Good night and good luck
Well folks, I reckon that will do. It’s been a huge week, and it’s only the beginning of two months of huge. We’ve been delighted to have your company throughout budget week, and Mike and I look forward to calling the coming election for you.
We’ll be back, most likely Sunday, to cover the calling of the poll live.
But first, let’s wrap Thursday.
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Tony Abbott made an extraordinary speech in the parliament that I have described for most of the day as the most compelling unwitting pitch for a federal integrity commission, ever. He thought the mining industry should look after the former resources minister Ian Macfarlane, given he’d kindly abolished the mining tax for them. There was also a gobsmacking story about cash in an envelope. But no-one seemed to care much apart from us, and the readers, who care quite a lot, despite the fact politics seems intent on ignoring them.
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The government got in an inelegant tangle about the costings for its budget company tax cut. The prime minister and the treasurer tried to tough out calls for the ten year costings, which would have likely worked, had they not been silly enough to keep pressing Labor over its alleged black holes. You really can’t go down that path if you have a black hole problem yourself. If you do, you look like you don’t think the same rules apply to you as they do to your opponent, which is an arrogant disposition that I recall got Tony Abbott into all sorts of trouble. All pretty unfortunate.
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Bill Shorten promised Labor would deliver $71bn in savings over ten years in a budget in reply speech which mapped out Labor’s alternative for government: more investments in social capital, less tax breaks for the rich, a few jabs at the prime minister on the way through.
There was more, but that’s the main thrust of things.
Have a good rest, you’ll need it, and be safe until we regroup again for DD day.
That’s the end of the 44th parliament now. Since the sudden death last year of the Liberal MP Don Randall, a white rose has been placed at his old seat in the parliament.
Randall entered parliament in 1996. Tonight, after Shorten’s speech, his fellow classmates from 1996 removed the rose from the Randall desk.
Bottom line on the likeability issue from Shorten? It doesn’t matter if people don’t like me. We’ve got a better bunch of policies than the government.
Q: Just before you go - every poll shows that voters like Malcolm Turnbull more than they like you. Why do you think that Australians should vote for somebody that they don’t like as much as the other guy?
Bill Shorten:
Well, I think that when Australians see our positive policies, our commitment to Australian jobs, properly funding our schools, our TAFE, our childcare and our universities, our commitment to not privatise Medicare, and to defend bulk-billing and look after and work with GPs so they’re not taking a cut in terms of having to increase the cost of going to see the doctor, when they look at our policies on renewable energy, to help tackle the challenge of climate change, when they see our commitment to the equal treatment of women to tackling housing affordability, when Australians look at our fully funded positive plans to put people first – we are very competitive at the next election.
Sales wants to know whether Labor will restore full funding for hospitals. Shorten says he doesn’t intend to give her a number tonight.
Bill Shorten:
What I can commit right here on television tonight is we will fund to a far greater level than what the Turnbull government is doing.
Sales says, given Labor stuffed up the mining tax, why is it reasonable to trust that Labor will be better than the government on cracking down on multinational tax avoidance?
Bill Shorten:
We got our research costed independently by the parliamentary budget office. That answers that question.
7.30 host Leigh Sales points to research showing a third of families get more from the government than what they pay in tax.
Q: Do you think that’s acceptable?
It’s the system we have is to make sure that people have got the minimum safety net.
No, she says, more than a safety net at that level.
Bill Shorten:
I don’t accept that. If you’re raising two kids at high school and you’re on $65,000, working mum, I don’t actually think that because you resent losing a couple of thousand dollars in family payments that somehow you’re bludging off the system.
Shorten on 7.30
Bill Shorten is up now in the ABC studios.
Q: You seem upset the budget isn’t giving every last Australian a direct handout. Is that your idea of responsible economic stewardship?
Bill Shorten:
It’s a question of priorities, Leigh. What we believe is that the government shouldn’t be giving millionaires a $17,000 tax cut whilst working mum with two kids at high school on $65,000 is actually facing losing over $4,700, it’s a matter of priorities.
Q: Let’s have a look also at your claim that Australians on lower incomes are getting nothing or not getting enough. Overlooking the fact they get health, education, roads, defence, as a given...
