new measures to strengthen our regulatory agencies to put in place a new Act and to boost the infrastructure spending on aged care facilities. So this is a very comprehensive program of initiatives, a response to the royal commission, and I think will make a real difference on the ground.
Updated
Leigh Sales: The budget sets this out as a 2-stage recovery. The first part’s led by government spending, then there’s a transition to private sector-led investment. When vaccination’s lagging behind world’s best practice, when there’s no detailed roadmap for when or how borders will open, when state premiers close down their states for one or two cases of COVID, how can the private sector plan to invest with any kind of certainty?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, they are right now. Because what we’ve seen is investment in machinery and equipment at near or highest levels in seven years off the back of the government incentives we’ve put in place in the last budget and extended in this budget. Business conditions have reached a record high. Consumer confidence at its highest level in 11 years. And more Australians are in work than ever before. I know it’s easy to be critical about various things, but I do want to point out that Australia, right now, is ahead of the global pack when it comes to our economic and our health recovery. No-one’s taking that for granted. No-one thinks that the job is done. It’s far from over in that respect. That’s why this budget seeks to lock in the recovery with a whole series of new investments.
Leigh Sales: Even with that, with the borders closed, you’ve got a problem. Let’s take mental health as an example. The government’s putting $2.3 billion into mental health services. If you talk to anybody at the moment trying to see a psychologist or psychiatrist or people who work in that field, they will tell you that you just cannot get an appointment. There’s no way around that because you can’t magic up psychologists and psychiatrists out of the pool.
Josh Frydenberg:
You’ll be pleased that in this budget, there’s more money for training people to work in the mental health space...
Sales: Those degrees take like six years.
Frydenberg (like he was never interrupted)
..including for psychiatrists and the like. This is a record spend on mental health. Everything from expanding the successful Headspace centres to putting in plates Head to Health, new adult centres for those aged 25 and above, based on the Headspace model. We also have additional support that we’re rolling out when it comes to mental health to treat people who need it most.
Leigh Sales: You want unemployment below 5%. Without open borders, how are you going to get enough workers to fill the vacancies in the sectors where they’re needed?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, there are workforce shortages. You’ve identified a real issue in various aspects of the economy. The agriculture sector being one. We are working through this budget on increased programs in relation to skills and training. We have announced tonight an extra $500 million for the JobTrainer program to take it to $2 billion to support 450,000 places.
The apprenticeship program has been very successful, Leigh. We’ve tonight invested $2.7 billion in 170,000 new apprentices. We’re also boosting subsidies and grants available to employers who take on long-term unemployed, as well as a focus on foundational skills like maths, English, and computer literacy for those out of work.
There is then a back and forth about why the government isn’t trying to recoup funds from companies which profited from JobKeeper.
Josh Frydenberg says JobKeeper worked and the government isn’t going to retrospectively punish people. (*Cough robodebt cough*)
The exchange, which just continues along the lines - why aren’t you trying to get this money back vs it worked and we acted swiftly and it is what it is - ends with Frydenberg somehow making it Labor’s fault:
Well, again, it worked very effectively through the tax system. You’ll remember the debate - Labor asked us to extend JobKeeper beyond a year*. We said no. It was costing, at that time, more than $2 billion a month. And we have seen, in the month of April, more than 100,000 people come off income support, even as JobKeeper ended. Labor said they would spend more. They said the sky would fall in if JobKeeper ended. It hasn’t. And that step that we took - that decision we took - has proven to be the right one.
*For industries and areas which needed it.
Leigh Sales:
Let’s talk about the size of government spending. Last year, it was 32% of GDP. For the next four years, it will never go lower than 26% of GDP.
The coalition was absolutely screaming blue murder when Labor was at 25.9% during the global financial crisis, claiming that was waste and profligacy. [Why is it different now?]
Josh Frydenberg:
Look at the context in which we’re operating - a once-in-a-century pandemic and the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression. What has happened since COVID-19 has dwarfed what happened during the GFC. We saw 1.3 million Australians either lose their jobs or see their working hours reduced to zero. That is what required us to spend an unprecedented amount of money on direct economic support programs like JobKeeper, which helped keep 3.8 million Australians in a job.
What you see in this budget - just to point out, what you see in this budget is that the deficit’s come down by two-thirds over forward estimates, and net debt as a proportion of GDP - a key indicator of fiscal sustainability - comes down every year compared to what was forecast at the last budget just over six months ago.
Leigh Sales:
The economic recovery has come much faster than you anticipated in the budget just six months ago. You’ve had two quarters of the fastest economic growth on record. Employment is far rosier than expected. Given that, why the need to keep government spending so high?
Josh Frydenberg:
Well, we’re very much in the middle of a pandemic. If you look around the world, there is a lot of uncertainty - more than 800,000 global cases a day. Europe has just gone into a double-dip recession and, here in Australia, we just saw Western Australia have a state-wide lockdown. So our recovery needs to be secured. That’s why this job focused primarily on supporting more jobs through investments in skills, in infrastructure, the digital economy, and tax relief for families and also to support businesses make more investments. They’re the initiatives that we put in place designed to boost aggregate demand, overall economic activity, and create more jobs, because we cannot take the gains that we’ve made for granted.
Josh Frydenberg 7.30 interview
The Treasurer is in the studio for his traditional post-budget announcement interview with the ABC.
Leigh Sales:
The budget’s based on a series of assumptions, and they are that the whole Australian population will be vaccinated by the end of the year, that there’ll be no sustained state border closures this year, and no major COVID outbreaks, and that international borders will start to operate reasonably normally by the middle of next year. Those are very uncertain and heroic assumptions, aren’t they?
Frydenberg:
We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and making assumptions during normal times is difficult - to make them during the middle of a pandemic is even more so. Those assumptions are based on the best available evidence to us. We know that more than 10% of the Australian population has now received their first dose. We’ve seen 30% of those aged over 70 or above receive a dose.
We saw more than 400,000 doses rolled out over the course of the last week. More supply is coming online. So that is the assumption about vaccines. With respect to international borders, it’s quite a conservative, cautious assumption that international borders will gradually reopen from the middle of next year.
$58.6m budget allocation for “gas-fired recovery” and $173.6 million for gas infrastructure roads
“Gas is an expensive, polluting fossil fuel that’s driving climate change. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on climate adaptation measures while funding one of the worst drivers of climate change is not only dangerous, it makes no sense economically.
“Investing in new gas is unlikely to pay economic dividends and so it is a waste of budget spending. Investing further in gas risks locking in huge investment losses, stranded assets and will continue to drive the climate crisis.
“The budget should not be using public money to pay for climate-wrecking fossil fuel infrastructure - it should be used for funding clean and safe renewable energy instead.
“The Federal Government is listening to their gas lobby mates, and committing public funds to a dangerous, polluting industry that is putting Australians at risk.”
Carbon Capture and Storage
“So-called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a fossil fuel industry PR concept that has never been proven to work anywhere at scale. The Coalition Government’s allocation of $263.7 million to fantasy CCS projects is a profound waste of public money.
“We already have the solutions to tackling the climate crisis in the form of clean and safe renewable energy, backed up by battery storage. The Coalition Government should not be wasting public money on technology like CCS that doesn’t work when it could be investing in the solutions like wind and solar that are already here.”
Production payment for oil refineries
“The oil industry is a key driver of climate change. Rather than propping up one of the biggest drivers of climate change, the Federal Government should be investing in electric vehicle infrastructure and the electrification of our transport systems, which currently rely on oil and contribute around 19% of Australia’s domestic emissions.”
Here is how Greenpeace has broken down the environmental spending:
$1.2 billion for low emissions technology innovation
“At no point does this measure mention renewable energy, which is already powering swathes of the Australian economy. Instead, the Budget provides $263.7 million dollars for the false solution of CCS. The Coalition Government seems hell-bent on funding everything but proven, existing zero emissions technology like wind and solar”
Oceans Leadership Package
“The biggest threat to our oceans is climate change. Without meaningful climate action to drastically reduce emissions and reach net-zero by 2035, this money is nothing but a bandaid for a bullet hole. Our oceans need strong and meaningful climate action, not token band-aid initiatives.”
National Recovery and Resilience Agency & Australian Climate Service Initiative
“The Federal Government is not being honest about the National Recovery and Resilience Agency. This is an agency set up to deal with the extreme weather events that climate change and the Coalition Government’s inaction on it is turbocharging every day.
“The Coalition Government has consistently refused to take action to address the mining and burning of coal, oil and gas as the cause of climate change, and now Australians are paying for it in the budget.
“Adaptation measures like the National Recovery and Resilience Agency and Australian Climate Service Initiative are necessary because Australians are feeling the impacts of climate change right now, which is driven by the mining and burning of coal, oil and gas. Continuing to use public money to fund gas, a polluting fossil fuel, will only make those climate impacts worse.
“No amount of adaptation and resilience measures will take the place of real action on climate change, which is phasing out fossil fuels, scaling up renewable energy, and reaching net-zero emissions by 2035.”
The AAA - the Automobile Association - is pretty happy with the budget’s infrastructure spending:
The AAA’s Managing Director, Michael Bradley, said the Federal Government had delivered on its commitment to fast-track road funding by removing roadblocks and identifying shovel-ready projects that would save lives as well as jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Last October the Government committed to invest $7.38 billion throughout 2020/21 on road infrastructure and tonight’s Budget shows this target will be surpassed with an investment of $7.77 billion by the end of this financial year, and a further $8.2 billion in the year ahead.
“Now that this standard of delivery has been set, motorists will expect the Government to deliver in full on its road funding commitments in the year ahead,” Mr Bradley said.
The post budget response line up has begun - that’s where all the stakeholders literally line up and give their responses to the budget for TV news grabs - Chris Knaus and Daniel Hurst will be bringing you those updates
The Australia Institute’s Ben Oquist has responded:
The budget has failed to deliver any meaningful tax reform.
21 years into the 21st century we still have a tax system that looks more at home in the 19th century.
For too long treasurers have ruled out new taxes. It is time to open up the debate about how much revenue we need and how best to collect it.
A fairer and simpler tax system would wind back tax concessions; tackle inequities; ensure public goods are supported; discourage polluting and destructive activities; and collect more revenue more fairly.
On any of these measure the budget has failed.
While fiscal support and increased debt and deficit is exactly what the economy needs now, tax reform is essential to ensure a sustainable, secure and fair revenue base for the future.
The extension of the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset is band-aid tax policy at best.
It is time to stop talking about temporary rebates and start talking about a modern tax system for the economic, social and environmental challenges modern Australia faces.
Too many tax reforms have been taken off the political table. Resource tax reform, wealth tax reform, property tax reform and carbon pricing have been put in the ‘too hard’ basket.
From affordable, quality aged care to climate change, policy challenges cannot be best addressed without a better tax policy.”
Josh Frydenberg, who may have said ‘endometriosis’ for the first time in his life tonight, given how he mangled that word, has now finished his speech and commended it to the house.
*for the record, the extra endo funding is on education programs mostly, which does nothing to help people access the specialist care necessary to get diagnosed, which for most women, takes on average a whole 10 years.
Josh Frydenberg:
We are also shoring up our fuel security by helping local refineries to keep operating in Australia.
Mr Speaker, we are the custodians of this great continent for future generations.
This budget provides over $480m in new funding for the environment, including
$100m to protect our oceans.
We are also upgrading our recycling capabilities, creating jobs and reducing waste sent to landfill.
Australia is playing its part on climate change, having met our 2020 commitments and on track to meet and beat our 2030 target.
Australia is on the pathway to net zero and our goal is to get there as soon as we possibly can, preferably by 2050.
‘Preferably’ is doing A LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Basically we haven’t moved at all. No shift. Nothing. And barely any funding - a lot of this funding here is going on the new national disaster resilience fund and the oceans stuff was already announced.
Josh Frydenberg:
Mr Speaker, all Australians have the right to be safe.
The reality is, for too many women, this is not the experience.
One in four women experience violence from a current or former partner.
This must stop.
We must do more to end all forms of violence against women and children.
Since we came to Government we have invested more than $1bn to keep women and children safe.
