Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Amy Remeikis

Labor states write to Morrison demanding confirmation of no future cuts – as it happened

Bill Shorten in Perth on the campaign trail, where he hit back at Coalition claims Labor wants to increase taxes.
Bill Shorten in Perth on the campaign trail, where he hit back at Coalition claims Labor wants to increase taxes. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

On that note, let’s call it a day.

As I said, tomorrow is the final day of full campaigning before the Easter break. But I can’t imagine we are going to get a change of pace. One of the key takeaways from this campaign so far, is that no one particularly cares that it is on.

The political parties know that. It’s why you are getting the same messages over and over again. Like a George Costanza answering machine message, they’re hoping that eventually, something will catch on.

Believe it or not.

But in the meantime, us stuck listening to the messages over and over and over again are being driven slightly crazy.

It’s like being stuck in an Escher print.

An Escher-style Polaroid in a Polaroid in a Polaroid –Polaroid: The Magic Material by Florian Kaps
An Escher-style Polaroid in a Polaroid in a Polaroid –Polaroid: The Magic Material by Florian Kaps Photograph: Florian Kaps

(Which is a recurring nightmare of mine, but then again, so is this, so I guess dreams really can come true.)

But with the campaign back tomorrow, comes the blog, so we will just continue riding this together.

A big thank you to everyone who followed along today, you all do make it easier. We hope to see you back tomorrow morning. And in between, as always, take care of you.

Updated

For those asking about the Michelle Landry/Adani background, you can find that here, from Katharine Murphy’s report:

One of the Morrison government’s strongest backers of the controversial Adani coal project, Michelle Landry, says the company has attended fundraisers for her re-election campaign, but she doesn’t have a figure on how much has been donated.

Landry, who is the member for Capricornia, told the ABC on Wednesday she was not in control of her campaign finances so she wasn’t in a position to nominate a specific figure for Adani donations. She said taking financial support from a company trying to secure federal and state backing for the project ‘certainly doesn’t sway me’.

‘My main job is to look after the people of Capricornia, and [the Adani project] is about jobs for the people of Capricornia,’ the Queensland MP said. “I have the biggest coal mining electorate in this nation, and I stand up for my people here and will continue to do that.’

Updated

The Labor campaign looks to be heading off again (soon, if not already) with my bet on the Northern Territory as the next cab off the rank. It would make sense, given where they are, and where they have been.

The Liberal campaign is in Tasmania overnight.

There’s been an agreement to not campaign on Good Friday (or the main Easter holidays) so tomorrow, which also marks a week since the election was called, also marks the last big day of campaigning for a couple of days.

I think everyone is going to welcome that break.

Updated

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting Advance Australia says a death threat allegedly made to Captain GetUp (or the man within the suit) has been reported to Queensland police:

The conservative lobby group Advance Australia has made a complaint to Queensland police about a reported death threat made to its ‘satirical superhero’ Captain GetUp.

The caped conservative crusader, who is confusingly named after progressive activist group GetUp, is a superhero-style character created to drum up publicity for Advance Australia causes, and to highlight what it says is GetUp’s agenda ‘to change Australia’s way of life’.

Updated

This was Chris Bowen’s response to that very question today:

Well, I make this point, we have low wages growth in Australia under this government, and Bill is the only leader putting it on the agenda. Whether it be the living wage, whether it be reversing the penalty rate cuts, whether it be cracking down on sham contractors. Bill Shorten is the alternative prime minister putting wages on the agenda.

Now on the superannuation guarantee, it actually may be one of the ways and is one of the ways we can actually improve the share of the economy going to workers over time. Putting the miracle of compound interest to work for them through superannuation. That’s what the SG does.

Now, some people will oppose superannuation increases, just like they opposed it being introduced, just like the Liberal party opposed it being introduced in the first place and said that superannuation would be a disaster. It’s one of Labor’s great achievements. We’re very proud of it, and only Labor will defend it.

And the other point that I would make is that we have as well as the policies that Bill outlined, outlining policies to improve superannuation for women. It is not conscionable that so many women in Australia are retiring in Australia into poverty, having committed no crime but to work hard all their life. We want to pay the superannuation guarantee during paid parental leave, and we want to crack down on superannuation theft. That’s what it is. Employers, some, bad employers stealing from their employees.

We’ve all seen too much of it as local members. We know this is a big problem. The Liberals ignore it. We’ll make superannuation a national employment standard, so they can be pursued through the courts, because employers who don’t pay superannuation are stealing from the employees and they’re also getting an unfair advantage over their competitors who are doing the right thing.

Updated

Labor's super plan gets rap on knuckles from Grattan Institute

And on Labor’s super policy, Danielle Wood says:

“What we have suggested is it just wouldn’t be a good policy – largely because you are asking people to take a hit to their incomes today, in order to boost their incomes in the future in retirement.

“What we have said, and what modelling is showing, is that people are actually doing OK at the moment. Almost all Australians can expect to be above the OECD benchmark of 70% of their pre-retirement income, in retirement, and so asking them to take a further hit to wages today, doesn’t necessarily [seem] to be a good idea.

“Bill Shorten seems to be suggesting the money won’t come out of wages, and we don’t think that makes sense, from a theoretical prospective and in terms of the evidence of what we have seen from the past, when the super guarantee has risen, we do see that wage growth comes off.”

Updated

What about the government’s claims that the interest bill on the national debt will drop, because debt will start to be paid off, as well as drops in the welfare bill, as employment grows, will offset things.

“So if you run budget surpluses for a period, net debt comes down, and the interest bill comes down,” Wood says.

“It certainly can’t explain the entire differential, and it also, the size of the surpluses in the next four years, also rely on that incredible spending restraint that I just talked about, so it is partly self-reinforcing in terms of the assumptions.

“Will the welfare bill come down? Well employment growth, unemployment’s forecast in the budget to stabilise at the point at which it is already at, so it is difficult to see that you would have a strong downward trajectory in terms of those unemployment payments, for example.”

So given the surprises which pop up – like natural disasters, for instance, Danielle Wood tells David Speers she does not believe that the government can lower its spending. That spending would be maintained at its historic levels.

Which, in Wood’s analysis, means cuts would have to be made somewhere, in order for the forecast surpluses to be met.

“Exactly right, so we have seen quite a low rate of spending growth, and we have done that through a series of policy decisions, which have restricted access to a lot of government payments, things like eligibility for family tax benefit b, we’ve changed the asset test for the aged pension, all of those have actually brought the rate of spending growth down.

“To then halve it again looks to me to be incredibly optimistic.”

Updated

Asked if she is saying there would need to be a spending cut, or the rate of spending growth would be slower, Wood says:

The rate of spending growth would be lower. The $40bn figure which has been quoted is what spending would be, under the Treasury numbers, where we have spending as a share of GDP coming down to 23.6%, compared to if spending stayed at its current share of the economy.

So if it stayed at 24.9%, as it is this year, as it has been on average over the two terms of the Coalition government, the difference between those positions by the end of the decade is about $40bn a year.

Updated

Meanwhile, Grattan Institute director Danielle Wood was speaking to David Speers on Sly about Pfeo and what it meant in terms of the institute’s analysis the government would have to make $40bn worth of cuts to make its forecasted surpluses.

The Pfeo figures suggest these are Treasury’s numbers, Treasury owns these numbers now, the questions I was raising though, I think, still remain – how is it that we end up with a substantially lower rate of spending growth, both over the next four years and then over the decade, compared to historical rates of growth. Already it would be a halving of the rate of spending growth over the next four years, compared to what we’ve seen over the two terms of this government.

And that was already historically low. So they look to me, incredibly heroic. It is unclear to me how those numbers come about. Other than the fact that we do know that when Treasury puts together those numbers, they are assuming current policies. So effectively no change in policy.

So if you wanted to believe, they can contest the next three elections without introducing any new spending, that partly explains why you have a moderation of spending growth.

And that is why I would say the government shouldn’t be relying on these numbers to say this particular set of very large personal income tax cuts are affordable, because they are not supposed to be a realistic picture of what the trajectory of spending would actually look like, presumably government does introduce some policy changes.

Updated

On Michelle Landry admitting she has received some campaign donations from Adani, Simon Birmingham says:

“She made clear she has no engagement in terms of the fundraising for her campaign or the dollars, but she knew they’d attended a function or two. She said that. Let’s keep it in perspective. She knew when she invited people to come to fundraising events they’ve turned up and attended a function or two.

“...You shouldn’t create conspiracies and nor is anybody else. Adani is being subject to the same laws of the land as everybody else in terms of the environmental hoops they have to jump through.

“The conditional approval that was given by the mine to proceed to the next stages of assessment contained more conditions than any ore environmental approval of any Australian project ... They’ve hardly had an easy time of it. There are further hoops the project will have to meet through in meeting the conditions to get through to production.”

Updated

Patricia Karvelas moves on to whether the low and middle income tax cuts need to be legislated or not.

PK: The Prime Minister originally said the low- and middle-income tax off sets wouldn’t have to be legislated be they do. That’s a significant blunder isn’t it?