Bill Shorten:
Is that something people should be grateful for? That’s why they pay their taxes.
It had a very good tempo, that speech. Bit of abstract theatre criticism perhaps, but true nonetheless.
I think it’s worth posting the wrap up, because it’s the election pitch.
Bill Shorten:
My fellow Australians, in 58 days, you will have your say on who governs the country for the next three years.
We might be the underdogs in this election, but we have never sought to be a small target.
We are offering a social and economic program for betterment of this nation.
The markers we set for the future of Australia: Jobs, education, Medicare, climate change, affordable housing and fair taxation, equality for women, our belief in young Australians.
By contrast, this budget punishes people who can’t afford it and rewards those who don’t need it.
Worse than that – it speaks for a lack of vision, a lack of understanding of what makes this country great.
It shows the Liberals have never given up on the idea that it’s up to every individual to fend for themselves and those who fall behind, get left behind.
Prime Minister – Australians honestly thought you were so much better than this.
Because Australians are so much better than this.
Australians built superannuation and created Medicare. We are delivering the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We opened ourselves to Asia and forged a new identity as a leader in our region.
We said Sorry.
We are a nation the world admires as prosperous and fair.
An economy where growth comes from extending opportunity.
A country where your destiny is not pre-determined by your postcode, or your parents’ wealth.
Where aspiration is encouraged and success is earned, not inherited.
A nation of courage, community and compassion.
This is the Australia I witnessed at Beaconsfield, a decade ago.
At Black Saturday, and through the Brisbane floods.
It is the Australia I’ve had the privilege of representing my entire working life – standing up for people, every day.
An Australia enlarged by all who call it home.
Striving for the best, but caring for each other.
An Australia of common effort and shared reward.
This is the Australia Labor believes in.
And it is the nation I hope to lead.
Tonight my team and I offer ourselves as your next government.
We have learned the hard lessons of the past.
We have put forward our positive plans.
We are united.
We are ready.
A Labor Government will always put people first.
Another tally of savings, culminating in the marriage equality pledge.
Bill Shorten:
From infrastructure to health and education, Labor has made it clear how we will fully-fund each and every one of our promises.
Responsible savings for a stronger budget and more jobs. We will save $1.4bn by repealing the Nationals’ new Baby Bonus.
We will recover another $1bn by abolishing the discredited Direct Action. Paying big polluters to keep polluting, stops under Labor.
We will not spend $160m of taxpayer money on a divisive plebiscite dredging up all kinds of harmful prejudice. Instead, the Parliament of Australia will do its job – and within our first 100 days of government - vote to make marriage equality a reality.
I don’t really know what legislating to protect Medicare means, but Shorten says he’ll do it within the first 100 days.
The VET changes. And the flourish of the abacus on the savings.
Bill Shorten:
Tonight, I declare the pendulum has swung too far to private providers - Labor will be backing public TAFE. We will restore integrity to the training system, by cleaning out the dodgy private colleges who have been ripping Australians off for too long.
In 2014, the ten largest private training colleges in Australia received $900m in government funding. Yet less than 5 % of their students graduated.
Tens of thousands of Aussies are being loaded up with massive new debt – but not the qualification they need to find a job.
And for the past three years, the Liberals’ only response has been to blame someone else.
At last, after three years, Malcolm Turnbull has acted – he has demanded…a discussion paper.
The prime minister may not be capable of making a decision – but I am.
While Mr Turnbull dithers – Labor will deliver. A Labor Government will cap Vocational Education loans at $8,000 per student.
We will cut this wasteful spending, saving an estimated $6bn over the decade.
Tonight I have outlined $71bn of additional budget improvements over the decade.
These are the decisions our nation needs.
This is what a responsible budget looks like.
To schools now, and another less than subtle dig at the prime minister.
Bill Shorten:
In the shadows of the election campaign – having ripped $30bn out of schools – they’ve promised to put one billion back.
And there they sit, awaiting the thanks of a grateful nation. But Australians know they can’t trust this prime minister on education.
And when they hear Liberals lecturing teachers, saying: “More money won’t solve the problem.”
Australians know the only people who ever say this are those for whom money has never been a problem.