Tonight, we invest a further $1.1bn in women’s safety.
We don’t know how long that funding will last for - it’s only short term.
Updated
Murph has also fact checked Josh Frydenberg’s speech - you can find that here
We haven’t included it as he spoke here, because you need context - otherwise it is just a bunch of words.
Josh Frydenberg will walk out of parliament and straight into the ABC for the traditional interview with 7.30
There are a lot of questions. Like, what happens when things for the economy stop looking so rosy in the next financial year? Why is so much of the funding short term? And what does this budget actually stand for?
Updated
Sarah Martin has gone over the big spending measures - you’ll find her break down here
Labor has also released its response - and it is also not holding back.
From Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher (but really from the whole party):
This Budget is yet another marketing exercise that can’t re-brand the mismanagement and missed opportunities that define eight long years of this Liberal-National Government.
It is a shameless political fix, rather than the genuine reform needed to make Australia’s economy stronger, broader and more sustainable.
Despite spending almost $100 billion and racking up a record $1 trillion in debt, the Morrison Government’s Budget reveals real wages will go backwards.
Beyond the hype and the headlines, Australians on modest incomes will only receive a temporary tax break before the election and be dealt a tax hike after it, while the highest income earners will enjoy a permanent tax cut forever.
After their last Budget centrepiece ‘JobMaker’ created just 1,000 of the 450,000 jobs promised, Australians can’t believe any jobs promised in this Budget.
Morrison and Frydenberg won’t tell Australians when they will be vaccinated, haven’t secured more vaccines, haven’t come clean on the cost and risk of delay, and are failing to deliver fit for purpose quarantine facilities.
Instead of securing Australia’s recovery, the Morrison Government is risking it.
It’s not the headline-seeking announcements in this Budget that matter, it’s the Government delivering on them.
For eight long years, this Government has overseen record low wages growth, chronically high underemployment, and it still doesn’t have a credible plan to create secure jobs.
For eight long years, this Government has presided over an aged-care crisis, an energy crisis, a housing crisis and a skills crisis.
And for eight long years, this Government has overpromised and underdelivered on critical infrastructure and this Budget actually cuts funding by $3.3 billion.
They’re now cynically using their eighth Budget to pretend they care about the issues and Australians they’ve ignored in the last seven.
Updated
Josh Frydenberg also just said that “under the Coalition, the NDIS will always be fully funded”.
I mean sure - when you change the parameters of what ‘fully funded’ means, and boot a whole of people who would have been eligible, off, then yes - you can say you are ‘fully funding’ what is left - but that doesn’t meant the NDIS is anywhere near where it needs to be.
Murph has also delivered her first thoughts:
So, what does Tuesday night’s budget tell us about the government’s election planning? It tells us the government hopes that it can get the bulk of the Australian population vaccinated by the end of the year. It also hopes that the economy, which has surprised on the upside thus far, will keep picking up steam over the next 12 months.
This strong forecast pick-up in the economy tapers off in the budget out-years. Tick. Tock. Goes the election clock.
This budget tells me that the government is absolutely leaving open the option of going to the polls late in 2021. I’m not sure I’d go as far as this being an election budget, but this is, absolutely, a keeping your options open budget.
As well as being an options wide open budget, Tuesday night is also a make-good budget.
If we cast our minds back to the budget Josh Frydenberg delivered last October, the government got flayed in the court of public opinion after delivering an economic statement that read like a budget for blokes.
That was followed in short enough order by Scott Morrison very obviously failing to rise to the occasion of the #MeToo moment that the former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins visited on the Australian parliament in the opening quarter of 2021.
Our latest polling, published on Tuesday morning, suggests that voters (in this instance, women) are less angry with Morrison than they were a month ago.
Morrison wants to use Tuesday night’s budget to lock in his political recovery, and to that end, the budget has been crafted as an official expression of emotional intelligence.
You can find the whole thing here:
Well, the Greens aren’t holding back.
Here is Adam Bandt’s and his party’s response:
Tonight’s Budget is a pre-election sweetener that fails to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax, while growing inequality and fast-tracking climate collapse.
While on the surface the budget may appear to do away with the Liberals’ years of austerity politics, it continues the myth that largesse to the super-wealthy will trickle down to everyday people.
Instead of a billionaires tax, the Budget locks in stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires and the wealthiest. Instead of making the big corporations pay their fair share, the Budget is full of more corporate welfare. Instead of investing in planet saving, nation building infrastructure, it hands billions to fossil fuel companies, further accelerating the climate crisis.
The Morrison government is handing $1.1 billion in new money to the oil, gas and coal industry, $11.4 billion next year alone, and with a total of a $51 billion across the forwards, this is one of the biggest handouts to the fossil fuel corporations in a Budget ever. Meanwhile one of the few paltry investments in the environment is for trashing our environmental laws.
The economic forecasts are built on sand and on an assumption our failed quarantine and vaccine program will miraculously start to work and that rest of world overcomes the pandemic. Wages go backwards for years, while more than $62 billion in handouts are directed to the billionaires and the big corporations.
That seems to sum up a lot of the reaction - this is a good start, that could have been done a lot better.
The problem is also, most of the budget has been pre-announced. That’s partly the government’s strategy under Scott Morrison - announce, so you can re-announce, and then announce the re-announcement - all before you get to the first announcement of the start of the announcement - but it is also because the government is really looking to reset the narrative here. And announcing these programs in advance has meant at least a couple of weeks of things it wants to talk about being bandied about - rather than the last few months of things it hasn’t wanted to talk about.
The first reactions to the budget are rolling in:
Dr Cassandra Goldie, ACOSS CEO says:
This budget provides much needed funding to finally start fixing some of the gaping holes in our aged care, childcare, mental health, and domestic violence services.
We are worried about the government clawing back hundreds of millions of dollars out of social security and employment services, when there is a need to be increasing this funding.
Josh Frydenberg has absolutely practiced this speech over and over and over again.
That doesn’t make the delivery any more compelling, but it at least means he is not shouting into the microphone.
The speech, much like the budget itself, doesn’t have a lot of direction - this is an election place holder budget, rather than a budget with direction. A buffet budget if you like - there is something for most people, but none of it is really long term, and it’s a bit of a hodge podge.
Plus, it is assuming A LOT goes right with covid - mostly that there are no more major outbreaks in Australia, and that the vaccine roll out goes to plan - that everyone who wants a vaccine gets one by the end of the year.
What misses out?
Well, take out the already announced national resilience fund and the environment doesn’t do so well.
Extra 120 repatriation flights for stranded Australians
Daniel Hurst:
The government is planning to arrange a further 120 facilitated flights by June 2022 to bring Australians home from abroad.
Since the start of the pandemic, 127 government-facilitated flights have brought 18,800 Australians home.
There are currently 34,500 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as wishing to return from overseas, and the federal opposition has repeatedly accused Scott Morrison of breaching the “home by Christmas” pledge he made last year.
Tonight’s budget papers include an extra $120m over four years “to increase Australia’s consular capability and provide additional support to vulnerable Australian citizens overseas whose return to Australia has been impacted by Covid-19 travel restrictions”.
We’re told that includes about $56m in funding for a further 120 facilitated flights between now and June 2022. Given we’re nearly at the end of the current financial year, three-quarters of that funding ($42m) is in 2021-22.
If the number of passengers on each flight is about the same as the earlier facilitated journeys, that means these additional flights could bring home about 17,760 people – far short of the number of stranded Australians. Typically, facilitated flights go to the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory.
But we’re told Dfat also plans to assist people to secure commercial flights (the ones that go into the state capitals and hotel quarantine). Apparently Dfat has helped 45,400 Australians to return home since the start of the pandemic, including 18,800 on facilitated flights.
Still in the Dfat space, the budget papers also show an extra $37.1m over two years “to support the Indian government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis in India through the provision of urgently needed medical supplies”. That includes the medical supplies the government announced last month, but Scott Morrison assured Narendra Modi in a recent call that that was just an initial package of support.
Sarah Martin went through the aged care reforms - that’s a $17.7bn package to try and clear the home care waiting list within the next two years, mandate minimum care time in residential aged care homes and increase the workforce.
The government has accepted all but six of the 148 recommendations - further consideration will be given to the recommendation for mandatory minimum qualifications for personal care workers, and while there is acceptance of the recommendation for a positive duty to be imposed on approved providers, there is no adoption of the recommendation for civil penalties for a breach of duty and compensation payments in the event of a breach - that’s to be considered as part of the new Aged Care Act - so it’s quite a bit away.
The government has also rejected calls for a levy to fund the sector, and changes to user fee arrangements, including means testing.
Sarah Martin has taken a looky-loo at some of the tax concession extensions - the instant asset write off for businesses is continuing - so any ‘tradie’ (because of course they are mentioned) who didn’t buy a new ute in the time since last year when the measure was first announced, can buy one now and write the whole asset off. The low and middle income tax offset - the $1080 already legislated - will be extended for another year.
Elias Visontay has looked at mental health spending - and there is a bit there - a new network of mental health clinics for Australians who have aged out of Head Space - so over 25s - will be established across the country with $487m allocated for that.
$2.3bn will be spent on mental health in total, including a national suicide prevention office. But there is no more money for extra mental health sessions, which is what a lot of people actually wanted.
Hursty has also examined at preschool funding - there is $1.6bn in the four years covered by the budget (the $2bn used in Josh Frydenberg’s speech spans a slightly longer time period) for preschool services, but the conditions will be negotiated with the states and territories - and attendance targets will be part of that.
Essentially, the government plans on creating a new funding agreement to “support continued universal access to at least 15 hours of preschool each week (600 hours per year) for children in the year before they start school”, meaning four-year-olds - not younger, as advocates were calling for. That’s because Australia lags the OECD average when it comes to preschool enrolments for three year olds.
Daniel Hurst has had a look at Asio - the spooks will be getting an extra $1.3bn in funding over the next 10 years, apparently because we are in a “more complex security environment”.
So you would think that extra money would also come with a large chunk for oversight right? Well, no. Just $4m will be spent in extra funding for oversight on Australia’s security agencies.
Paul Karp has taken a gander at the increased wait for all government payments - some 13,200 future migrants and 45,000 families will now have to wait FOUR years before they are allowed access to any government payment. That is going to save the government $671m allegedly, which will be deployed into other policy areas. Anyone who received their residency from 1 January will be included - and carers and parents will be hit the hardest.
He also looked at the $464.7m spend on immigration detention - covid meant we didn’t get to deport as many people as usual, so we have a whole heap more people in immigration detention - aren’t we a great nation? The spend is reflecting that we have more people in immigration detention, and getting facilities upgraded - including extending the use of Christmas Island and “hardening” it to prevent riots.
Right now, it’s home to two little girls and their parents who just want to go home to Biloela.
And every budget has its notable spends - here is some of what you’ll find in this one.
Anne Davies looked at the so-called ‘women’s budget’ - which this year came with quite a thick economic statement (Labor introduced the women’s economic statement, Tony Abbott, a former minister for women, put a kibosh on it and then Kelly O’Dwyer brought it back, and it basically collates all of the spending on women. In previous years it has pretty much been a pamphlet, but it’s amazing what a coming election and an angry populace will do - for the record, Simon Birmingham has denied the increased spending has anything to do with recent events. *that sound you hear is me choking to death on a jelly snake)
The government will spend an extra $1.1bn on women’s safety, including more emergency accommodation, legal assistance counselling and emergency assistance. As Anne found out:
“The package includes a new, two-year National Partnership Agreement in which the Morrison Government will provide up to $261.4 million to partner with states and territories - they will be asked to contribute- to boost local frontline services and trial new initiatives during the transition to the next National Plan.
The Government will commit $164.8m over three years to establish Escaping Violence Payments to provide up to $1,500 in immediate cash and a further $3,500 in kind for goods or direct payments of bonds, school fees or other items. The payments will be provided under a two-year trial.
There will also be an additional $12.6m to support accommodation for women and children experiencing family and domestic violence.”
Every budget has assumptions underpinning it - here are the ones you need to know when it comes to covid.
Treasury assumes:
Covid will remain a risk to the world economy - and therefore is a risk to Australia.