Simon Birmingham: There’s plenty of time to make sure there we put in place the tax measures we’re taking to this election and we are very confident that if we’re elected we’ll have a clear plan date. There’s no doubt about the different tax policies between the Liberal and Labor parties. People vote LiberalNational they’ll get lower taxes and I suppose they’ll...

PK: You can’t do it administratively can you?

SB: We want to see our entire tax package implemented. That’s what we’re taking to this election and we’ll take to the Parliament as quickly after the election as we can. Six years ago we promised the Australian economy a balanced budget, more jobs and secure borders and we have delivered on those. This election we’re taking to the Australian people a strong economy, more jobs, 1.25 million more jobs over the next few years, lower taxes, we’ll deliver on those things.

Wild times in Kooyong

Folks following the campaign closely will know the treasurer Josh Frydenberg is under the pump in his blue ribbon seat of Kooyong, with GetUp pouring resources into the seat and challenges from a high profile Greens candidate and a climate-focussed independent. Frydenberg has happened upon a script that GetUp is using in his seat for voter contacts.

Under a heading: “what are some bad things Josh Frydenberg has done” volunteers are prompted to say “Josh Frydenberg was part of the coup that removed Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister. Frydenberg failed to get any real action on climate change. He’s part of the chaos in Canberra. He’s in Coalition with Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce”.

Under a heading: “Josh Frydenberg is a good person!” volunteers are prompted to say “Mr Frydenberg might be a nice person, but he is part of a bad government. Malcolm Turnbull was a nice person too, but he was cut down by Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott, and they are the people who run the Liberal party today.”

As a consequence of the script, the head of GetUp, Paul Oosting, also found himself under the pump on Melbourne radio on Wednesday morning, given there is no evidence Frydenberg was directly involved in the move against Turnbull.

Here’s a bit of that.

Jon Faine: The words in your script are, and your volunteers are saying to people “Josh Frydenberg was part of the coup that removed Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister” – that is misleading.
Paul Oosting: Well I don’t think he became deputy prime minister by accident did he?

Jon Faine: Your words that you’re putting in your volunteers’ mouths, do you concede they are wrong? “Was part of the coup that removed Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.”

Paul Oosting: Well there was undoubtedly a coup that he was part of within the Liberal party as all Australians saw it play out. There’s been a lot of um-

Jon Faine: It depends what your definition of part of actually is isn’t it? I mean in that sense every member of the Liberal party caucus was part of the coup but that’s not really fair is it?

Paul Oosting: Um well I think it is fair actually. I think Australians are fed up with those leadership coups that occur whether it’s in the Liberal party or the Labor party-

Jon Faine: But you’re implying that Josh Frydenberg was part of the plot to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull which is factually wrong. Do you acknowledge that it’s wrong or not?Greg Hunt was part of the coup, Michael Sukkar was part of the coup, Alan Tudge was part of the coup, Peter Dutton was the leader of the coup, but to say Josh Frydenberg was part of the coup is just wrong. Why don’t you acknowledge that?

Paul Oosting: On what basis are you ruling out his involvement ah Jon?

Jon Faine: Do you acknowledge it’s wrong or not?

Paul Oosting: No ... I’m just asking on what basis you think that he wasn’t involved given the position that he played throughout that saga and um since?

And so it went.

Updated

The debate continues over Australia Institute modelling:

PK: There’s modelling coming out tomorrow, by the Australia Institute, and it’s found that your plans to reduce the top marginal tax rate to 30% will deliver $77 billion into tax cuts to people already earning more than $180,000 a year over the next decade. Why do people on such high incomes need such a large tax cut? That’s a staggering figure, $77 billion.

SB: The Australia Institute is basically the research tank of choice for GetUp so let’s park their views.

PK: No, do you contest that figure, $77 billion.

SB: I have not seen the Australia Institute research and frankly I discount it given the biased source that it comes from. What I think is important for Australians to understand is the divergence in terms of the tax policies of the Liberal party and National party versus the Labor party kicks in at $45,000. Labor seems to think that if you’re earning more than $45,000 you ought to be paying more tax in the future relative to what we believe. We have made it very clear that we will deliver significant lift first and foremost this year, more than $1,000 for many families by attracting the low- and middle-income tax offset. Then we want to fix tax creep and we’ll fix that by abolishing 33 cents in the bracket...

PK: But I asked you about reducing that down to 30 cents and increasing the threshold up to $45,000 wage earners which means the vast majority of Australian families and Australian workers will never pay more than 30 cents in the dollar in tax. So is $77 billion in tax cuts going to people earning over $180,000?

SB: High income earners, those top income earners will still pay around 60% of income tax...

PK: Sure, will they get back it is... $77 billion?

SB: They’ll pay the vast majority of tax. We want to ensure the middle income earners are not paying more than 30 cents in the dollar.

PK: I know that’s your tax plan.

SB: Getting pushed into a higher bracket... it’s very important tax plan for those Australians.

Updated

Asked repeatedly by Patricia Karvelas to guarantee there would be no cuts over 10 years, Simon Birmingham says he “can not be clearer” while not saying the words, yes or no:

SB: Absolutely we can and we can do that because we’ve got clearly laid out in the budget both the forward estimates and the medium-term projections, demonstrating that the economic growth that we will continue to deliver as a government, who is able to soundly manage our economy, allow prisons to grow, create more jobs and generate more revenue, we will reinvest that as we have done in growing funds for schools, hospitals and roads because that’s what we value. The difference is...

PK: No cuts to health or education for 10 years you’re telling me, under a Coalition government?

SB: Support for health and schools and roads will continue to grow...

PK: There’ll be no cuts for 10 years...

SB: I cannot be clearer.

PK: For 10 years?

SB: I cannot be clearer...

Updated

Simon Birmingham is on Afternoon Briefing on the ABC. He responds to the Labor states letter asking for a guarantee about health and education spending:

The states and territories can be confident there’ll be continued growth in funding for schools and hospitals and roads and today’s pre-election fiscal outlook, released, independently prepared by the Treasury and the Australian government, demonstrates that we can under current policy settings deliver the budget surplus, growing that surplus over time to 1% of GDP. That we can continue to invest growing sums in schools, hospitals and roads and we can deliver the tax cuts we have promised to the Australian people.

All of that comes from having a growing economy which underpins jobs growth, revenue receipts to government and allows us to be able to do that.

Updated

I am shocked. Shocked that there is gambling occurring here.

Updated

Does a tax cut need to be legislated first?

So that would suggest these tax cuts do have to be legislated in order to be in place for 1 July, when people can start putting their tax returns in, not just delivered administratively because both Labor and the Coalition agree on them, publicly.

What does that mean?

If not legislated, the government’s promised $1,080 tax rebate for low- and middle-income earners won’t be in place.

Labor has also promised just under $1,000 for the same earners, but has maintained it would need to be legislated first.

Updated

Samantha Maiden reported on this for the New Daily just after the budget.

From her report:

The Australian Tax Office has warned the government it will not deliver planned $1080 tax cuts from July 1, unless they can be rushed through Parliament before the end of the financial year.

Less than 24 hours after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg insisted the timing of the election was ‘no impediment’ to paying 10 million workers the tax refund from July 1, the ATO has told The New Daily that it will not act until the laws have royal assent.

The ATO ruled out preparing for a July 1 start date by delivering the tax cuts ‘administratively’, as it was asked to do in 2016, on the basis that tax cuts had bipartisan support.

‘The measures announced as part of the 2019-20 budget are subject to receiving royal assent and are not yet law,’ the ATO spokesman said.

‘The ATO requires law in order to deliver the measure as announced, and, as such, it cannot be delivered administratively.’

Updated

Labor has jumped on Scott Morrison’s comments about legislating the low- and middle-income earners tax cuts.

Pefo says this:

There are a number of tax measures included in the 2019-20 Budget that take effect on or before 1 July 2019. Many of these measures can be legislated at a later time within 2019-20 without materially affecting the estimates. However, the immediate relief to low- and middle-income earners component of the Lower taxes for hard-working Australians: Building on the Personal Income Tax Plan measure requires the relevant legislation to be passed before the increase to the low and middle income tax offset (LMITO) can be provided for the 2018-19 financial year. If not legislated prior to 1 July 2019, the revenue cost of this measure would need to be reassessed.

Morrison said:

What happens traditionally with the tax office is where there is a bipartisan commitment to matters that they can often go ahead and admit the tax arrangements on that basis. There are measures they’ve been able to do that. It is our intention to legislate them. When I introduced the tax relief in last year’s budget, and people. And deny the full implementation of our tax plan. Now, we were successful in legislating that. As we were successful last time, we will be successful again.

The difference?

These lines:

What happens traditionally with the tax office is where there is a bipartisan commitment to matters that they can often go ahead and admit the tax arrangements on that basis. There are measures they’ve been able to do that.

Updated

Q: The Treasury statement seems to suggest that the low income tax offsets must be legislated. What happened?

Scott Morrison: What happens traditionally with the tax office is where there is a bipartisan commitment to matters that they can often go ahead and admit the tax arrangements on that basis. There are measures they’ve been able to do that. It is our intention to legislate them. When I introduced the tax relief in last year’s budget, and people. And deny the full implementation of our tax plan. Now, we were successful in legislating that. As we were successful last time, we will be successful again.