It is “assumed” a “population-wide vaccination program will “likely” be in place by the end of 2021 (note - that is not everyone vaccinated by the end of this year, but a program to get everyone vaccinated should be in place)
Localised outbreaks of covid will occur, but will be contained but general social distancing measures will remain in place.
Treasury also assumes the states will keep their borders open for the most part.
A ‘gradual’ return of temporary and permanent migrants is “assumed to occur from mid-2022’.
Small groups of international students will be allowed to return from late 2021 increasing from next year. But that will all be at the mercy and discretion of state quarantine caps (except those in safe travel zones, like New Zealand)
The international border is expected to remain closed until at least mid-2022.
What are some of those other assumptions?
Treasury has built its budget on a few other assumptions, including that we are all going to go on a massive spending spree - it is expecting household consumption to hit 5.5% in the next year, before dropping to 4% the following year.
It’s also expecting a whole heap of new jobs will be creating, as it aims for an unemployment rate of 5.5% this year, before dropping to 5% next year, and then dropping further to 4.75% in 2022-23. It’s currently 6.9%. Plus, just looking at it, it looks like a lot of those jobs will be part time. And there is no real mention of underemployment - when you want more hours than you are receiving - because there never is.
Oh - and wages won’t be growing, or doing much of anything. Which is at least honest (usually there are heroic assumptions that are never actually met but continue to get made the next year). This time round, the wage price index is forecast to go from 1.25% to 1.5% to 2.25% over the next couple of years. Which is still heroic, but not as bad as some of the assumptions. But essentially - despite all the extra jobs which are going to be created, there is very little chance of a wage increase. Huzzah.
Budget at a glance - what do you need to know?
Debt - (Not that we care about debt anymore)
The deficit for 2021-22 is $106.6bn ($53bn less than forecast in the last budget)
Net debt is forecast to peak in June 2025 at $980bn - 40.9% of GDP.
How did we get here?
Iron ore prices were higher than anticipated, the government didn’t spend as much money as it expected on JobSeeker and the economy recovered quicker and better than expected. Plus, borrowing costs are stupidly low at the moment
Big ticket?
$30bn in tax breaks for businesses and workers - basically extensions of current programs such as the instant asset write offs make up the bulk of it, with the low and middle income tax offset extension rounding it off
What did we spend on Covid?
Paul Karp has you covered on that - we spent $311bn on the pandemic covid-19, including $20bn on health supports and $290bn in economic stimulus. Since December’s mid-year economic update we spent an extra $41bn on economic supports and $3bn on health measures.
But as Paul points out -
“With a budget deficit of $161bn for 2020-21 in part due to a downturn in revenue, the $311bn figure captures only one side of the cost of Covid: the spending side.”
What needs to happen?
A lot. The government is banking on borrowing costs staying cheap (thank you reserve bank), people spending up big themselves, and covid staying under control.
The upbeat forecasts - which have growth returning to 4.25% next year and unemployment dropping to below 5% - assume that Australia’s internal borders will remain open, domestic activity restrictions are lifted, and migration gradually resumes from mid 2022.
And that growth tapers off in the outward years from 4.25% to 2.5% and then 2.25%. And wages - they are staying low.
Despite ongoing delays to the government’s vaccine rollout strategy, the budget also relies on a “population wide vaccination program” being in place by the end of 2021, assuming that everyone who is eligible and wants a Covid-19 vaccine will have one by year’s end.
Updated
Budget 2021 is released
Good evening and welcome to the Politics Live coverage of the 2021 budget - you have Amy Remeikis at the blog helm - I’ll take you through a snapshot of the budget and reactions as they come, live.
Josh Frydenberg is on his feet, which means we can go public and be released from the shackles of the lock up. Thank goodness.
Let’s get straight into it - it’s a strange old budget - and I think you are going to be told to look at the numbers in the next year quite a bit - because look beyond the next year and things aren’t exactly rosy when it comes to the economy.
It looks like we have had a huge bump, but you have to remember we are coming off a fairly substantial dip from October, when covid brought the world economy to a standstill - and anything looks great when the bar is subterranean.
That’s true for rebound relationships, and it’s true for economic predictions.
This budget doesn’t seem to know what it is. A band-aid, a promise, an apology?
Most of it, you already know - the big announcements were leaked out ahead of today, to make sure they all got at least 24 hours of clear air to themselves.
(It also includes one mention of ‘Team Australia’ - because why not pretend it’s still 2014. That’s not cheugy* at all. *It’s very cheugy)
But the so-called ‘women’s budget’ is essentially just putting money back into services which have seen money cut for years, the ‘recovery’ is an extension of programs already in existence, and the ‘something for everyone’ includes tax-cuts already legislated - and re-announced here, presumably so Frydenberg can say the phrase ‘tax cuts’. All they have done is extend the low and middle income tax offset for another year - which means another $1080 tax offset if you fall into that group.
It is absolutely a pre-election budget - there are basically no savings measures (except if you are a migrant - surprise! Now you’ll have to wait FOUR years before you receive any government support) and there is a little bit for most people - particularly if you’re among the Coalition’s electoral targets - working class, young families and business owners.
If you’re not in that group? Well, it’s been eight years. So you are probably used to missing out - and besides - there are (already legislated) tax cuts remember? Why would you complain?
Excuse the sarcasm - it has been a long lock up.
You have Katharine Murphy, Mike Bowes, Paul Karp, Greg Jericho, Sarah Martin and Daniel Hurst in Canberra, with the Guardian brains trust making sure you know the nitty gritty of the portfolio details. This budget included the full response to the aged care royal commission - Sarah Martin covered that off and we’ll be bringing you that very important information as well.
Thanks for joining us - it has been a very long day, and no one is ever really in the mood for budget - but we appreciate it.
Ready?
Treasurer prepares to deliver 'pandemic budget'
OK, dear readers, the time is upon us. The federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg is about to hand down his budget, the second “pandemic budget” in his time.
He is about five minutes away from delivering his budget speech. Stay tuned. We’ll have you covered for all the best news and analysis, right here.
Outside of parliament house, youth activists have spelled out “Fund our future not gas” in candles. The protest is organised by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
National director Alex Fuller said in a statement that young people will be simultaneously living through worsening climate change impacts while “paying the bill of this federal budget for decades”.
We are calling on the Treasurer not to exacerbate the climate crisis for our generation by giving publicly-funded handouts to dangerous gas.
Right now, young people are sending the Government a clear message: “Fund Our Future, Not Gas”. We will not stand by while this Government sells out our future to prioritise the fossil fuel industry. Young people deserve a fighting chance for a safe climate future: a gas-led recovery will intensify the climate crisis and endanger our future, while forcing us to pay the bill.
Young people will be paying the bill of this Federal Budget for decades, whilst simultaneously living through the worsening impacts of climate change. We're on Parliament lawn calling on the Government to #FundOurFutureNotGas! #Budget2021 pic.twitter.com/o1ZwIXkuJb
— AYCC (@AYCC) May 11, 2021
Half an hour until budget: what are we expecting?
OK folks, we’ve only got half an hour left until the latest “pandemic budget” is released.
Time to start getting excited.
We’ve (the media) bleated on about this ad nauseum, but we are expecting a major focus on aged care (reportedly $18bn in new money), mental health (package of $2.3bn), infrastructure ($10bn package), the tax offset extension ($7.2bn), the assumption of a border re-opening in 2022, the expansion of childcare subsidies and new investment in the prevention of family violence.
The government has also been trumpeting an expected training and skills package, including the extension of the $1bn jobtrainer program for another year. It will also unveil several housing policies, including a scheme to assist single mothers get into the housing market.
The government’s messaging is already clear.
The budget’s sell will rely on convincing Australians they are being protected in an uncertain time, and that the government is driving job creation and economic growth, while investing in sectors that have been exposed as having major, systemic flaws.
Wondering how the budget is going to affect your hip-pocket?
One of the most clear and obvious ways is through the tax offset for low and middle income earners. It existed last year and is expected to be extended again next year.
The offset will give eligible Australians a tax break of between $255 and $1,080.
Failing to extend the offset would leave more than 10m workers, mostly women, with an effective tax hike. So the government is planning to do so at a cost of about $7.2bn.
Need to know more? My colleague Sarah Martin wrote an excellent explainer on the offset last month.
Western Australia has just ordered anyone arriving in the state who has been at Victorian exposure sites to quarantine for 14 days and get tested.
The state’s chief medical officer Dr Andrew Robertson said he believes the risk to WA to be “very low”.
However, the situation highlights the importance of remaining vigilant to prevent any spread of the virus or community transmission in this state.
We will continue to monitor the situation in Victoria very closely and issue updated health advice if required.
You can read the full statement here.
WA issues directive for any travellers who have been to Vic exposure sites to quarantine for 14 days and get tested #COVID19Vic @10NewsFirstPER @10NewsFirst @10NewsFirstMelb
— Natalie Forrest (@nat_forrest) May 11, 2021
We mentioned the government’s $2.3bn package for mental health a little earlier. That was a late breaking bit of news ahead of tonight’s budget.
AAP has more detail on the announcement:
Australians in need of mental health support are set to benefit from a $2.3 billion package included in the federal budget.
The new funding will be spent over the next four years, adding to major commitments already made during the Black Summer bushfires and COVID-19 pandemic.
The mental health plan will be built on five key pillars.
Almost $250 million will be spent on prevention and early intervention, including the creation of an online platform to provide professional counselling, support and referrals.
Another $300 million will be allocated to suicide prevention.
For the first time, in partnership with the states and territories, the government will fund ‘after care’ for every Australian discharged from hospital following a suicide attempt.
At least $1.4 billion will go towards child, youth and adult mental health treatment centres.
Vulnerable communities will receive $107 million in extra support, with money set aside to update a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy.
And $202 million will be spent boosting workforces and improving governance.
Scholarships will be offered to nurses, psychologists and allied health practitioners working in mental health.
The federal government has framed the extra investment as the first phase of its response to a Productivity Commission inquiry into mental health, as well as a report delivered by the national suicide prevention adviser.
The funding injection should bring the government’s mental health spending to about $6.3 billion in the next financial year.
The Coalition is keen to point out the projected figure is 90% higher than when Labor was last in power.
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Brendan Rynne, the KPMG chief economist, says he is looking for additional funding in tonight’s budget for the Covid-19 vaccination program, including new vaccination centres and new vaccine supply purchases.
He says the rollout is critical to the opening up of Australia’s borders. But, interestingly, he says the lack of migration may in fact increase wage growth, something the government and Reserve Bank are looking to achieve.
We have been traditionally reliant on migration to help grow our economy and in particular provide skills across a broad range of industries. The interesting thing that we’ve got at the moment is both the government and the Reserve Bank are looking to achieve wages growth within the economy and one of the ways to achieve wages growth is in fact to limit the supply of new labour which is new migration coming through. So there is that balancing act at the moment in terms of in – bringing in additional supply of new migrants in Australia and ensuring we are getting real wages growth within the country.
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We’re only an hour-and-a-half away from the budget.
One of the measures we’re expecting is the extension of the jobtrainer program, which offers free or low-fee courses to equip workers in areas of need, including IT, aged care, and childcare. The program was due to expire in September but will now reportedly be extended by another 12 months.
National Union of Students Australia president, Zoe Ranganathan, has hit out at the program, saying it weakens the integrity of Tafes and smaller skills-based universities. She says the program outsources training to private institutions, which are often under-skilled and under-qualified.
The government should not be giving handouts to private companies when universities will lose $19bn over 3 years.
Investing in our future means backing in all institutions that are qualified to give the skills needed in Australia’s future. Now is the time to be ensuring Australia continues to deliver high quality higher education.
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We’re yet to hear any major budget announcement for the higher education sector, which has been crippled by the lack of international student revenue due to the pandemic.
Andrew Norton, a higher education expert at the Australian National University, said the sector will be hoping for another $1bn in research funding, which it received last year. He told the ABC:
On my estimates, international student contributed to $3bn to Australia’s research effort. That $1bn would have been very helpful in maintaining research activity in Australian universities through 2021. And given it seems unlikely we’ll get a big intake of international students in early 2023, sorry, 2022, I think it’s likely universities will want an extension of that additional research funding. So we don’t get any disastrous abandonment of research projects before they’re finished.
Norton cannot see large numbers of international students coming back to Australia anytime soon, but says universities have plans to attempt to bring small cohorts through quarantine.
The sector has got various proposals for bringing back relatively small numbers of international students through the quarantine system. Unfortunately, while that will be great for the students involved, we need to move huge numbers of people through the airports and into the universities. To give you an example, in 2019 there were more than 100,000 international students arriving in both February and July for second semester. And so the hotel quarantine system simply can’t deal with numbers on that scale. And we have to move to a more relaxed quarantine system if we’re ever to get international students in commercially viable numbers.
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From tomorrow, NSW Health will require anyone coming from Greater Melbourne to Sydney to complete a declaration saying they have not been to a venue of concern.
Anyone who has arrived since 6 May will be required to contact NSW Health if they have attended potential exposure sites.
NSW Health’s full statement is here:
⚠️PUBLIC HEALTH ALERT – VICTORIA⚠️
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) May 11, 2021
NSW Health continues to closely monitor the situation in Victoria as local health authorities investigate the COVID-19 case detected in the Greater Melbourne community. pic.twitter.com/HcpNPKPUat
Government senators cross floor on India travel ban motion
A very interesting development in the Senate.
The chamber has just been debating an urgency motion on the India travel ban put forward by Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy. The motion read:
That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
Helping Aussies in India return, not jailing them; and fixing our quarantine system rather than leaving our fellow Australians stranded.
What’s interesting is that Matt Canavan and Gerard Rennick, both government senators, crossed the floor to vote in support of the motion.
The motion was carried: 28 in favour, and 22 against.
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Budget leaks: what we know so far
Right, the budget is nearly upon us. We’ve got little more than two hours left until the treasurer’s speech at 7.30pm.
As always, there have been repeated “leaks”, otherwise known as strategically dropped announcements from government designed to maximise positive media coverage.
So what do we know so far?
- The government is expected to announce a major aged care package, including the federal government’s “full response” to the aged care royal commission. The package is reported to be worth $18bn and will focus on workforce improvements. The aged care sector, though, says it’s not enough. They say $40bn over four years is needed to fix the system.
- A $10bn new infrastructure spend is expected, including major projects across all states and territories. The government is expected to fund a new freight hub in Melbourne and an upgrade to the Great Western Highway, worth about $2bn. Road projects in Tasmania, South Australia, Northern Territory and the ACT are also expected to be funded, as are freight and rail upgrades in Western Australia and Queensland.
- A significant package for mental health is expected. The government says it will invest an extra $2.3bn, most of which will go to treatment centres and suicide prevention efforts.
- The government is also likely to expand the childcare subsidies, worth about $1.7bn, increasing the total spend over three years by a significant amount. But the increase is not expected to begin until next year. Labor say it should begin this year.
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New or extended housing policies including the family home guarantee, a new home guarantee, and a First Home Super Saver Scheme’ (FHSSS), which are designed to help Australians find a way past the huge barriers that exist to the housing market.
- The tax offset for low and middle-income Australians will stay in place for another year, giving up to $1,080 on tax returns for eligible individuals. If it wasn’t extended, analysis suggests about 10 million workers would face an effective tax hike, most of whom were women.
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International travel is not forecast to resume until at least 2022, despite the October budget update predicting they would open this year.
- The government will announce a training and skills package. This will include the extension of the $1bn jobtrainer program for another year.
- Larger tax breaks will be given to small brewers and distillers, in a bid to boost the industry.
I’m quite sure I’ve missed something, such has been the flurry of announcements.
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Just back on the positive Covid-19 case in Melbourne, government senator Matt Canavan has said he thinks there is a “rationale for looking to expand places like Howard Springs”.
The case appears to have been transmitted through South Australian quarantine. The Victorian government has called for the government to help fund a dedicated quarantine facility, similar to the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs, in Victoria.
Canavan told the ABC:
I think there is a rationale for looking to expand places like Howard Springs, working with state governments and other facilities, any of which would be [with] the co-operation of state governments. In saying that, I can’t see us ending hotel quarantine any time soon. We have a backlog of Australians who want to return and if we are to take on other business or tourists as well, there might be a need for some level of quarantining for some time. I’m not as negative on the hotel quarantine as some are. We had instances of outbreaks. But we’ve had 300,000 people go through ... it has been well over 98% successful.
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Just a reminder on the Andrew Laming kerfuffle in the House of Representatives. When this scandal was playing out in the media, Laming said he would “resign from all parliamentary positions effective immediately”.
Now the government is moving to stop Labor’s attempts to remove him from a paid position as committee chair.
While we’re talking about the lower house, it has just suspended business until the budget is delivered at 7.30pm.
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I'm not a 'taxpayer-funded troll': Laming
The member for the Queensland seat of Bowman, Andrew Laming, has also just spoken in the lower house. Laming says he is not a “taxpayer-funded troll” and suggestions to that effect are an unfair blight on his character.
He is angry at “reflections on my character and conduct” made during the earlier debate attempting to remove him from a committee chair position.
Matters in the last hour have been raised by those in the chamber making reflections on my character and conduct. They’ve misrepresented a number of times and I list them very briefly. Legitimate political questions that I’ve asked online of opposition state MPs have been characterised here as stalking – that is a misrepresentation.
A photograph taken of my own wife playing with our family has been misrepresented as stalking and hiding behind bushes in a park where there are no bushes.
An utterly, utterly, entirely appropriate and innocent workplace photograph with no offence found whatsoever after a police investigation has been characterised in here as lewd.
And to misrepresent the work that I’ve done on Facebook responding to comments of others has been characterised as harassment. To refer to me and misrepresent me as a ‘taxpayer-funded troll’ for my online work, with all posts remaining online and visible to the public, is a misrepresentation and a reflection on my character.
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In the lower house, Labor has been trying to have Andrew Laming removed from his position as chair of the standing committee on employment, education and training. It’s a paid position.
The government stymied Labor’s strategy, moving that a question on committee membership be put before an amendment to remove Laming could be seconded. That keeps Laming on the committee as chair.
Laming has recently been the subject of reports of online harassment of women and taking an “inappropriate” photograph of a woman bending over. He took personal leave and then blamed his behaviour on ADHD.
Peter Dutton just moved to gag me, to prevent me from speaking about this government’s failure to remove Andrew Laming from his paid committee chair position. #auspol
— Terri Butler MP (@terrimbutler) May 11, 2021
Government members currently voting to protect Andrew Laming's position as committee chair. So much for standards. So much for this being a budget day for women. #auspol
— Kate Thwaites (@ThwaitesKate) May 11, 2021
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Boy's death in bin 'highlights urgency of alleviating poverty'
Back to the looming budget, which is now about three hours away from release.
The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union says the truly awful story about the death of a child sleeping in an industrial skip shows what the real focus of the budget should be: alleviating poverty.
Kristin O’Connell, AUWU spokeswoman, says:
Today a child has died because he was forced to sleep in a garbage bin. This is the only budget story that matters – and it is a budget story. Poverty is a choice and we are sick of the bipartisanship on the brutal policies inflicted on those of us who need support.
More money for Close the Gap initiatives will not protect First Nations people from the racist violence inflicted through our welfare system, including through targeted programs like cashless welfare and the Community Development Program.
More money for aged care does not help the 300,000 older people who are starving on unemployment payments with little prospect of ever working again.
More money for mental health services does not help the hundreds of thousands of unemployed people whose lives are being destroyed by pointless and increasingly punitive ‘mutual’ obligations requirements.
More money for childcare and superannuation does not help women trapped in unsafe relationships because paternalistic partner income tests mean they can’t access a social security payment.
More money to force younger people into useless training and designed-to-fail hiring subsidies does not create jobs.
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McLaws supports state on dedicated quarantine facility
We just heard Victoria call on the federal government to upgrade the quarantine system, after what looks like another case emerging out of hotel quarantine, this time in South Australia.
The Victorian health minister Martin Foley wants a dedicated quarantine facility in Victoria, which the state government has proposed and pledged some funding for. The federal government has been lukewarm on the idea, saying hotel quarantine is highly effective.
Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an infection control expert at the University of NSW, has just told the ABC that she supports the Victorian government’s calls.
Absolutely. I have been calling for a federal approach with federal best practice for quarantining, because this isn’t going to go away. After a year, we have to finally understand that this is not going to go away rapidly ... people will still need some sort of quarantining on return. Be it at home or in a medi-quarantine station. So, yes, this really does need to be funded and it would be cheaper in the long run.
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Victoria’s health minister Martin Foley said while meetings with interstate health authorities were continuing to get to the bottom of the state’s new Covid case, he understood the man was the next-door neighbour of a positive case in a medi-hotel in South Australia.
Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said if the man had acquired Covid in South Australia, he would be treated as an interstate-acquired case, but in the meantime “there will be challenges for Victoria” in ensuring the virus had not spread.
A reminder that the full list of exposure sites is here.
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We diverted away from question time earlier. A few things of note from the portion we missed.
Defence minister Peter Dutton was asked about expenditure on defence bases in northern Australia. He says the government is announcing about $750m in the Northern Territory to upgrade air training facilities.
He said the government would announce “further details” on defence spending tonight.
The members of the Australian defence force know when we say we are back to business and we have their backs, they know that this government means it.
Shadow national disability insurance scheme minister Bill Shorten asked about Liam Danher, an NDIS recipient who had been asking for a $445 epileptic seizure mat. He didn’t get it. The NDIA instead fought the claim. Liam later died after choking to death during a fit.
His family is now demanding an apology.
Shorten asks whether the government should have just accepted the claim.
Employment minister Stuart Robert responds that the death of any participant is “absolutely tragic”, particularly when it is avoidable. He then lists a series of reforms to the NDIS to improve support for participants.
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Victoria calls on federal government to better fund quarantine in budget
Victoria’s health minister Martin Foley says there has now been “example after example” of the virus leaking out of hotel quarantine and that the federal budget would be “an opportunity for the federal government to step up and do its bit’’.
Victoria is asking the federal government to help fund a cabin-style quarantine site in Melbourne’s north and has put a proposal for the purpose-built facility forward. Foley said:
We’ve seen the virus leak out of hotel quarantine right across the country. As the South Australia minister indicated when I heard him speak, there is no such thing as a foolproof hotel quarantine facility, which is why this evening’s national budget is a golden opportunity for the commonwealth to step up and do its constitutional duty and fund, with the states, a quarantine facility such as that proposed by Victoria. There is example after example of the leakage out of hotel quarantine that continues and this would appear to be another example. And there is every indication that we are going to be in a position of some form of closed borders for many, many months, if not years.
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Victorian case acquired in SA quarantine: Brett Sutton
Victorian health minister Martin Foley is giving more information on the positive Covid-19 case in that state and has named a list of exposure sites. The full list is here. That page was crashing earlier so you can also find a list of exposure sites on the Department of health Facebook page.
“My understanding is the gentlemen departed India via the Maldives, through Singapore into Adelaide,” Foley said. The man entered quarantine in South Australia for 14 days, before flying home to Victoria where he tested positive this morning.
Chief health officer professor Brett Sutton said it was a reminder to “be on guard”.
“The thing about this virus, there are some individuals who pass on to no one else at all,” he said. “And there are some individuals who pass on to several people, and you can’t tell.”
Sutton said he would not comment on another jurisdiction’s quarantine system but all new incidents should be a “learning opportunity” and Victoria had been through its own “learning journey” in that regard.
“I think it’s absolutely the case he’s picked it up in quarantine in South Australia,” Sutton said. “We think the onset of symptoms were on the eighth [of May], so he would have been infectious for 48 hours prior to that.”