Q: Would you try and legislate them before July 1?

SM: We would seek to legislate them at the earliest possible opportunity.

Updated

Scott Morrison:

What the Labor party refuses to do – what Bill Shorten refused to do – is to tell you a, what his policies are, and, b, how much they will cost you. There is a big transaction cost for Australians. There is a big cost to changing government at this election.

That cost is not just the $387bn that Australians would pay in higher taxes, but it’s also the impact of the policies like their carbon abatement policies that Angus Taylor has just taken you through. These are the costs he won’t tell you about. These are the impacts he won’t tell you about. And if he won’t tell you what they are, I would encourage you not to vote for them.

Updated

Angus Taylor is asked, a few times, about Eastern Australia Irrigation, and says he has no more to say on it.

I have responded to this. There’s no basis impact on the claims.

Updated

Scott Morrison is speaking on Pefo.

He says it confirms the government’s plan.

He’s still in Tasmania.

Two very different takes, taking the exact line you would imagine they would, on Pefo.

From Josh Frydenberg’s and Mathias Cormann’s statement:

Today’s independent Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2019 confirms the integrity of the Budget delivered on 2 April 2019 and verifies that the Budget is back in the black.

The 2019 PEFO confirms the $7.1 billion surplus for this coming year, with surpluses building to a total of $45 billion over the next four years and increasing to 1 per cent as a share of GDP over the medium term.

In the 2019 PEFO the Secretaries of Treasury and Finance have certified that the assumptions and economic forecasts underpinning our 2019-20 Budget are credible and conservative.

In particular, the 2019 PEFO verifies the integrity of our medium term projections in the 2019-20 Budget and confirm that they reflect the impact of decisions that have already been taken and already been publicly announced.

It shows that the Government can boost funding for all the essential services Australians rely on, including for hospitals and schools, and deliver income tax relief to hard working Australians while delivering surpluses for the entire decade to 2029-30 and paying off Labor’s debt.

The 2019 PEFO also confirms that our Liberal National Government uses prudent, cautious and realistic forecasting assumptions as the basis for our Budgets, including for commodity prices.

Meanwhile, Labor is standing up in a bit on this, but Jim Chalmer’s first take was:

Updated

Labor has said it would review the commissioners appointed to the disability royal commission, but the Greens senator Jordon Steele-John wants a commitment they will be replaced:

Having commissioners who can be trusted by the disability community is absolutely critical to ensure that we achieve justice, so I’m glad to see the Labor party have come part of the way towards acknowledging the very serious concerns we have with John Ryan and Barbara Bennett,” Steele-John said in a statement.

“However, what I can’t reconcile is why there is any need for review. More than 60 disability organisations – most of Australia’s peak advocacy bodies – have called for this urgent change, it should be an easy call for the Labor party to make.

“If the Royal Commission does not have the trust of the people it is designed to serve and deliver justice for, then it is not able to do its job properly. The ongoing involvement of both John Francis Ryan and Barbara Bennett is untenable.”

Updated

The attorney general, Christian Porter, has responded to (the former LNP president) Gary Spence’s loss in the high court. The case had a little sting for the commonwealth, with the court ruling the provision of federal law that provides immunity from state donation bans is invalid.

Porter:

“The government respects the decision of the high court. Given that the reasons for the decision have not been published, it is not possible at this stage to comment further.”

Updated

Annnnnnnd the pre-election fiscal outlook is out.

http://treasury.gov.au/publication/2019-pefo

Labor states write to Morrison demanding confirmation of no future cuts

The Labor states have written to the Morrison government demanding an “urgent confirmation” that commonwealth surpluses won’t be “built on funding cuts to hospitals, schools and infrastructure”.

This is a straight chip-and-chase from the Labor states – backing in their federal colleagues to continue putting pressure on the Coalition to explain if there will be a $40bn cut in federal spending, as suggested in an analysis by the Grattan Institute.

From the letter:

The Treasurers of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory are calling on you to confirm that there will be no further funding cuts to hospitals, schools, infrastructure and other essential services that Australians rely on.

The 2019-20 Australian Government Budget confirms that spending as a percentage of GDP will decrease from 24.9% in 2018-19 to 23.6% in 2029-30. At the same time, receipts as a percentage of GDP are projected to increase from 25.0% in 2018-19 to 25.5% in 2029-30.

This is a significant departure from the medium-term forecasts included in the 2016-17 Budget which stated that “payments as a proportion of GDP are forecast to fall to 25.2 per cent by the end of the forward estimates but rise and then stabilise over the medium term”.

Analysis undertaken by Grattan Institute indicates that the Commonwealth Government’s projections require a cut to spending of about $40 billion a year by 2029-30 – the equivalent of $30 billion in today’s dollars. Grattan Institute have stated that “achieving such a reduction would require significant falls in spending across almost every major spending area”.

Yesterday Scott Morrison dismissed the Grattan Institute analysis as “absolute, complete rubbish”.

Updated

A transcript of Bill Shorten’s conversation with ABC radio Perth includes his view on Melissa Parke stepping down as the Labor candidate for Curtin.

Shorten: Well I like Melissa. I think she is an accomplished woman and she was a good member of parliament when she was there and she’s also worked overseas for the United Nations and refugees, so I like her. In terms of her candidacy, she thought it would be good to run and then she made a decision that she didn’t want to become a distraction and of her own volition she decided to take a step back again.

Host: So you didn’t ask her to stand down?

BS: No. And the point about it is that she is a strong person. Anyone that knows Melissa knows she makes her own decisions. Having said that, in terms of what she has actually said, I wasn’t there. I am not saying she is wrong, I am not saying she is right.

H: Are you embarrassed by it?

BS: No, she has strong views. I like Melissa. It didn’t work out on this occasion. But I am not one of those people that is going to … I like my team and I think that politics is better suited when you say positive things rather than everyone piles in.

H: And now Josh Wilson supports a two-state solution in Israel and that is also causing you some tension?

BS: No, he supports party policy and that is our party policy, a two-state solution – the right of Israel to exist behind secure borders but also recognising the legitimate aspirations of Palestinian people to their own country.

Updated

Josh Frydenberg is in WA, where he is continuing the website fight.

This is an actual thing which is happening this election. The parties are attacking each other over their websites.

Well, the Coalition website has enormous amount of detail and, in fact, I was looking through its economic plan again just this morning and it spells out what we have delivered for the Australian people and what we’ll continue to deliver.

The Coalition appears to have four policy plans – I tried opening it for further detail, but it won’t open on my browser.

Labor has taken down parts of its policy. It says it is updating the website.

Does anyone care about any of this? Anyone?

Updated

Meanwhile, this is still a thing which is happening:

Updated

George Christensen appears to have deleted his tweet about MPs’ travel.

Updated

Yesterday Labor went on the attack with a Grattan Institute analysis that found the 2019 budget’s projections of a shrinking ratio of government spending to GDP implies a cut of $40bn a year in spending.

The Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos responded that cuts would not be needed because the Coalition has kept spending growth to 1.9% of GDP and it will “grow the pie” of GDP.

Danielle Wood, the budget policy program director at Grattan, isn’t buying it.

“The figure of 1.9% spending growth under the Coalition is wrong, I get 2.6%,” she told Guardian Australia.

Wood explains a few tricks are behind the 1.9% figure:

  • Taking 2013-14 as the baseline and blaming Labor for that year – even though the Coalition were in charge for three-quarters of the time, during which they gave a cash injection to the RBA to make the last Labor year look worse; and
  • Assuming that the spending restraint projected over the next four years comes about - so the Coalition is running not on its record but its projections.

Grattan’s analysis assumed nominal GDP growth of 4.5% from 2021-22 to the end of the decade. Wood said that projecting growth beyond that would be a “non-standard assumption”. “Are the Coalition seriously saying they can boost GDP growth beyond that?”

Too long, didn’t read – it seems spending restraint/grow the pie logic can’t magic away the projected fall in government spending.

Updated

The Australia Institute has released a report of its own ahead of this long weekend:

Updated

Anyone with political aspirations for this election, the clock is ticking:

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) issued a reminder today that individuals wishing to stand as a House of Representatives or Senate candidate in the 2019 federal election have until 12 noon Tuesday 23 April to lodge their nomination.

Electoral commissioner Tom Rogers said a correctly completed nomination form and accompanying deposit in the form of a bank cheque or cash must be received by the relevant AEC officer by the 12 noon 23 April deadline.

Incomplete or late nominations cannot be accepted.

Updated

Chris Bowen was asked about George Christensen’s travel and said it was unacceptable for any MP to be outside their electorate for so long.

The ABC cuts from the press conference, and with it goes the transcription service.

Shorten continues:

This government has put together a surplus to get through the next six weeks. We all know it’s tied together with sticky tape and projections about wages. If we want to secure growth for the future, you vote Labor, because this government’s growth plan relies on low wages and big corporate profits and relies upon cutting services. The beauty of our plan for growth is that fairness and decency are good economic guidelines.

If we get wages moving again, tick, economic confidence. If we invest in the infrastructure of the nation, as with Perth with roads and Metro Net. If we invest in people. If we’re going to give all of our three-year-olds the chance to go to kindergarten ...

Updated

That continues:

Q: Is there a figure on how much it’s going to cost the economy?

Shorten: I’ve said that I think ... I don’t think, that I know, our economy is going to grow. I don’t accept the characterisation that it is a cost. We’re going to grow. And we’re going to grow because we are going to move to a lower carbon pollution economy. And there’s other aspects which means that we will grow. But the modelling has been done. McKibbin did his modelling - 45% with international offsets, 26 for government without.

Q: It is forecast that we’re facing increasing headwinds, domestically and internationally. There’s businesses out there who are concerned about facing a recession. What happens if we don’t grow over the next five years?

Shorten: Well, first of all, what I would say, what contributes to challenges for the economy is this current government. The economy is more than just climate change. What I would put to you is this - global debt is rising. And under this government, they have no plan to reduce debt. Global debt about 10 years ago, was about $US130tn, now $US230tn around the world.

What we’ve been lucky, as a world economy, is that interest rates have remained low. But this government has constructed a wafer thin forecast of a surplus next year, by robbing the NDIS, by hiding the cuts they’re going to make.

What we’ve done with our economic reforms, and this is the bigger story, is that we’ve been very upfront. We know that what we need to do in this country is properly fund our schools and hospitals, properly fund our TAFE and our childcare.

What we also need to do is give relief to the low and middle class taxpayers, and that’s what we’re doing in our first term, but we also need to improve our financial bottom line as a nation.

Updated

Q: Mr Shorten, you’ve had 23 hours to think about yesterday’s answer. Can you give final detail on how much the emissions reduction target will impact the economy? What that figure will be? And you’ve talked about offsets. How much money do you expect or believe that you need to spend on the international offsets to meet the target?

Shorten: We will see across the 2020s, as a result of our energy policies, and our climate policies, GDP growth of about 23%. In terms of offset, we will allow companies to purchase offsets if they need to, if they can’t meet the carbon emission reductions by changes in productivity in the workplaces.

Q: I’m not sure that’s a financial figure in how much it’s going to cost the economy because BA Economics says it will cost $172bn?

BS: I disagree.

Q: Do you disagree?

BS: I do disagree and what we’ll do is provide you further information about international offsets. But I don’t accept that the price of buying international offsets is anywhere in that dimension.

Updated

Q: The cut in the electricity sector – will that be more than the 26% cut in the sector that the Coalition is promising?

Bill Shorten: No, our target is to reduce by 45%. That’s our target. Our target is 45% for the electricity sector, yes.

Updated

He continues:

This is not a theory. What we’ve seen is rightwing employers taking over industrial relations in this country, recommending to companies strategies to terminate agreements. There have been hundreds of terminations every year.

These are good and practical measures.

We’ll have more to say on how to help women get better wage rises too. What we often see in Australia is that an industry that’s predominately feminised.

What we see there is that on average, their pay is less than an industry which is vastly populated by men. But I don’t think that when you have feminised industries, the value of the work is any less.

What it reflects is that for too long, we’ve seen a gender unfairness and that feminised industries, even though the work is important, like early childhood education – gee that’s an important job – but because it’s feminised, we think that it is disadvantaged.”

Updated

Q: On wages, Mr Shorten. You’ll be meeting with some more workers today, but I would like to find out what you are going to do to increase their wages beyond your policies of re-introducing penalty rates and cracking down on labour hire. How will you work to increase the wages of people who are not on the minimum wage?

Shorten:

What we’ll do is – the labour hire crackdown actually does help people above the minimum wage.

... But in some companies, someone who works directly for the employer and then someone else with the same direct trade qualifications who works not for the employer but for a labour hire company who contracts the person to the in-house company.

The problem is that you have two people working alongside each other and are paid different hourly rates. What this does is, this dampens wages growth. Because what happens is - if you can employ someone from a labour hire cheaper than direct labour, what you then do is say to the direct labour – I’d like to give you a pay rise but I can employ someone from labour hire more cheaply.

Another thing to help people above the minimum wage is we’re going to say in enterprise bargaining, at the end of a three-year agreement, the employer cannot terminate that agreement and say – everyone is back to the award, which could be 50% or 60% or 100% less than what they’re getting. Or say you don’t have to go back to the award but you do have to accept a significant wages cut.

Updated

Q: With your climate change policy, what proportion of the emissions reduction will be required from the electricity sector?

Bill Shorten:

Well, we want to make sure that we’re getting all of the sectors contributing to it. We said that we want to see the electricity or the power generation industry contribute to do its bit by 45%. We think that it can do that. We believe, through our system, and I’m not too proud to say it – we’re borrowing from Mr Turnbull, under then treasurer Mr Morrison’s National Energy Guarantee.

We think that this is a good system, which can actually be made to work, and as we explained to an earlier question, using international offset, we think it’s sensible that it is considered.

Updated

Shorten continues:

The fact of the matter is – if you earn $40,000 or $50,000, you don’t tend to be investing it in the investment property or Cayman Islands. You spend every dollar that you get. When we shrink the volume of money in the economy, when we shrink and cut by $80m, that’s $80m less that’s spent in the economy. Labor has got a plan to get wages going. Now, I know that the government says that wage rises are bad, but they’re actually not. The United Kingdom saw an increase in some of its minimum wages and it saw an increase in employment, not a decrease. What we want to have is modest, but meaningful pay rises. We want to work with the independent umpire, the unions, the employers.

I get that if a small business is worried about capacity to pay that is a relevant thing to take into account. But I think ignoring wage stagnation is a disaster for the economy, because after all, as your opening question correctly said – everything is going up in Australia except your wages. And only Labor has a plan to get your wages moving.

Updated

Q: Mr Shorten, every day you say to Australians that everything is going up except the wages, but the Grattan report says that the superannuation guarantee could keep wages down by 2%. Are they wrong?

Shorten:

What the empirical evidence shows is that over time, when there’s an increase in compulsory superannuation, it hasn’t affected wages growth. So I’m familiar with what they say, but I don’t accept it based on previous evidence.

What I would also say about the more general point about wage stagnation in Australia, is - it’s a problem. Well, no lesser person than the governor of the Reserve Bank has said it’s the number one issue - low wages growth.

No political party serious to form a government can be taken seriously unless they have a wages policy. This government does not have a wages policy, other than patting themselves on the back about low wages outcomes. I think the finance minister in one of his media appearances said that low wages are caused by the architecture that they’ve created in the economy.

This goes to the heart of one of the big issues in this election. It is a referendum on wages. Did you know that this Easter, because of the penalty rate cuts, all the people who will be serving us as we have our holiday time, the total of $880m reduction in penalty rates. That’s what the cost of these arbitrary cuts are. Not just going to low-paid workers although that’s a disaster, but $80m less than low-paid workers have to spend in the economy.

Updated

Q: You ruled out any further changes to superannuation taxes.

Shorten: Let’s be really clear, other than what we’ve already announced.

Q: Other than what you’ve announced. What about any changes to superannuation arrangements to stop accounts being eaten up by fees and charges?

Chris Bowen:

One of the important things, just to answer that as well, that Bill, kindly, when he was superannuation minister as part of the Council of Superannuation Custodians, which is to take superannuation out of the budget cycle, to have a transparent approach to the change to superannuation every five years.

Which we have said, remains our approach in government, and that was Bill’s idea when we were in government. It hasn’t been implemented because we haven’t been in office for six years, but it’s a good idea. People are right to say that they want more certainty for superannuation and only Labor will deliver the Council of Superannuation Custodians.

In relation to the other matters, fees and non-performing funds. I would refer you to speeches that I’ve made and that Clare O’Neill is making as late as today, on Labor’s general approach.

To be fair to both the government and the opposition, we have both said that we’ll take our time to work through the Productivity Commission review.

We said that we’re not attracted to the best in show model, but it’s a substantial report. I’ve said, for example, that no underperforming fund will have a friend in Bill Shorten or Chris Bowen, and I don’t care if they’re a retail fund or an industry fund. They’ll have no friends in the Labor government and will need to lift their performance or get out. Of course, we’ll work through with treasury advice of the best ways of implementing that approach and of course, we want to put downward pressure on fees as we did when Bill and I were respective superannuation ministers with MySuper and those reforms, and there’s more to do.

We said that just a small reduction in fees over the working life massively changes somebody’s retirement balance when they retire. We’re committed to that, and I’ve said it before but it’s so important to us. The reform is to win the superannuation, and superannuation theft, are very high priority force an incoming Labor government.

Updated

Shorten continues:

I’m not going to make a promise about tax cuts which are a mirage which this government hasn’t explained how they pay for them. I think that Australians want to see the detail and that’s what we’re doing with our plans and proposals.

For example, for me, the killer number which shows this government’s either radically out of touch or just lying to the people of Australia, is that under Mr Morrison’s tax plan for Australians, if you’re a millionaire, you’ll get a tax cut under Mr Morrison of $11,000. But if you’re a person on $40,000, Mr Morrison only wants to give you $11 a week.