Some of the key locations of concern where people are being asked to immediately test and isolate for 14 days include:
- ALTONA NORTH – TIC Group (front office) at 232 Blackshaws Road, all day on Thursday, 6 May
- MELBOURNE CBD – Curry Vault Indian Restaurant and Bar at 18-20 Bank Place, between 6:30pm and 9:30pm on Friday, 7 May
- EPPING – Indiagate Spices and Groceries at Unit 14C/560-590 High Street, between 5pm and 6pm on Saturday, 8 May
- EPPING– Woolworths Epping, corner of Cooper and High streets, between 5:40pm and 6:38pm on Saturday, 8 May
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Close contacts of Victorian case negative: health authorities
We’re just going to leave question time momentarily. Victorian health authorities are giving an update on the most recent Covid-19 case.
Thankfully, the man’s three household close contacts have returned negative results.
The man, in his 30s, has been re-tested and confirmed as a positive case.
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Scott Morrison is asked about aged care, which is expected to be the centrepiece of the budget tonight, with a reported $18bn investment.
Labor asks how the government can trust the prime minister to fix an aged care system that “his government has brought to its knees”.
Morrison says there has been a real increase in aged care funding of 50% under the Coalition government. He says this exceeds the growth in population. The government will release its full response to the royal commission tonight, he says, before throwing down the gauntlet to Labor.
The question for the Labor party is will they play politics with this or will they engage with the government to make sure we work together to fix what is an intractable problem, that has impacted on government, on Labor, on Liberal and National for decades. We will step up tonight, the test is on the Labor party as to whether they will join us and step up with us.
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Tony Burke, the manager of opposition business, asks about wage growth. He says the government has failed “to achieve its forecasts on wages, in every one of the last seven budgets”.
Why should any wage forecast released tonight in the eighth budget be believed?
Scott Morrison says Treasury completes the budget forecasts independently.
He then talks about iron ore prices and revenue forecasts.
Burke gets to his feet on relevance, saying the question was squarely about wages.
The speaker redirects the prime minister to the question.
Morrison starts talking about tax cuts.
The speaker again redirects the prime minister to the question.
Morrison:
I was diverted by the interjection and the point of order by manager of opposition business, Mr Speaker. As I was explaining to those opposite, the forecast in the budget, that includes the wage forecast, combined with all the other forecasts in the budget to make an assessment of revenue estimates upon which we base our spending decisions. This may come as a mystery to those opposite, but that’s called responsible financial management, Mr Speaker. It’s what our government does, and that’s why our revenue estimates, Mr Speaker, have always proved to be quite conservative. And that means we don’t spend money that’s not there, Mr Speaker. We don’t do that.
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Anthony Albanese presses on with his criticism of the JobMaker program. He asks whether just $2bn from the $4bn set aside for the scheme was spent.
Scott Morrison says - and I’m paraphrasing ever so slightly here - that he doesn’t care because jobs were created, one way or another.
Now, when you put these measures together, I don’t care, Mr Speaker, whether it’s the JobMaker hiring credit, the Boosting Apprenticeships scheme, the JobMaker program, the cashflow boast, the JobTrainer program, I don’t care which of these programs delivers the result. Just so long as the result is achieved.
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Jousting over JobMaker
Anthony Albanese asks the prime minister about the failure of the JobMaker program.
My question is to the prime minister: in last year’s budget, the government announced its signature JobMaker program would support 450,000 jobs. But the program only supported just 1,000 jobs. When the government failed to deliver its signature announcement from the last budget, how can Australians believe anything that it announces tonight?
Scott Morrison responds:
The opposition put the test of our budget last time about what it meant for unemployment, I note at the time we brought down our first pandemic budget, unemployment was at 7%, Mr Speaker. Today it is at 5.6%. It’s at 5.6%. By the Labor party’s own standards, Mr Speaker, the economic recovery plan that we put in place in our first pandemic budget, Mr Speaker, has met their test, and has exceeded it, Mr Speaker. But Mr Speaker, this is not the first time. It was the leader of the opposition who said back in July of last year, he said, “400,000 will join the unemployment queues by Christmas”. But 300,000 jobs were created. He said the Morrison government had no plan for jobs, and no plan for recovery in June of last year, but yet another 500,000 jobs after that were created.
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Greens leader Adam Bandt calls on the government to support its policies of placing a 6% tax on billionaires’ wealth and placing a new super profits tax on big corporations making excessive profits.
Scott Morrison ain’t keen, unsurprisingly.
I’ve got a tip for the member for Melbourne, I won’t be listening to the Greens, Mr Speaker. And neither will the treasurer, and the Australian people, who value their jobs, Mr Speaker, who value the strength of an economy, a strength of an economy is what actually pays for essential services.
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Labor’s Catherine King is on her feet. She says the government has “underspent on its infrastructure announcements by an average $1.2bn every year for the eight long years it’s been in office”. She asks how the public can be expected to trust the government.
Michael McCormack, deputy prime minister, takes the question for Scott Morrison.
I know that Labor hasn’t delivered a budget for nearly 10 years. They haven’t delivered, haven’t delivered a surplus budget since 1989. 1989. Surplus budget. That’s the last time you did it.
There’s a bit of commotion.
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Labor’s Ed Husic takes the attack back to new industry minister Christian Porter. He asks how many applications the government has received for funding to set up mRNA manufacturing in Australia.
Porter responds that there are only a “tiny number of commercial entities who are even potentially able to do this, and we’re in conversations with them”.
What the question seeks to lead Australians to believe, such a production facility could’ve been up and running, could’ve been imminently up and running, and it’s important for all Australians to understand the actual science and commerciality of this technology speaks totally against that proposition.
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The prime minister gets a dixer on the budget.
Scott Morrison gives a flavour of the language we can expect tonight. It’s all about protecting Australians against he pandemic, creating jobs, guaranteeing essential services, and building a “more resilient and secure Australia” in an increasingly uncertain world, he says.
Whether that uncertainty stems from the security of our region, the pandemic which we face, or the challenging climate which the world is faced with, Mr Speaker, over the next 30 years and beyond. Mr Speaker, our world does remain uncertain. The pandemic continues to rage. This will be our government’s second pandemic budget tonight, Mr Speaker. Because we are under no illusion the pandemic continues to rage across the world, as it is extended from the developed world now into the developing world, as we see the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in places like India and indeed as it will continue to move across other parts of the world in the months ahead. Mr Speaker, it’s against that pandemic background that tonight’s budget is framed.
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Husic grills Porter on mRNA manufacturing
We’re into questions now. Labor’s Ed Husic is up first, with a question on the failure to develop mRNA manufacturing capability in the pandemic.
The Guardian has reported on this issue extensively. Experts have been calling for Australia to develop mRNA manufacturing for a long, long time. We haven’t. And now we’re wholly reliant on imports for the mRNA Pfizer vaccine.
Thank you, Speaker. My question is to the minister for industries, science and technology. Can the minister confirm that, more than a year since this pandemic started, the only money the Morrison government has spent on mRNA vaccine manufacturing has gone to consultants, not scientists?
Christian Porter, the industry minister, responds that mRNA is a new technology and not one Australia could develop quickly. Experts have said it could be done within three to six months. Porter rejects that.
We have approached this issue with both confidence and realism.Confidence that Australia can and should have a domestic manufacturing capability here, but with some realism that is not a simple process, it’s not a process as has been reported in some outlets that would take three to six months, it’s going to be a significantly longer process than that. To understand that process, as the member noted in his question, we went through an audit last year to identify possible companies in Australia with the potential for mRNA capability. We went through an information-generating process where there’s 64 responses. We engaged McKinsey’s, they produced a final report, we have gone through that report, it has a range of in commercial confidence measures, and information, it notes, I think, if I can say in summary to the house, that there is great confidence for Australia in terms of a capability to manufacture this type of technology, but to ensure that that manufacture is sustainable, that it is commercially viable, and that it is at scale, that will require a breadth of manufacture not just in vaccines but other therapeutic goods, and we’re investigating that at present.
NSW and Victoria have announced their intention to develop mRNA manufacturing.
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Anthony Albanese is on his feet, also paying tribute to Andrew Peacock.
He recalls Peacock’s reaction to the murder of two Australian citizens by Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia in the 1970s. Albanese appears to make a veiled reference to the government’s current treatment of stranded citizens.
As foreign minister, he was determined to withdraw Australia’s recognition of the regime in Phnom Penh, sending him on a collision course with his leader. Decades later, his anger had not softened, making a declaration of principle we would do well to carve in the walls here, quote: ‘Our first duty is to our own bloody citizens.’
Albanese pays tribute to Peacock’s support for Papua New Guinea’s independence and describes him as a “peacemaker, not a war-maker”.
Andrew Peacock was a fine Australian. A man of principle, a man who never waived from his smaller liberal values. On behalf of the Australian LaborParty, I offer my condolences to Andrew’s family.
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PM remembers 'true liberal' Peacock
We’re on, belatedly, in the House of Representatives. Scott Morrison begins with a tribute to the late Andrew Peacock, a former Liberal party leader, who died on April 16.
Morrison:
He was a man of great lives, of achievements and exhilarations. Of course, these extended mostly to his family, but so many others. The Liberal party, the track, the Essendon football club – each of them that left him with his shares of wins and of losses. And near misses also. The 1984 and 1990 general elections nearly chasing down former prime minister Bob Hawke. And the 1974 Melbourne Cup, where Leilani was the favourite and appeared to have it in the bag. A cup lost in the shadows of the post.
Morrison speaks of Peacock’s belief in liberalism and individual liberty as a driver of progressiveness and diversity.
At the core of Andrew’s beliefs was liberalism. And its ability to help people live out the truest expression of who they can. As he said in his Alfred Deakin society lecture, a liberal society doesn’t demand homogeneity, a fruitful society is one that promotes a zest for differences, as the natural expression of individual liberty would be more creative, progressive, and interesting.
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A development in the Luna Park ghost train fire story, which was the subject of a recent documentary series by the ABC. Matt Kean, NSW’s environment minister, is calling on the government to establish an inquiry.
BREAKING: NSW Environment Minister @Matt_KeanMP has formally called on the government to establish a Special Commission of Inquiry into the Luna Park Ghost Train Fire. In the words of Mr Kean: “There is no time limit on justice.”
— Caro Meldrum-Hanna (@caromeldrum) May 11, 2021
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Cash defends India travel ban
The Senate has kicked off question time a little earlier than the lower house, for some odd reason.
The first question is directed to senator Michaelia Cash, the new attorney general, about the returned traveller ban from India.
She’s asked whether the government agrees with government senator Matt Canavan’s belief that the ban leaves Australians stranded and that “we should be helping Aussies in India return, not jailing them”.
Cash says:
Thank you, Mr President. And I thank Senator [Raff] Ciccone for his question. Senators in this chamber will be aware that we are in the middle of a global pandemic and, as such, decisions are being made by the government, in particular to ensure that Australians are kept safe from the effects of COVID-19. Senator Ciccone, you will also be aware, as has been stated, on many of an occasion, the decisions that the Morrison government makes in relation to COVID-19 are based on health advice. On 22 April 2021 you will also be aware that India was designated a high-risk country. By agreement, Mr President, of the national cabinet. You would also have seen that on 27 April 2021, cabinet’s national security committee, they agree to pause direct passenger flights from India. Senator Ciccone, again as you would be aware, this decision was reinforced by the decision made by the Minister for Health, as he is entitled to, under section 4771 of the Biosecurity Act 2015.
She’s also been asked about government senator James Paterson’s comments that the ban is a step too far.
Cash says individuals are allowed to have opinions, but they do not represent the views of government.
I think, colleagues, you would understand as members of the Coalition government, that we are allowed to have our own opinions. Those opinions don’t necessarily reflect the position of the government.
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/EPA
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We’re standing by for question time. Won’t be too long now.
A crucial litmus test of economic health is whether the government can get the unemployment rate back under 5%. We’re currently at 5.6%.
Economist Chris Richardson, of Deloitte, says it’s not going to be easy. He predicts at least 200,000 new jobs will need to be created.
We temporarily had an unemployment rate under 5[%] in the lead-up to the global financial crisis but it was temporary. To get there from where we are today you probably have to create an extra 200,000 to 300,000 jobs. We have momentum at the moment. The extra spending will help as well. You want the government to be ambitious around unemployment. Governments around the world and Australian governments for 20 years have not been ambitious enough.