It just shows you his priorities and who is backing in. And the only way that he can pull off this stunt of giving millionaires $11,000 in tax refunds and people on $40,000, $11 a week, is by taking the axe to health and education services. And as we’ve seen today, I just think that health is more important than giving a millionaire an $11,000 tax cut.

Updated

Q: Mr Shorten, opposed to superannuation taxation, income tax. The Government is going to the election with tax cuts aimed at people on $90,000 to $120,000 in 2022. They are not high income earner, if you live in Sydney, you live in Perth, that is not a high income.

What do you say to those people that, under your present plan, you are not offering anything else?

Shorten: First of all, this Government’s going with proposed tax cuts which means that you have to vote in at least two elections. By 2022, we think that this Government is making up these tax cuts. In other words, they can’t pay for them.

The question which this Government hasn’t yet answered is -how do they pay for these? See, once you take the tax income out of the budget, of’ got to replace it. There’s only two or three ways to do it. By raising more taxes somewhere else - by paying more interest under the national debt, which has doubled under the Liberals, or cutting services.

And this is why the Grattan Institute, who were quoted earlier in another matter, showed that this Government will have tens of billions of dollars of cuts to services. So we think that the tax cuts that the Government has is are a mirage. We certainly agree with the Government on the first round of tax cuts.

In fact, we’ve got better tax cuts to 3.6 million people under $40,000. But this Government cannot explain its mirage of tax cuts in the future, on the never-never, unless they explain what they’re going to cut in the way of services. And it’s a matter of choices.

Q: Do you dispute the government’s figure of $34bn over a decade?

Bill Shorten:

I’ll get Chris to see it but I do dispute it as a tax increase. I absolutely do. What happens when you give a concession to someone is that’s a tax expenditure. If I was to give you a concession on something, that is money that we take out of the tax system, which you get.

That is a concession to you. And that, therefore, becomes a choice. Is it the best use of a concession to give someone a concession, preferential treatment on one aspect of superannuation? Or to invest in other parts of our nation’s priorities. Regardless, I’ll get Chris to answer.

Chris Bowen:

Of course, Jim Chalmers and I will be releasing the budget bottom line and the impact of the decisions shortly. We have the pre-election economic forecast and we’re doing that over the course of the campaign. The Parliamentary Budget Office does that after every economic statement. But the superannuation tax concession reforms and and reversal of some of the government’s measures, which the analysis shows is benefitting high income workers and high wealth individuals does return $30bn over the medium term on the current projections.

Updated

Q: The question on superannuation yesterday was very clear. It’s hard to believe that you misunderstood it. You could easily have specified that you only meant you would add no more policies on top of the ones already announced.

Does it not look dishonest, when you don’t mention that?

Shorten:

Obviously, going back and reading it and rereading what James asked me, you’re right. I was answering a question which I thought I’d been asked, and I accept that it was a different question asked.

But you’re all formidable journalists. You know that our policies have been out there for three years. I’m sure that you’re probably all aware of them. And of course, today has been an opportunity to remind people of them.

Q:

You have an opportunity today to clear the record and be up-front with the Australian people about how much you will raise income taxes on superannuation.

BS: Well, I don’t accept your characterisation that it is raising taxes. When you wind back a concession, it is not raising it. Let’s be clear – we’re going to take a lecture from the government. Our policies are out there for people to see. But we’re not going to take a elect from the government who retrospectively ambushed people by creating a retrospective timetable. And also, one of great shames of this government is that for the last number of years, mandatory minimum contributions are stuck at 9.5%.

Updated

Q: You referenced in the modelling which shows that your emissions target reduction would cost the same as the government’s. How will it cost the same as the government’s, considering that you have a bigger target? How is the saving?

Bill Shorten:

We are costing a 45% reduction with international offsets, so in fact, it does cost the same.

The government’s 26% doesn’t have that. But further on climate change - we’ve given hundreds of talks about the policy on climate change, and we think it is an important issue in this election. So we can, you know, you’re referring, quite accurately, to the McKibben modelling but there are other costs to recognise.

Inaction on climate change is going to cost Australians in the future. Just ask the Poverty Council, just ask the Insurance Council. Just look at the increase in extreme weather events and the number of weather records broken on a constant basis. Our natural disasters cost us in 12 months, $18bn. Now, we can’t turn all of that around overnight with the policy, but we want to be a government who hands on a better deal to our kids on climate change. The other cost of inaction is rising energy prices. Single biggest contributor to rising energy prices is a lack of climate energy policy in this country.

The current government is on to their 13th energy policy and the third prime minister. This isn’t good enough. We’re seeing a rise in prices because we’re not creating policy certainty, because therefore the generation is not being invested in.

Updated

It’s still not working for me

Question: The Grattan Institute is warning an increase to the compulsory super would hurt low income workers.

Chris Bowen:

I make the point, we have low wages growth in Australia and Bill is the only leader putting it on the agenda.

Whether it be the living wage, whether it be reversing the penalty rate cuts, whether it be cracking down on sham contractors. Bill Shorten is the alternative prime minister putting wages on the agenda. On the superannuation guarantee, it actually may be one of the ways and is one of the ways we can actually improve the share of the economy going to workers over time. Putting the miracle of compound interest to work for them through superannuation.

That’s what the super guarantee does. Now, some people will oppose superannuation increases, just like they opposed them being introduced, just like the Liberal party opposed it being introduced in the first place and said that superannuation is a disaster.

It’s one of Labor’s great achievement as we’re very proud of it, and only Labor will defend it. And the other point that we would make is that as well as the policies that Bill outlined, outlining policies to improve superannuation for women, it is not conscionable that so many women in Australia are retiring into poverty, having committed no crime but work hard all their life.

We want to pay the superannuation guarantee during paid parental leave, and we want to crack down on superannuation theft. That’s what it is. Some bad employers stealing from their employees. We’ve all seen too much of it as local members. We know that this is a big problem. The Liberals ignore it.

We’ll make superannuation a national employment standard, so they can be pursued through the courts, because employers who don’t pay superannuation are stealing from the employees and they’re also getting an unfair advantage over their competitors who are doing the right thing.

Updated

I just checked – the website does appear to be down.

Bowen continues:

Who also needs to be careful in the claims about superannuation is the Treasurer. The Treasurer has been reactive in the last 24 hours looking at the Labor Party’s website. He appears to have nothing better to do. Good luck to him. I’ve had a look at the Liberal party website.

The Liberal party has got four election policies that have gone on the website. Congratulations. They’ve got four of them up. That’s OK. They’ve got a Liberal plan on their website.

The trouble is - if you click on the plan, Safari could not open because the page is down. It’s terrible when that happens, isn’t it, Josh. The Liberal party plan is not active on their website. Before they start casting aspersions around, they might want to get their house in order.

The Liberal party plan is broken, just like the plan itself. The website is down. The plan is not active. It has been wiped. So before Josh wants to get tweeting, maybe, just like your policies, get your policy right – get your website right, first.”

Updated

Q: I’d like to clarify that compulsory... The compulsory employer contributions. Will you increase that? And what would you say to the Grattan Institute report that says that could hurt low-income Australians?

Bill Shorten:

The Grattan Institute have been very busy and we’d like to talk a bit about some of their reports, not just your one. On your specific answer it’s at 9.5% now and I’ll ask Chris to supplement.

Chris Bowen:

I’ll answer that and add to the general issue as well. We’ll get the superannuation guarantee to 12% on the existing legislative timetable. That’s the difference between us and the government, and the Liberals.

The Liberals always find an excuse to delay increasing it. They promised in 1996 to keep the increases and they reneged on the promise. They promised to continue increases in 2013 and they reneged on the promise and if you add up all those delays, an Australian today is now retiring with $100,000 less in their superannuation. That’s what Liberals do.

The superannuation guarantee increase is running about 23 years late and every day that delay is down to the Liberal party. Every day of that delay. As Bill said, on the broader issue, Scott Morrison seems to want a pat on the back for saying no changes to superannuation over the next three years. Well, that’s what Tony Abbott said in 2013, and during that term, Scott Morrison, as treasurer, brought down a retrospective tax change. He said it wasn’t retrospective but the giveaway was in the effective date - 2007 - which applied in 2016, the $1.6m cap. So Scott Morrison wants to be very careful in his claims about superannuation.

Updated

He continues:

But I also have to say I notice that the government has reverted to type with their, you know, lying about our policies. When you close down concessions and loopholes, this is not a massive increase in taxation.

We’re just saying we think these resources can be used better and of course when it comes to helping people contribute to their superannuation, we’re not going to be lectured by a government who, with no mandate and no notice, changed the rules for amounts higher than $1.6m.

They made retrospective changes, which we opposed the retrospective nature of those changes.

We’re not going to be lectured by a government who’s frozen compulsory superannuation contributions at 9.5%. That’s been such a disaster for low-paid people and middle-class people in this country. It’s just a real economic vandalism.

Updated

Q: Mr Shorten, yesterday when you said you had no intention of increasing taxes on superannuation, were you not including already proposed Labor policies of up to $34bn worth of changes to the super savings? Were you just saying there wouldn’t be any new ones? Did you forget that policy?

Shorten:

Thanks for that. And I should also give a shout-out to James who asked the question yesterday. I thought I was being asked if there were unannounced changes to superannuation and we’ve already made the announcements of the changes we’re going to make.

But obviously we have changes which we outlined three years ago. I should have picked the words better, no question. We have no proposals other than what we’ve already announced previously, no changes to the general taxation treatment other than what we announced recently.

Just to remind people, we have said that we will lower the concessional contribution cap from $50,000 income to $200,000. We’ve also said that we will change the non-concessional contribution caps to $75,000 so we’ve made some announcements.

Updated

Chris Bowen:

Later on today, we will see the pre-election fiscal outlook. Coming so close after the budget you would expect it to confirm what we knew from the Budget – that is that almost a quarter of the coming surplus is based on spending less on Australians with a disability.

The government says there’s not enough demand, an insult to every Australian with a disability.

We know that it will confirm that to pay for their never-never tax cuts, the government will have to engage in spending cuts of $40bn a year. $40bn a year over the medium term.

Now, the government wants to have lots of discussions about tax cuts. That’s fine. We’re happy to have that discussion. They’re delivering tax cuts, which give a millionaire a tax cut of $40,000 a year and - sorry, give a millionaire a tax cut of somewhere around $11,000 a year and give somebody earning $40,000 a year a tax cut of $11 a week.

That’s their plan for Australia. They have to make deep cuts to health and education to pay for it. If they want a debate about tax cuts, they’ve got to ‘fess up to what are the spending cuts to pay for. They promised no cuts to health, education, the SBS or ABC in 2013 and they delivered all of the above, all of the above.

Now, we’ll deliver bigger tax cuts for Australians this year earning less than $48,000. We know that can be afforded but we won’t sign up for never-never tax cuts which will be paid for by cuts. Liberals cut.

They cut health, they cut education and they’ve cut the pension when they’ve had the ability to do so. They should have the moral fortitude to ‘fess up as to what the cuts are and then we’ll have a proper budget debate. Of course, the economy will be front and centre in this election. We relish that. We have alternative plans for the economy and for the budget and we invite the government to be truthful with the Australian people about what their cuts are.

Updated

Bill Shorten is now holding his press conference.

He also has Chris Bowen there.

You may have noticed that in that question on the Grattan Institute, Scott Morrison did not go into the cost of the government’s planned tax cuts for high income earners.

While Labor has not gone into the cost of its climate policy, the government is yet to go into the true cost of its “never-never” tax plan cuts.

The only other reference we have, are PBO costings the Greens asked for in May 2018, which found that $80bn of the cuts would come into play from July 2022 and another 41.6bn would hit the budget from 1 July 2024.

Michael McCormack blesses us with his half-sentence cadence on a question about whether or not he has spoken to George Christensen today.

Yes, I have spoke to George Christensen. I speak to all my candidates every day and my hard-working members and I’ve told them, and I know, their focus is on their electorates and on making sure that we have better jobs and more stability in our electorates and that’s why we’rer olling out $100bn of infrastructure across Australia and in each and every electorate across Australia, they’ll benefit from that.

George has referred himself to the independent parliamentary expenses authority and I’m sure that when that report comes in, George will comply with it.”

That $100bn is over 10 years. Less than half of it will be spent over the next four years.

Updated

Q: Jim Chalmers has suggested that Bill Shorten misheard or misunderstood the question about Labor’s taxes on super. What’s your reaction to that?

Morrison:

I think that is ... It was quite laughable, frankly, watching Jim Chalmers trying to explain what Bill Shorten was saying.

It reminded me a bit of Bill Shorten saying, “I agree with what you said even though I don’t know what she said.”

Let’s try and explain Jim Chalmers’s logic. He’s not going to put additional taxes on superannuation, starting now. So not include the $34bn I’ve already decided to do.

I mean that is either one of the sneakiest and shiftiest things you’ve seen, to pretend to people that you’re not going to increase taxes on superannuation when it is actually your policy that you’re going to increase them by $34bn. So they’re either being dishonest or sneaky. Or they’re just clueless when it comes to their own policies.

The transaction cost for Australians of changing government is $387bn, hit in higher taxes, which will drag the economy down. It will slow the economy down, and that will impact the incomes of all Australians, the incomes of all businesses, everybody walking into a shop will have less under Bill Shorten because he would have taken more away from them in higher taxes.

Higher taxes will slow our economy and put the recovery and the growth we’re seeing in northern parts of Tasmania at risk just as it will anywhere else in the country. When Bill Shorten can’t even explain his own superannuation increases in terms of tax, then why would you vote for him? He doesn’t know the details of his own policies.

He can have others come up and try and clean up after him as much as you like, but you can’t clean that mess up, Bill. You’ve got $34bn of higher taxes on superannuation hitting everything from mums going back to work to tradie on site to home-based businesses, to Australians who just want to invest more in their superannuation to provide for their future. He’s taxing them every which way till Sunday.

Updated

Q: Prime Minister, yesterday you dismissed analysis from the Grattan Institute saying there would have to be $40bn in cuts to spending to meet your targets by 2029 of a share to GDP. Can you walk us through exactly where you argue that analysis falls over.

Morrison:

Because it’s completely at odds with the work that has been done by Treasury. The Treasury go through and look at the medium-term expenditure projections and ensure that they are reflective of what the government’s policies are. So the Grattan Institute is not Treasury.

Treasury is Treasury. And the figures that are in the budget and the figures that will be released by Pefo set out what the fiscal scoreboard is when it comes to the bunch yet.

Now, there are plenty of people who have lots of opinions on what these figures are but it’s actually the Treasury that combine these figures and they do that independent will I and professionally. So this suggestion that has been put around about expenditure matters into the future is not well informed, in my view.

It’s not informed by the work that Treasury has done, and it doesn’t bear any relation to what our forward projections are for our expenditure, because over the next decade, we will see increases in expenditure on education and on hospitals.

There’s $30m specifically under our new agreement for hospitals, part of which has been signed up with the Tasmanian government here and I’ve talked about 60% increased investment in public hospitals and public schools around the country, increased investment, 45% increase for mental health expenditure around the country. A 50% increase in aged care. See, Labor will go around like they did at the last election – and they’ll try and tell stories and trick people. It’s very shifty what we’re seeing Bill Shorten doing, just like he did at the last election, and I think people are wise to Labor’s shiftiness.

Updated

Q: There’s been a lot of talk about the politicisation of Treasury and that’s, of course, not helped by your former chief of staff [Philip Gaetjens who is now Treasury secretary]

Morrison: Only by the Labor party.

Q: Would you concede there’s a perception that there could be a politicisation of Treasury?

SM:

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean I know the Labor party puts that around but that’s what the Labor party does.

We’ve got the Pefo statement, I understand, that came out today and that statement will set out what the facts are about the state of the budget and we look forward to seeing that document later today. The Labor party is going around attacking public officials who have served our country over a long period of time.

They’re the ones seeking to politicise public servants by making those offensive allegations. The people who work for our public service do it because they believe in public service and I don’t think they should be used as fodder in political campaigning because Chris Bowen can’t get his numbers to add up. Chris Bowen has already seen his negative gearing policy disappear off the Labor website. He saw his negative gearing policy go around his ankles when it came to the costings on the figures he’s using. He can’t get the message through to Bill Shorten that they’ve got a $34bn policy to increase taxes on superannuation. Chris Bowen can’t blame public servants for being the weakest link in Labor’s chain.

Just on that – it was the government who said Treasury had given it the $387bn figure for Labor’s tax plan, but Treasury later came out and said it did not give a total and costed figures given to it by the government.

Updated

Why should taxpayers pay more than $3,000 for George Christensen’s domestic leg of his private flights ...

Morrison:

As you may know, George has referred all of those inquiries to the independent commissioner on this issue. That’s why we set the independent process up.

George has referred himself to that, and he’s happy to have himself subjected to that independent scrutiny and that’s why we have such a commission, to inquire into exactly these questions.

So that will be done, that will be assessed and then I have no doubt George will abide by the ruling handed down.

Q: Did you ask him to refer himself?

SM: I haven’t spoken to him.

Q: Voters think this doesn’t pass the pub test. Do you think it does?

SM: We have an independent process for people’s expenditure to be examined. That’s the reform ...

Q: That won’t say the expenditure didn’t happen?

SM: It will say whether it’s within the rules. That’s what the independent commission process will determine.

Updated

How much does that $387bn figure relate to people earning an income of over $180,000 a year?

Scott Morrison:

It related to $154bn related to the personal income tax plan. $95bn of that relates to the change to bring the 32.5 cent rate down to 30-cent rate, for people earning more than $45,000.

So I don’t accept, I really don’t accept this suggestion. What we’re saying is if you earn more than $45,000 a year, then you will pay 30 cents, not 32.5 cents. The Labor party is running around saying this is for people on high incomes.