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ACOSS warns that home guarantee 'won't help many'
Cassandra Goldie, chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, is speaking to the ABC about tonight’s budget. ACOSS is a key advocate for lower-income and vulnerable Australians.
Goldie says the government appears to be making a serious investment in aged care, childcare, and mental health. She says that is because of a “huge backlash” to the budget last year.
But she warns that a measure designed to help single mothers buy a new home - guaranteeing them with a 2% deposit - would do little.
It won’t help that many single parents. It is a very targeted and ... it won’t cost the government anything. I think we will see tonight but I think it is costing them virtually nothing, about $300,000 over the forward estimates.
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Labor has accused the Coalition of hyper-ventilating on the costs of the NDIS to try to justify major changes.
Tonight’s budget is expected to estimate the NDIS will involve about $30bn in expenditure by 2024-25, and Scott Morrison has warned the costs are rising faster than expected.
But the Productivity Commission predicted this exact scenario back in 2017. It estimated the NDIS would cost $30bn by 2024-25.
Shadow NDIS minister Bill Shorten accused the government of attempting to justify compulsory independent assessments and privatisation by manufacturing a cost crisis.
For days the senior ranks of the Morrison government have been dramatically catastrophising about scheme sustainability and hyping fictional cost blowouts.
Now it turns out that has just been pearl-clutching kabuki theatre when they knew all along the NDIS is tracking just as predicted, and their hyped blow out that does not exist.
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Surviving boys traumatised after horror skip death: police
Police in Port Lincoln have given an update on the tragic death of an Aboriginal boy, who died when the bin he was sleeping in was emptied into a garbage truck this morning.
The boy, aged 13, was with two others, aged 11 and 12, when the industrial skip was picked up about 5.20am. One of the boys was able to jump clear while two were tipped with the bin. Of those two, one survived relatively unhurt and the other sadly received fatal injuries.
Supt Paul Bahr told reporters that police had spoken to the two surviving boys, but “clearly they’re traumatised by what’s occurred and it is going to take time to get a detailed story from them”.
I think the background as to how they ended up in this industrial bin and sleeping in this bin is something that is really going to take some time to understand. It will be part of – a strong part of – the coronial investigation that we’ve now begun and all that detail will come out as part of that investigation.
Baher said police had not received any earlier reports of people sleeping rough in bins in the South Australian town.
We are not aware, and I have asked my staff this this morning, we are not aware of any reports of any kids sleeping in bins in Port Lincoln. This is the first time we’ve become aware of it ...
Port Lincoln has an issue with homelessness like any community and from time to time we do get rough sleepers. I’m not aware of children sleeping rough. We do have some very good support services here that tend to act very quickly if we do get reports of it, but I’m not aware in general of children sleeping rough.
Baher said it was tragic, “really terrible event”.
It is tragic for all of the Port Lincoln community. This is a tight-knit, relatively small community. Everyone in this community will be impacted either directly or indirectly by this event. For those first responders, dealing with a young child who suffered significant trauma and not being able to save their life after a lot of effort has gone into attempting to revive this child is going to be very difficult for them.
He said the garbage truck driver was unaware there was anyone in the bin.
By the time the truck driver was alerted that there were people in the bin, it was at that point of being too late to stop the skip tipping.
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Spurrier says genomic sequencing is the key to unlocking the mystery. The state will obtain genetic information from Victorian authorities and compare it to a case in South Australia, which was in the adjacent room in hotel quarantine.
They’ve reviewed CCTV footage and can find no breach.
We will know what the genomic make-up of the person will be in the adjacent room here in South Australia, who’s now still in Tom’s Court [medi-hotel], and we’ll match up with the genomic testing of the person in Victoria and we’ll be able to see.
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Spurrier says there are several working hypotheses about how the transmission occurred.
They include:
- A very, very long incubation period, longer than the 14-day hotel quarantine.
- A breach in hotel quarantine that has allowed the person to acquire the infection in hotel quarantine.
- That after his release from quarantine, there was some form of community transmission.
Spurrier says the state has been meticulous in looking at their hotel quarantine to attempt to prevent any outbreak or breach.
We know that Covid can be transferred through droplets, which are direct droplets between two people that are standing quite close to each other, but I think it’s very evident now that Covid can be, or the virus can be, transferred through smaller droplets – ie, aerosols – and that these droplets may hang around in the air for a period of time. What we’ve done in South Australia with our medi-hotel system is really look meticulously at the ventilation, both in the hotel rooms but also in the passage ways.
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New Victorian case returned repeated negative tests in South Australia: authorities
South Australian health authorities are speaking about the latest case detected in Victoria. The individual who tested positive had come through hotel quarantine in South Australia.
The state’s chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier says the person tested negative during all of their tests in quarantine, including on day one, day five, day nine, and day 13, before being discharged from a hotel on 4 May. The person then returned straight home to Victoria.
He then developed symptoms on 8 May and was tested again yesterday, 10 May, returning a positive result.
She suggests that there is little risk to South Australians.
Now, we usually decide that the infectious period is two days before somebody develops symptoms, which would have been 6 May. So if people in South Australia are thinking, “Could this person possibly have been out and about here in South Australia?” It doesn’t look like that is the case.
Thanks to the incredible Matilda Boseley for taking us through the morning. I’ll be with you for the next six hours or so, as we crawl towards the release fo the federal budget.
Our politics team are preparing to get locked up. They’ll be out with their coverage and analysis about 7.30pm. Until then, settle in and stick with me. I’ll keep you across the day’s events, including all things budget.
With that, I shall hand you over to the brilliant Christopher Knaus to take you through budget day afternoon.
This was the first time the lower house has met in more than a month, which means it was also the return of former attorney general Christian Porter.
Porter is still in the cabinet (now as the minister for industry, science and technology) but his demotion was made pretty clear today, with him sitting well down the low end of the frontbench, in front of the crossbenchers and Nationals MPs. (Although I guess Covid-19 has spread everyone out a bit as well.)
He is now sitting between Keith Pitt and Stewart Robert, and by the sounds of it spent much of his first hour back in the limelight busily looking through his papers and texting on this phone.
The Guardian’s Mike Bowers took these pics.
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We are expecting to hear from South Australian health authorities soon. As the Victorian positive case quarantined in an SA hotel facility, all eyes are now on that state.
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Voluntary assisted dying draft bill with Queensland attorney general
A debate on voluntary assisted dying is a step closer in Queensland with draft laws now in the hands of attorney general Shannon Fentiman.
According to reporter Nick Gibbs, from AAP, the proposed legislation is aimed exclusively at “individuals who are suffering and dying”, a review update from the Queensland Law Reform Commission states.
QLRC chair Peter Applegarth said in this month’s review:
“It is not intended to apply to individuals who wish to die because they are tired of life or in decline, but who are not dying ...
This fact may disappoint those individuals and supporters of a broad-based scheme for voluntary euthanasia or medically assisted suicide.
It also may allay the fears of others that a voluntary assisted dying scheme would be generally accessible for those who do not wish to go on living.
The state government will consider the draft bill and a final report compiled by the commission before they are tabled in parliament and made public. Both must be tabled within 14 sitting days of receipt.
Victoria is the only Australian state in which voluntary assisted dying is active, and Western Australia and Tasmania have passed their own laws
South Australia is also a step closer to having a voluntary assisted dying regime after the state’s upper house recently passed legislation.
Queensland is expected to debate the laws later this year and Labor MP Duncan Pegg, who’s set to resign amid ongoing cancer treatment, spoke frankly as someone who has been fighting the disease for 18 months.
I will not tell members how to vote [on] your conscience, but before making a decision I encourage every MP in this place to make sure they speak to and listen to people with terminal illnesses and their families.
Pegg said he had been attending cancer clinics as part of his treatment and regularly spoke with patients with terminal illness.
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OK! And parliament has gone on a break for the next 90 minutes. Nothing much to report except for more Prince Philip speeches.
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This is not particularly news-related but one of the previous times Melbourne had a mystery local case the premier Daniel Andrews called a 10pm emergency press conference to announce that the gathering limit for homes was going down from 30 to 15.
The only thing was, I had my birthday party the next day, with exactly 30 people coming. Have you ever had to text person after person and let them know that they don’t make your top 15 list of friends? Because I have and, let me tell you, it wasn’t great.
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Duke an enduring part of our story: Albo
Sorry, I got distracted by this positive Covid-19 case in Victoria (and not just because I’m typing this from Melbourne). Jumping back to federal parliament now.
The first order of business is honouring the recently departed Prince Philip.
Here is a bit of what the leader of the opposition, Anthony Albanese, had to say about the prince’s marriage to the Queen.
He found love with Elizabeth. Love that survived and thrived, even after they were thrust into the strange limelight of royal power far sooner than either of them had ever anticipated.
During his many decades devoted to his queen, his nation, and the Commonwealth, he also became an enduring part of the story of our nation. His first visit to Australia was in 1940, a midshipman aboard a battleship that escorted Australian troops from Melbourne to Suez.
He eventually became a regular visitor to our shores, not least of which was his extensive visit here with the Queen in 1954, as well as his opening of the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956.
But just as he shared in our joys and our triumphs, he shared in our sorrows, seeing with his own eyes the awful devastation wrought by bushfire. Throughout it all, he developed multiple connections here, and ultimately built the lasting legacy in the form of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme.
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Here is the full statement from the Victorian Department of Health about the new Covid case.
There is no word so far on if or when there will be a press conference.
Media Statement: Positive COVID-19 Test Result pic.twitter.com/RlRfh7bioX
— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) May 11, 2021
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India travel ban case arguments may be moot points by week's end
On Monday the federal court rejected an urgent bid to overturn the India travel ban, brought by a 73-year-old Australian stranded in Bangalore, Gary Newman.
The court has only decided the first half of the case. It held that the health minister, Greg Hunt, was appropriately satisfied that the ban was “no more restrictive or intrusive than is required” and that the Biosecurity Act was clear enough to override Australians’ common law right to enter their country.
The second half of the case argues the ban is not “reasonably proportionate” and that it infringes an implied constitutional right of citizens and permanent residents to enter Australia.
But the court may never hear these arguments because as Newman’s counsel, Christopher Ward, conceded on Monday they may be moot points if the ban is repealed on Friday as expected.
On Tuesday Newman’s solicitors, Marque Lawyers, said that no decision had yet been made about whether to pursue the case.
If our constitutional arguments are right, they would overrule the effect of yesterday's decisions. No decision has been made yet whether to pursue the case further.
— marquelawyers (@marquelawyers) May 11, 2021
It's also unknown whether the government will in the future decide to prevent citizens from returning home; on the law as at today, it can.
— marquelawyers (@marquelawyers) May 11, 2021
One good thing from the case: the Commonwealth conceded, and the judge agreed, that Australian citizens do have a common law right to return home. However, it's effectively extinguishable at the Health Minister's discretion. So, not that much of a right.
— marquelawyers (@marquelawyers) May 11, 2021
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Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... I thought this budget was about jobs for women?
Fact Check: True pic.twitter.com/x933JiJVSz
— Matthew Canavan (@mattjcan) May 10, 2021
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Victoria records a positive Covid-19 case after hotel quarantine interstate
Victoria has just detected a positive Covid-19 case.
The Department of Health says the man in his 30s recently returned to Australia from overseas and spent two weeks in hotel quarantine in South Australia.
Here is the statement:
He arrived in Victoria and returned to his home in Wollert on 4 May and developed symptoms on 8 May. He got tested yesterday, 10 May, and returned a positive result this morning.
Further testing has been urgently arranged to confirm the diagnosis. Until that time, the department is treating this as a positive case and acting accordingly.
The individual is being interviewed and exposure sites are being verified. They will be published when they are confirmed.
The individual who was tested positive is isolating at home. His household primary close contacts are also isolating, being interviewed, and will be urgently tested.
The department is working with interstate counterparts to determine the likely source of this infection.
If you have any symptoms of COVID-19 – such as fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, chills or sweats, or change in sense of smell or taste – get a test immediately.
More updates to come.
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Today’s lower-house sitting will start with a statement on Prince Philip. This is the first time the House of Representatives has met since the Duke of Edinburgh died on April 9.