No. It’s for people earning as little as $45,000 a year. And the first change also when it comes to moving these thresholds is to move it from$37,000 a year, which is 19 cents, and move that threshold up to $45,000 a year. That’s people on very modest incomes.

We have a tax plan that not only deals with the here and now, more than $1,000 on low and middle incomes. That’s happening straight away but we have a plan to lower taxes today and into the future as well and it has three key components. The first one is immediate tax relief right here and now.

A tax plan we began legislating after last year’s budget and everyone said it was on the never-never and we’d never legislate it. We actually made it law and Labor want to repeal those laws. The second plan, the second part of that plan which is actually to abolish the 37-cent threshold in its entirety and make the tax system more simple and the third part is to reduce the second-highest tax rate which would, at that stage, be 32.5 cents down to 30 cents.

That’s a big change to the tax system. We have a plan to reduce taxes for everybody. Bill Shorten doesn’t have a plan to do that. If you work harder in this country, Bill Shorten wants to just tax you more. And that’s no way to encourage and inspire Australians to go and do amazing things, because that’s what makes our economy strong.

Updated

First question – isn’t this the same announcement Bill Shorten made a month ago?

Scott Morrison:

The difference is we know how to pay for it without increasing taxes. That’s the bottom line. Every time you see Bill Shorten spending money, he’s spending your money with higher taxes.”

He then brings up the superannuation issue from yesterday.

Michael McCormack appears to take the Tasmania is the turnaround state rhetoric even further – turning Tasmania into a some sort of weird soil Jesus.

I’m only sorry I didn’t bring a pocket of nails today because with this soil I could have thrown them in the ground and grown crowbars. That’s the sort of potential that we’ve got here in Tasmania.”

Even Scott Morrison seemed surprised by that one.

Scott Morrison:

... All the product of a stronger economy and being able to manage money and of course that enables us to keep Australians safe and keep our borders secure. Because people matter, the economy matters. Because people matter, managing money matters, because that’s how you connect all Australians to the dividend of a stronger economy, which they’re certainly experiencing here.

Updated

Meanwhile,

Soo......this appears to be the same announcement Labor made a month ago.

From Labor’s March announcement:

A Shorten Labor government will help create up to 3,900 jobs in Tasmania by committing $100m towards Tranche Three of Tasmania’s Irrigation Scheme.

Labor’s commitment will go towards new irrigation schemes, additional water capacity, increased water delivery efficiency and more reliability and sustainability of existing schemes in Tasmania.

Labor understands how important agriculture is to the Tasmanian economy – it adds $1.5bn a year locally, and employs over 7000 Tasmanians.

But you can’t have a strong agriculture sector without having proper and sustainable water supply.

So Labor’s commitment to Tranche Three will help connect potential irrigation schemes in farming districts including Detention, Don, Flowerdale, Harcus, the Tamar Valley, Fingal, the Southern Midlands and Sassafras.”

Updated

And the update

Updated

As the old adage says – never tweet

Updated

See?

Insert carrot is the new black joke here.

A sharp eyed reader has just pointed out that Bill Shorten visited the same farm with Labor MP Justine Keay, where he also looked at dug up carrots, about a month ago.

Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack are digging up carrots in Tasmania.

Chalk this up to sentences I never thought I would write.

Tom Connell from Sky News points out that, as it stands, right now, the Coalition does not have a more generous tax cut plan position as the Labor party.

“I think the track record of our two parties is very clear on this – we believe in lowering the tax burden for businesses and individuals and Bill Shorten believes in increasing it,” James Paterson says.

Connell points out that again, there isn’t a policy on that and asks if it would take a “friendlier parliament” to get it passed.

“Our plan is set out in the budget, it is a four-year plan for a stronger economy, for lower taxes for individuals and businesses and we have already started the process for legislating that, and if we are re-elected, we will finish the process of legislating that and everyone can know that the lowest taxes they will ever face, they will face if a Liberal government is elected.”

So, no difference then.

Because the Senate would have to change, or senators who rejected it, One Nation and Derryn Hinch included, would have to support new legislation.

Updated

The Liberal party senator James Paterson has not ruled out the Liberal party attempting to pass its big company tax cuts again.

The government managed to pass its tax cuts for small businesses. But its planned tax cut (from 30% to 25%) for companies with a turnover of more than $50m didn’t pass the Senate and were dropped.

Paterson told Sky News it was within the Liberal party’s “DNA” to “take every opportunity to reduce the tax burden, because we believe ultimately a $1 is best kept in the pocket of those who earn them, rather than sent off to Canberra”.

High court closes donation loophole

Candidates in the federal election will not be able to take developer donations in states that ban the practice as the result of the high court’s orders this morning.

The court has given orders (the result) but no judgment (its reasons).

What we can say so far is the Queensland ban on developer donations did not breach the implied freedom of communication.

The federal Coalition’s laws overriding state bans on certain categories of donations has been found invalid.

As I wrote about here that provision - 302CA of the electoral act - threatened to open up loopholes by allowing developers to donate to state branches as long as it was possible the money would be spent on federal campaigns.

Queensland and other states argued this created loopholes, for example developers could donate to federal campaigns and federal branches could then send extra resources to state campaigns - money is fungible after all. In that way no laws would be broken but developers could indirectly benefit state campaigns.

The high court has effectively closed that loophole.

Updated

Bill Shorten looks to have the first press conference this morning, with one scheduled for 8.30am WA time.

Looks like the ruling, for which we don’t have published reasons (not unusual that often comes later) goes a bit further:

The LNP had tried arguing that the laws were unconstitutional, on the grounds that it breached implied freedom of political communication. The LNP also hoped it would strike up a victory because federal laws allow developer donations.

But it was an uphill battle from the beginning, given that a challenge to similar NSW laws in 2015 on pretty much the same grounds, also failed.

Blow to LNP fundraising hopes with high court ruling Qld developer laws are valid

The high court has ruled that Queensland’s laws banning developer donations, are valid.

That translates to a loss for the LNP – and massively cuts into its fundraising pool.

Paul Karp will have more on that soon.

Updated

Scott Morrison has touched down in Tasmania.

Bill Shorten has been in WA since last night.

Up on the Great Barrier Reef, businesses and tourism operators are understandably keen to get the message across that coal jobs aren’t the only ones at threat in the great climate debate.

A group of 150, including many who live in key Queensland marginal seats, have signed a formal declaration demanding strong climate policies to protect the future of the reef.

The Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators and the Australian Marine Conservation Society are also running a joint advertising and door knocking campaign.

The head of AMPTO, Col Mckenzie, says the reef “is still a dynamic, vibrant, awesome place” but is under threat from climate change.

“We need our leaders to put in place strong climate and energy policies to protect its future.”

“Today we’re calling on all our political leaders to stand up for Far North Queensland businesses and jobs and demonstrate climate leadership to protect the future of our reef.”

And for those waving Stop Adani / Go Adani banners and playing the zero-sum jobs at home, Chris Jones from Tropical Journeys has some statistics.

“The reef is our livelihood, generating $6bn each year and supporting 64,000 jobs,” he said.

Updated

As part of the Guardian’s Fair Go? series, Katharine Murphy has taken a look at one of Scott Morrison’s favourite sayings - “a fair go for those who have a go”, which he has applied to champion racehorse Winx and various small businesses.

This idea that some categories of people are inherently more deserving than others; that finding yourself on the bottom rung of the ladder is attributable not to a set of circumstances that governments might look at correcting for the good of society as a whole, but because of a failure of individual imagination and work ethic.

Morrison’s language, if we decode it, is pernicious at a couple of levels. The first is implicit in the prime ministerial declaration of a belief that opportunity is equal for everybody, and some people just squander opportunity because they are lazy.

The second way the language is unhelpful is the free pass it delivers to governments. By sheeting home responsibility to the undeserving, Morrison (and others before him) fail to properly interrogate what might actually be going on.

If being stuck in a poverty trap is the fault of the individual, then governments, wonderfully, fortuitously, are off the hook. There is no need to investigate whether we are making a choice in this country, either consciously or unconsciously, to fail a group of fellow citizens, and in doing that, failing an important ideal of ourselves.

That mindset – the one articulated in the Morrison talking point about the fair go – means that nothing changes. The dial doesn’t shift.”

The IPA has released it’s list of 20 policies “to fix Australia”.

See how many you can list off without looking at the document.

I can start you off - selling the ABC is absolutely on there. As is repealing 18C.

Labor has deleted parts of its policy platform off its website, including its negative gearing plan and planned changes to capital gains tax, but the party insists it is part of a whole website update.

Bill Shorten neglected to mention Labor’s planned policy regarding superannuation changes (it wants to lower the 30% tax threshold point from $250,000 to $200,000 and also bring the non-concessional limit down to $75,000) when he was asked if Labor could rule out any new or changed taxes to superannuation yesterday.

Labor argues Shorten interpreted the question as meaning any “further” new or changed taxes. But it has given the Coalition an in, on what has already been a fraught week.

Updated

The high court will hand down its judgment on this case today.