The Prime Minister will make a Ministerial Statement on His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 12pm, House of Representatives #auspol
— Political Alert (@political_alert) May 11, 2021
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We will be able to find out a bit more about the garbage truck accident in Port Lincon in about half an hour when police front media.
A 13-year-old boy has been killed allegedly after falling asleep in a large bin which was then collected by a garbage truck this morning.
The police media conference will be at noon South Australian time (12.30pm in Victoria, NSW and Queensland).
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Victorian arts boom: $170m for dinosaurs, theatres, music
Well here is some budget news, but it’s not the federal one. That’s right, Victoria is ramping up for its budget unveiling as well. As Liz Hobday from AAP reports, the state government says it will spend another $170m to revive the state’s creative arts sector.
Acting premier James Merlino told journalists the money will include funding towards a major redevelopment of the Geelong Arts Centre, with a new 500-seat theatre and a second 250-seat theatre.
The last 12 months has been incredibly hard on everyone, but particularly our creative arts sector.
There will also be $33m for the Melbourne Museum to develop a “Gondwana Garden” and a Triceratops gallery, which will house a 67-million-year-old Triceratops, billed as the world’s most complete dinosaur fossil.
Another $4.5m will go to suburban and regional creative hubs, including Emporium Creative Hub Bendigo and Brunswick Design District.
About $10m is marked for the live music industry, to support restarting live concert tours.
The statewide package is expected to create about 20,000 jobs.
The government unveiled a $190m, four-year package for the screen industry on Monday, which it says should support another 40,000 jobs.
The Geelong Arts Centre development is slated to be finished in 2023.
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Pour yourself another coffee and take a big sip because we have some truly baffling graphic design choices coming from Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Twitter feed again!
Why did they change the Queensland coastline? Why does the dotted line make it look like people are leaving the state not joining? Why did they make the heart purple and nothing else? Why in general.
This truly is my favourite part of the day. Please never stop.
Every day, another 100 people choose to be Queenslanders.@ABSStats figures show a net 9,800 people moved to Queensland in the Dec quarter.
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) May 11, 2021
It’s the largest increase in almost 20 years and shows our economic recovery plan is working.
Queensland really is the place to be🙌 pic.twitter.com/nvZhbm82KR
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Weeks after quitting parliament over sexual assault and sexting allegations, former New South Wales MP Michael Johnsen has rebranded himself as a consultant specialising in government relations and reputation management.
Johnsen resigned from parliament in March after he was accused of raping a sex worker in the Blue Mountains in 2019.
He denies the allegation, calling it “devastating, unfair and unfounded”.
An ABC investigation later revealed allegations about him sexting while in parliament.
Johnsen’s resignation has sparked a hotly contested byelection for his Upper Hunter seat, which the Nationals party held on a 2.6% margin.
Read the full report below:
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NSW records no new local Covid cases
Some good news coming out of NSW. After last week’s mystery case, it has once again recorded no local cases of Covid-19.
But this means that the “missing link” connecting the infected 50-year-old man and the returned traveller from the US with the same genomic stain of the virus could still be out there somewhere.
NSW recorded no new locally acquired cases of #COVID19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) May 11, 2021
Four new cases were acquired overseas to 8pm last night, bringing the total number of cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic to 5,353. pic.twitter.com/7FtGKCDwgy
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Labor has a pretty tricky job today – downplaying an economy that’s in the middle of a “red hot” recovery, and criticising the government for delivering a budget that looks pretty darn similar to a traditional Labor one.
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked earlier about the economy’s no doubt annoyingly healthy status:
The budget is recovering for a range of reasons. The iron ore price is substantially higher, some multiples of what the government assumed. So they got their forecasts wrong there.
But obviously, as the economy recovers from the deepest, most damaging recession in almost a century, the budget will recover as well when it comes to income taxes and social security payments and the like.
So the budget is improving in predictable ways and, in some instances, the improvement in the budget has nothing to do with the government when it comes to [the] commodity prices we’re getting.
We want the budget to recover strongly. We want the $1 trillion in debt to actually mean something in terms of jobs ... for people around Australia. The budget would be in much better nick if it wasn’t riddled with rorts and weighed down with [waste].
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Chalmers calls for permanent tax offsets for lower-paid workers
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers has been out and about this morning launching pre-emptive strikes on the Coalition’s budget.
Earlier, he slammed the government’s decision to continue the tax offsets for low- and medium-income earners, rather than making them permanent:
I think that Australians understand in the budget that Josh Frydenberg wants tax cuts for the highest-income earners to be permanent but tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners to be temporary, and that’s one of the things that will be a feature of the budget tonight, the temporary extension of that tax offset for low- and middle-income earners.
We’ve said all along that the priority for tax relief should be people who need it most and are most likely spend it in the economy. Tax breaks for middle Australia and low-income earners are a good thing, typically. It made no sense for the government to commit tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the highest-income earners years down the track without knowing what the budget and economy would look like. This government has wracked up $1 trillion in debt and they don’t have enough to show for it. They’ve got tax cuts baked into the system.
We’ll make our view known about them closer to the date but the priority for tax relief needs to be people on low and middle incomes. I think it says everything about this government that if you’re on a modest income you get a temporary tax cut and if you’re on the highest one, you get a permanent one.
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SA boy, 13, killed when garbage truck empties bin he fell asleep in
Some tragic news coming from South Australia this morning, with a 13-year-old boy killed when a garbage truck emptied a large bin he allegedly fell asleep in.
SA police say three boys – aged 11, 12 and 13 – were in the bin about 5.20am when it was being emptied.
One boy managed to jump out but sadly the 13-year-old sustained serious injuries and died at the scene. The third boy was not injured. All three boys are from Port Lincoln.
Police believe the truck driver was unaware the boys were in the bin “and is extremely shaken by the incident”.
Safe Work SA has been informed about the incident and police are preparing a report for the coroner.
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Believe it or not, there is actually non-budget news going on today. One of the biggest stories is the Queensland teacher’s union encouraging its members to withdraw their own children from today’s Naplan tests as they push for it to be reformed.
Mostafa Rachwani has more:
The Queensland Teachers’ Union is encouraging its members to withdraw their own children from the annual Naplan tests as they push for it to be reformed.
The call to the union’s 47,000-strong member base comes as testing begins on Tuesday and after an extended campaign to have the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (Naplan) changed.
The test has been given to students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 since 2008, and is intended to reflect how well students are learning essential skills such as writing, reading and mathematics.
You can read his full story below:
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Victorian MP wants five safe injecting rooms
A key Victorian crossbench MP wants three new safe injecting rooms in areas of Melbourne with high levels of drug use, reports Liz Hobday from AAP.
Victorian MP Fiona Patten, from the Reason party, will call on the state government to set up centres in St Kilda, Footscray, and Dandenong.
People are injecting in our streets, on our front lawns, and they are dying – we need to do something...
We are seeing overdoses in those areas similar to what we were seeing in North Richmond.
Melbourne’s existing safe injecting centre at North Richmond has been controversial due to its proximity to a school. The government is looking at setting up a second centre near the Queen Victoria market.
Under Patten’s plan, the new centres would also have the capacity to carry out pill testing. She says there have been calls from residents in St Kilda, Footscray, and Dandenong to set up facilities.
Patten is currently in New Zealand to talk to local MPs, who are currently considering safe injecting rooms.
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Labor senator accuses government of scandal-motivated budget focus
Some fighting words from Labor senator Katy Gallagher this morning.
She’s asserting that the government has only launched this woman-focused budget because of myriad sexism and alleged sexual assault scandals that have rocked Parliament House and the Coalition this year.
Do you honestly think the Morrison government would have had a women’s package if it wasn’t for the pressure they’ve been under during the past three months?
I mean in last year’s budget we were told that women were lucky because they’d built an extra lane on the highway, on the Barton Highway. That was their women’s package.
And you told me the two things aren’t linked? Of course they are linked.
I mean, we had the prime minister saying he didn’t even know that the gender pay gap was a problem until he found out about it this year*. Seriously? Of course, it’s linked.
Finance Minister @Birmo has denied the extra spending on women in this budget was prompted by the movement sparked by Brittany Higgins. @BrittHiggins_
— Tegan George (@tegangeorge) May 11, 2021
Senator @SenKatyG : ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?! (*or something like that) @10NewsFirst #auspol pic.twitter.com/IcQl2CbxGj
*This was originally reported by ABC’s Andrew Probyn, but it’s worth noting the Coalition government has had gender pay gap policies in place for many years, and Morrison tweeted about it in 2018, so it’s pretty clear Morrison did in fact know it existed.
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Queensland reports no new local Covid cases
We have a Covid-19 free Queensland as well by the way!
Tuesday 11 May – coronavirus cases in Queensland:
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) May 10, 2021
• 0 new local cases
• 17 active cases
• 1,581 total cases
• 2,513,073 tests conducted
Sadly, seven people with COVID-19 have died. 1,555 patients have recovered.#covid19 pic.twitter.com/legCAyeC5m
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This is just the cherry on top! *Chef’s kiss*.
Craig Kelly has just confirmed he funded this stunt, which is about government spending, out of his taxpayer-funded electoral allowance. Notes that he has his details on the back, says it’s “better than a business card” pic.twitter.com/gHAQYXVHwi
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) May 10, 2021
Before the big day reveals all, what do we know so far about the budget?
Sarah Martin breaks it all down for us:
Tuesday’s pandemic budget, which the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, insists is not a “spendathon”, will pump billions of dollars into the economy as the government attempts to cement Australia’s economic recovery after last year’s downturn.
With Australia’s borders closed for the foreseeable future and the government aiming for an unemployment rate below 5%, the budget will have a focus on stimulating the domestic economy and job creation.
The 2021-22 budget has also been put together with an eye to the next election, with a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure package targeting key battleground electorates. The government is also hoping a focus on women will help lift its standing among female voters.
Check out everything we know so far about day’s budget in the amazing explainer below:
Wait, so according to Craig Kelly, the point of the pallet of money is to represent the close to a trillion dollars of federal and state government debt that future generations will eventually have to pay off.
But then every individual note is itself a trillion dollars? But they are meant to look like $100 notes, but Kelly says you would need 10,000 pallets of $100 notes to make a trillion.
I don’t understand how much money this pile of fake notes is supposed to represent?
PRESS CONFERENCE - CRAIG KELLY MP – 9.30am Tues 11th May, Mural Hall, 2nd Floor Parliament House
— Craig Kelly MP (@CraigKellyMP) May 10, 2021
Wouldn't you love to have this much money ?
Well you do !!
This represents close to $1 TRILLION of Federal & State Government net DEBT that YOU & future generations need to pay off pic.twitter.com/ztKH5Wv9SD
OK, well this ended up being less dramatic than I thought.
Still waiting for an explanation on the Ned Kelly side of things.
Independent @CraigKellyMP breaking down the trillion dollar debt projection .. 💵 #budget @10NewsFirst #auspol pic.twitter.com/vfKeZbVZ9h
— Tegan George (@tegangeorge) May 10, 2021
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“They throw money, rivers of gold into electorates they want to win” or want to reward a sitting MP. - @SenKatyG on tonight’s #budget @10NewsFirst #auspol pic.twitter.com/gfRyxfbXnn
— Tegan George (@tegangeorge) May 10, 2021
There is a bunch of talk today about the government’s expected affordable housing support in today’s budget. If, like me, you are a bit confused about what it all means, can I recommend this brilliant explainer by Jessica Sier.
She is breaking down exactly what this extension to the first homebuyer loan scheme will look like, and negative the impact it might have on housing prices.
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#Budget2021 Papers are ready to go!
— Simon Birmingham (@Birmo) May 10, 2021
🎥Tune in tonight at 7.30pm. @JoshFrydenberg pic.twitter.com/tgqI4LYbJZ
Thank you to Johny Miller who pointed this out to me on Twitter.