Queensland laws banning developer donations are discriminatory because they deprive the Liberal National party of a “materially greater amount of donations” than Labor, the former LNP president Gary Spence has argued.

Spence has taken a case to the high court arguing that the ban on Queensland state and local council politicians taking developer donations breaches the implied freedom of political communication.

The Queensland government has said the law is justified because it is designed to reduce the risk of undue or corrupt influence on planning decisions and will argue that the donation ban should apply even if developer money is spent on federal campaigns.”

If the LNP wins, it’s going to have a lot more money for its federal election campaign.

Speaking of the Fin, Phil Coorey has an interview with Peter Dutton, where he lashes out at Labor “propaganda”, with the party using Dutton as a major part of its Victorian election campaign.

“Victorians will see through Bill Shorten’s propaganda and lies,” Dutton told the paper.

Just as a refresher, Danielle Wood from the Grattan Institute told the Australian Financial Review on Tuesday:

Under the projected 23.6% figure spending would need to be around $40bn lower in 2029-30 than it would be if we assumed that spending stayed at 24.9% of GDP – where it currently sits and the average over the two terms of the Coalition government.

“The budget would have to go back into deficit from 2024-25 to pay for those tax cuts, especially when we know the cost pressures from the ageing population are rising.”

Grattan’s $40.1bn estimate for the Coalition’s assumed lower annual expenditure in 2029-30 is about $30bn in today’s dollars.”

Updated

This how the exchange between Kieran Gilbert and Mathias Cormann over the Grattan Institute analysis played out.

KG: You say it is a Labor lie, this is Grattan Institute analysis and it looks at your record as well and the average of spending under your government, nearly six years in duration now, and says ‘well, if you project out over 10 years, your assumptions over spending levels are heroic’. It is not a Labor line, this is from the independent Grattan Institute economist.

MC: I would question they are independent and I would suggest the author is a consistent Coalition critic. But what I would say, is if you look at the 10-year projection when we came into government in 2013/14, the 10-year projection on government expenditure, as a share of GDP was that it would reach 26.5% over 2023-24 and rising. Now of course, 2023-24 as a result of our efforts to better control spending growth, spending as a share of GDP is said to be 24.5% and indeed, it is projected to reduce further to 23.6% by 2029-30. That is as a result of the economy growing more strongly, as a result of our government being better at managing the budget, better managing the spending, but I would hasten to point out, that after 11.5 years of Coalition government, in the period of the Howard government, the equivalent number, the equivalent ratio, was 23.1% and so what we are projecting here, on the basis of policy decisions so far, policy decisions which have already been publicly disclosed and not future assumed decisions which haven’t yet been made, the ratio that we are expected to reach by 2029-30 is 23.6%, which is still half a percentage point higher, then what was achieved in 11.5 years of Howard government.”

Updated

Asked about George Christensen’s travel, and whether it is appropriate that he charged $3,000 to taxpayers for domestic connection flights for his international travel, Mathias Cormann tells Sky:

My advice is that all of the travel undertaken by George Christensen was within relevant rules of work expense arrangements. Obviously, federal members of parliament do have to travel as part of their work to and from Canberra, and my advice is that George Christensen’s travel was consistent and within all the relevant rules.

Laura Jayes asks whether it passes muster. He replies

Well, look, in the end these are not matters for me to comment on, this is for George to explain, but in the end, with this job there is a lot of travel involved, we are a big country, George obviously lives in north Queensland, which is a fair way to go, and you know, like people from all over Australia, who have the privilege of representing the Australian people in the federal parliament, there is more travel involved in sitting weeks, to and from Canberra, my advice is that the travel undertaken by George Christensen was within all of those relevant rules.

Yes, Mackay is quite far from Canberra. But it’s not so far north that you have to go via the Philippines to get there.

Updated

Mathias Cormann calls the Grattan Institute analysis a “Labor lie”.

The Sky News host Kieran Gilbert points out that it is thinktank analysis, not something from Labor, to which Cormann responds by saying he questions the independence of the report and calls the author, Danielle Wood, a “critic” of the Coalition.

Given that the Grattan Institute considers itself to be centrist, I can’t imagine it is going to be overly happy with that critique.

Updated

Mathias Cormann is on Sky News talking about how the Grattan Institute was right when it found holes in Labor’s negative gearing policy, but is wrong about its analysis of the Coalition’s budget (which it found would need about $40bn worth of cuts to make the projected forecasts a reality).

Updated

For the record, the answer Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack give to questions about George Christensen’s travel, given that he spent more time in the Philippines than in parliament between 2014 and 2018 – 294 days, according to the reports – is that he hasn’t been overseas since July last year.

Updated

Jim Chalmers has some questions for the prime minister about George Christensen’s travel, which he has helpfully sent out in a press release:

This has now become a test of leadership for Scott Morrison and he needs to declare today if he continues to have confidence in Mr Christensen.

Did he know about Mr Christensen using taxpayer-funded flights to help subsidise private overseas trips?

What steps has he taken to assure himself that Mr Christensen hasn’t obtained a personal benefit from taxpayer-funded flights?

Does he approve of Mr Christensen’s use of taxpayer funds to subsidise his private trips overseas?

Does he think this is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money? Has Mr Morrison taken any steps to investigate if Mr Christensen has used taxpayer funds to help subsidise any other personal trips?

Happy Pefo day! Also known as the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook, which comes out during federal elections. Think of it as a Myefo for election campaigns.

It’s part of the charter of budget honesty and, basically, is Treasury’s report on the state of the budget.

Given that a budget was handed down just two seconds ago, you would expect the numbers to be quite similar to what we have seen. But we all know the danger of assumptions. So let’s wait and see.

Updated

The Herald Sun, which has been leading the reporting on George Christensen’s travel over the last term of parliament, has crunched the numbers of how much in taxpayer funds went into it.

From the Rob Harris and Anthony Galloway report:

Jetsetting Nationals MP George Christensen spent more than $3000 of taxpayers’ money to subsidise his own frequent private trips to the Philippines.

The outspoken government backbencher charged the public purse for five separate domestic flights between Canberra and other Australian cities, which linked up with his overseas jaunts, over a four-year period.

The Queensland marginal seat MP has been under fire since News Corp revealed he spent 294 days in the Philippines between 2014 and 2018.

His constant travel has earned him the nickname “The Member for Manila” among colleagues and sparked concern at the highest levels of government.

It looks as though the Queensland MP just has an autofeed for articles featuring his name for his personal website – which isn’t playing out that well today.

Updated

For one of the first times this campaign, the leaders are on opposite sides of the country.

So far, Victoria has been very popular, with Scott Morrison sandbagging (spending two whole days in the state) and Bill Shorten doing his best to tip those very marginal Liberal seats his way.

But today Shorten is in WA, while Morrison is in Tasmania. Or, as he likes to call it, the “turnaround state”.

Which is also what he calls South Australia. It’s a bit like a Tinder match who messages everyone the same compliment then one day accidentally group texts them all at the same time, but I digress.

Labor has another health announcement – this time it’s $20m for blood cancer patients.

Focusing on one policy area for a week is a trend we have seen in state Labor campaigns so it will be interesting to see if that keeps up as the federal campaign rolls on.

Updated

Good morning

We have hit day six of the campaign and all I can say is it’s been a really, really long decade.

Scott Morrison is headed to Tasmania, where the Liberals are hopeful of picking up Braddon.

Bill Shorten is in Western Australia, where Pearce and Hasluck are two of the big targets.

But it’s still all about tax and who has the better plan. Or, according to the political parties, who has the bigger black hole.

It’s an excellent discourse.

Labor had a bit of a bruising day yesterday so Shorten is hoping to get back on the front foot. The Liberals have maintained a small target approach which is so far focused on rebutting Labor. But neither side consider the election campaign to be on, on, until after Anzac Day. That’s because most people aren’t listening yet.

Case in point – my Uber driver had no idea the election had been called.

But we trudge on.

I hope you have had your coffee, and a hot cross bun or something similar for good measure.

Ready?

Let’s get into it.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Bruno Mars 'It Was Sent to Silence Me': Viral Post Claims Alleged Threat, No Confirmation Yet
Viral post claims Bruno Mars was sent a message warning to stay silent. The alleged threat remains unconfirmed with no official statement yet.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
10 Photos of 'Top Gun' Star Tom Skerritt Who Fans Say Is 'Still Handsome' at 92 After Meet-and-Greet Event
At 92, Tom Skerritt remains a beloved figure in Hollywood. His recent public appearance has sparked renewed interest and admiration from fans.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
I’ve been using this coffee accessory for a year and it’s the best way to get professional-level espresso at home
I'm an ex-barista and coffee enthusiast, and the best method for making cafe-quality espresso at home is easier than you think.
Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Anaconda And Primate Are Streaming On The Same Day, And This Is My New Barbenheimer
Let's make it an Anacondate!
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
William Shatner's 95th Birthday Post Is On Brand (And A Far Cry From Captain Kirk)
You won't see this on TOS.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Anya Taylor-Joy ‘Threw Up’ The First Time She Recorded Princess Peach Lines For The Super Mario Bros. Movie
That does sound pretty intense.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play