The promise:
Today is the day! #Budget2021 pic.twitter.com/ujXaqVqtRt
— Simon Birmingham (@Birmo) May 10, 2021
The reality:
The Parliament House ‘Budget Tree’ looking a little...bereft this year. #auspol pic.twitter.com/FbhJeHVtYz
— Michael Rowland (@mjrowland68) May 10, 2021
Let’s hope this isn’t an omen of things to come.
If you see anything you reckon should be on the blog you can tag me on Twitter @MatildaBoseley or email me at matilda.boseley@theguardian.com.
Who else is excited for whatever this is going to be?
Trillion-dollar bank fake banknote? Check.
Photo of Ned Kelly off google images? Check.
Nonsense undoubtedly to ensue? Check. Check. Check.
I’m pleased to inform you that Craig Kelly has planned a #budget2021 stunt with a comical pile of fake money pic.twitter.com/xtrmcfT53J
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) May 10, 2021
There’s a pallet of fake money in the Mural Hall of parliament.
— Amy Remeikis (@AmyRemeikis) May 10, 2021
Happy budget day pic.twitter.com/Wo6NvvsOwN
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International seafarer jumps off oil tanker in Melbourne waters
Victorian water police have fished a man out of the water after jumping off an international oil tanker on Sunday night in Port Phillip Bay.
Here is what police have to say about the incident:
The 31-year-old Georgian national was found by the Air Wing about 5km from the dock clinging to a navigational marker about 7.50pm.
Officers from the Water Police pulled the man from the water and conveyed him to Williamstown where he was medically assessed.
The man was taken to hospital accompanied by Australian border force officials who were assisting DHHS.
Police say it’s likely the man will be transferred to mandatory quarantine once released from hospital.
As a precaution the police officers who were in contact with the man have since isolated.
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OK, so something you are going to be hearing a lot about today is this debate over if this budget is a “pre-election budget”.
Basically, the next federal election has to be some time in the next 12 months-ish, meaning this could well be the last budget we have before we head to the polls.
This matters because it flavours how announcements will be viewed.
In broad strokes, if this is a pre-election budget these huge spending commitments could be seen as little more than wild election promises that may or may not be fulfilled. But, if this is just a post-national crisis budget like the government keeps insisting, then the spending is more likely to be seen as the government doing what it needs to do to help up overcome Covid-19.
Finance minister Simon Birmingham was asked about this by Michael Rowland on ABC News Breakfast earlier this morning.
Rowland:
Now, we know there are going to be truckloads of cash thrown around tonight. It looks and smells like a pre-election budget. On the other hand, the prime minister has said a couple of times now he is a full-termer, so the election won’t be to next year. Do you expect him to honour his pledge to the Australian people and not hole the election to next year?
Birmingham:
The prime minister will choose.
This budget is delivering on the promises we made at the last election. We went to the last election saying that we would invest in the economy, to grow jobs and to fund the essential services that Australians rely on. That’s why we have the focus on growing jobs.
Yes, we didn’t see at the last election there would be a pandemic and recession induced by that pandemic. But the investment in skills, the investment in investment, attraction incentives, to keep the economy growing and jobs growing.
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Australians are divided about the merits of the Morrison government’s controversial India travel ban, but a strong majority endorses the Coalition’s budget plan to boost funding for the aged care system, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
The survey of 1,092 respondents shows a majority of people surveyed (56%) think Australian citizens should be permitted to return from Covid-ravaged India provided they complete the necessary quarantine procedures when they arrive (22% of the sample was opposed to that idea).
When asked specifically about the travel ban imposed just over a week ago, 48% of the Guardian Essential sample said Australian citizens in India should be banned from entering the Australia due to the risk of Covid-19 transmission, while 27% opposed that idea. Survey respondents were also asked whether they supported jail time and fines to underpin the government’s travel ban, and 41% said yes while 33% said no.
You can read the full report below:
New Zealand police charge man with four counts of attempted murder
New Zealand police have charged a man with four counts of attempted murder after a stabbing attack in downtown Dunedin on Monday, reports Ben McKay from AAP.
The shocking attack took place at a downtown supermarket at around 2:30pm in the afternoon.
Five people – including the alleged attacker – were transported to nearby Dunedin Hospital, with three in a critical condition.
Police say the condition of three people in hospital is “serious but stable”, with a fourth person in a moderate condition.
Two of those hurt are supermarket employees.
The alleged attacker, a 42-year-old man, will appear in the Dunedin district court on the charges later today.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern and police leaders have praised bystanders for apprehending the man, stopping further injury.
“It’s nothing short of heroic,” Superintendent Paul Basham said.
Police are still conducting enquiries in relation to the incident, believing it to be a random attack.
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Victoria records no new local Covid cases
So far no Covid-19 outbreaks on the eve of the new budget. Going well.
Reported yesterday: No new local cases and 1 new case acquired overseas (currently in HQ).
— VicGovDH (@VicGovDH) May 10, 2021
- 8,155 vaccine doses were administered
- 12,918 test results were received
More later: https://t.co/lIUrl0ZEco#COVID19Vic #COVID19VicData pic.twitter.com/GUBNlJbUJ0
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Finance minister flags 'profound improvement' in the budget's bottom line tonight
The Australian has put a very specific figure on the budget deficit expected to be unveiled this evening: $161bn, an improvement of $53bn from the $214bn deficit predicted in the last budget in October.
Earlier the finance minister, Simon Birmingham, was asked about this figure and did nothing to discourage the idea, agreeing there had been a “profound improvement” in the budget bottom line.
Birmingham told ABC News Breakfast:
We have seen a profound improvement in relation to this year’s budget bottom line. That is as a result of the fact that the economy has been performing more strongly, particularly more Australians back into jobs, and we know that by getting more people back into jobs, we reduce the welfare wheel, we increase the taxation and the revenue coming in, and, indeed, just by having 200,000 fewer people on jobseeker at the start of this year than had been forecast has delivered a $5bn turnaround.
You get other dividends that flow through across the economy. That’s why at the heart of tonight’s budget, our focus is on how do we keep jobs growth continuing, because that is how we can make sure we can pay for essential services Australians want us to pay on.
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No, I really wasn’t joking about Frydenberg using the government’s prediction on the international border as a cliffhanger to get us to watch his speech.
Reporter:
Do you have a quarter when it might happen? First, second, third? End of the year?
Frydenberg:
No surprise – tune in at 7:30pm tonight. Thank you.
And then he walks off! Mate! There are people who can’t see their dying parents overseas. There are people who have never met their newborn children. Why are you using this to increase your viewership numbers?
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On Monday afternoon the federal court did some housekeeping in the Christian Porter ABC defamation case, which non-parties can see now orders have been made.
Porter has applied to the court to strike out three schedules of particulars from the ABC’s defence, including the detailed evidence related to the defence of truth the public broadcaster plans to run.
As foreshadowed on Friday, the court will hear the substance of this strikeout application on 1 and 2 June.
In the meantime, the federal court has granted an interim non-publication order so we don’t know precisely what is in those schedules – although the ABC has said they’re calling at least 15 witnesses for the defence of truth.
The rest of the order sets out the timetable to prepare for that strikeout, the key dates for which are:
- Porter has until Thursday (13 May) to file submissions and affidavits in support of the strikeout;
- There will be a case management hearing on Friday (14 May);
- The ABC and Louise Millligan will have until 25 May to file submissions; then
- Porter has until 28 May to reply to those.
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The treasure is still being coy about when the government assumes international borders will open.
Is it just me of is this is a super weird thing to tease out information on. It kind of feels like he’s saying, “whoopsies, I know when we think it will happen but I’m not going to tell you. Tune into my big speech tonight to learn when you might be allowed to see your families again!”
Okay, this is what he actually said:
In tonight’s budget, we make some assumptions around vaccine rollout and around border closures and around the containment measure that is are put in place in respect to Covid-19.
But it’s very hard to be precise in the middle of a pandemic. There’s a lot of uncertainty, globally and domestically with respect to the virus. So tonight’s budget has those assumptions in place. But the key point is - we’ll always follow the medical advice and we’ll always do our best to keep Australians safe.
Frydenberg has been asked if the national disability insurance scheme will need to be overhauled in order to bring the price tag of the program down, but the treasure is seeking to reassure people it will stay intact:
In tonight’s budget, you’ll see additional funding for the NDIS. This is a wonderful program. It’s made a profound change to lives of Australians with disabilities and their families.
We all know stories of people who have been assisted by the NDIS, and under the Coalition, the NDIS will always be fully funded. We need to ensure that it continues to remain sustainable, but under the Coalition, we are deeply committed to the NDIS and we’ll always ensure that it is fully funded.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is speaking now out the front of Parliament House. (Gosh treasurers work a long day on budget day! His big speech isn’t for 11 hours!)
He is once again prepping the Liberal “small deficit, small government” voter base for a budget filled with big spending and big policy.
The job is not done. There is still more to do. Australia is still in the midst of a global pandemic. More than 800,000 new Covid cases a day [and] Europe has gone into a double-dip recession. And only recently, we saw a statewide lockdown in Western Australia.
We must secure Australia’s economic recovery. Tonight’s budget will do exactly that.
Tonight’s budget will invest more in our Covid health response to keep Australians safe. Tonight’s budget will invest in infrastructure and skills to create more jobs and provide incentives to businesses to do what they do best – hire, innovate and to grow. And tonight’s budget will see record commitments on essential services, disability support, mental health, aged care and women’s safety.
Australia’s strong position today is not the result of luck. Australia makes its own luck. And tonight’s budget will lay out the Morrison government’s economic plan to secure Australia’s recovery.
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So that’s some of what the government is planning.
Let’s have a bit of a look at what the opposition’s tone for today will be.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is speaking with ABC radio now, and his message is basically that this spendathon budget just proves that Labor was right all along.
The fact is, a range of the measures that have been announced so far have been measures that Labor has called for either at the last election or before ...
We would have done things much earlier.
No doubt pre-empting a victory lap from treasurer Josh Frydenberg on the rising job numbers, Albanese has thrown cold water on the impressive “6% unemployment” figures.
There’s still 2 million Australians either unemployed or underemployed ...
If you work for 1 hour a week, you don’t show up in the figures.”
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Good morning
Happy budget day my darlings!
It’s Christmas for nerds, and luckily I’m a big nerd as well, and I’m very excited to jump into it with you.
Matilda Boseley here, minding the politics blog while Amy Reminkis prepares to be locked away in the budget room today.
Amy and the rest of the politics team will bring you all the ins and outs of the budget as soon as they are released (around 7pm), but until then I’ll bring you all the updates here.
Now to the big announcements this morning:
First up, the federal government is expected to pour billions of dollars into aged care and mental health after years of sector leaders begging for a funding boost.
Mental health advocates have long implored the federal government to dramatically increase funding.
But maybe don’t get too excited – experts have warned the packages are unlikely to make up for years of funding shortfalls.
Now it looks like mental health funding will be pitched as a productivity measure by the government – because you know, happy and healthy people work better as cogs in the capitalist machine.
But there is a very different motivation behind the aged care boost, rumoured to be almost $18bn over four years.
Health minister Greg Hunt has said the budget would draw a fundamental line in the sand after a damning royal commission report was released earlier in the year, calling for radical changes across the troubled system.
The big next budget headline in the papers this morning is for young jobseekers – with the government sending a clear message that “if you can’t earn, learn”.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is expected to announce a $1bn extension of the jobtrainer program, which offers free or low-fee courses to young and unemployed people.
But there is a catch, according to the Sydney Morning Herald: the budget could also dictate that some younger Australians must take advantage of these training programs or potentially lose income supports such as Youth Allowance.
(This comes as the government prepares to dump a hiring credit for people under 35 which supported just 1,100 of the 450,000 jobs it was supposed to.)
According to a report in the Australian, this is all expected to culminate in a post-Covid jobs boom that could reduce the predicted budget deficits by $53bn this year.
They are reporting that the soon-to-be-announced budget deficit for 2020-21 will be $161bn, compared with the $213.7bn forecast in the 6 October budget.
OK, with that, why don’t we jump into this massive day of news.
If there is something you reckon I’ve missed or think should be in the blog but isn’t, shoot me a message on Twitter @MatildaBoseley or email me at matilda.boseley@theguardian.com.
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