Labor has obviously packed out the galleries tonight, there’s lots of clapping. It’s helping Shorten lift. He looks like he’s enjoying himself now.
Infrastructure now and another little dig.
Bill Shorten:
Labor will turbo-charge Infrastructure Australia with a new $10bn funding facility.
A ‘concrete bank’ to get investment from the private sector, particularly big super funds, flowing into projects.
Instead of taking selfies on the train, we’ll get new projects underway.
Nation-building, not ego-boosting.
"You've done both"
A segment in the speech on women includes a promise to restore funding to community legal centres.
Shorten is on to climate change now.
Taking real action on climate change will create new jobs, attract new international investment and power our industries and services.
Of course, advocating climate action is hard, and running a scare campaign against it is easy.
Mr Turnbull should know – you’ve done both.
Turnbull smirks slightly, writing on his papers.
This is the section on the super changes. Grave concerns, which means maybe we oppose this, maybe we don’t.
Bill Shorten:
Labor has very grave concerns about retrospective changes - which is precisely why our reforms to negative gearing and capital gains explicitly rule out retrospectivity.
"Goldman Sachs is not a small business"
Bill Shorten:
Labor will support a tax cut for small businesses with a turnover of less than $2m dollars per year. Because that’s what a small business is. We will deliver tax relief for the small businesses representing 83% of Australian companies.
But billion-dollar operations are not small businesses. Never have been – never will be.
Coles is not a small business.
The Commonwealth Bank is not a small business.
Goldman Sachs is not a small business.
"The more you have, the more you get"
Bill Shorten:
On Tuesday night the treasurer said he didn’t want to talk about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
Now we know why. The more you have, the more you get. The less you earn, the more you lose. This prime minister has the audacity to accuse us of waging ‘class war’.
It is not ‘class war’ to disagree with cutting money from families on fifty and sixty thousand dollars in order to give millionaires a tax break.
It is not class war to ask why he is cutting $80bn from schools and hospitals – but spending billions on big business.
It is not ‘class war’ for Labor to speak up on behalf of everyone this government has forgotten and betrayed – women, young people, pensioners, carers and veterans.
Labor will never apologise for standing up for Australians who go to work every day and want to come home safe, who rely on penalty rates to make ends meet.
Who don’t want to be forced to work until they’re 70.
This prime minister talks a lot about aspiration – but there’s a part of it he always leaves out.
That the aspiration to equal opportunity, to a fair start for everyone, to a fair go.
That’s what Labor will always fight for.
Bill Shorten:
More than ever, we must be honest about what our budget can truly afford. We must maintain the triple-A credit rating from all three agencies Labor worked so hard to secure.
This is why my team and I are treating the Australian people with respect. Being frank and upfront about our plans. We are making the hard choices to fully-fund our investments in Australia’s future.
To turn around these Liberal deficits and deliver budget repair that is fair. Restoring the national budget – without smashing family budgets. Building a stronger economy – without hurting the things that help it grow. You don’t plan for the jobs of the future by cutting education, cutting infrastructure and making broadband slower.
Bill Shorten:
From Tony’s tradies to Malcolm’s millionaires - this is a budget for big business over battlers. This budget fails the test of fiscal responsibility too. Having banged the drum of ‘budget emergencies’ for so long. Despite all their cuts and broken promises – in the past three years, the Liberals have tripled the deficit.
Bill Shorten's budget-in-reply at a glance
Welcome to tonight’s live coverage of the budget-in-reply speech.
Bill Shorten is on his feet now in the House of Representatives, practising his alternative prime minister pitch.
Here’s what you need to know quickly.
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In broad terms, tonight’s speech emphasises Labor’s election slogan of putting people first. It characterises the government’s budget as a sop to big business. Shorten says the budget hits families. “A working Mum on $65,000 with two kids in high school will be over $4,700 worse off every year, and someone on a million dollars will be almost $17,000 better off each year.”
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Shorten will pledge savings of $71bn, citing costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office. The savings come from opposing the budget’s corporate tax cut for big business, maintaining the deficit levy, and a big crackdown on private colleges in the VET sector.
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Shorten will also confirm Labor will knock back some of the budget changes to superannuation, but it’s not entirely clear to me from the speech, which. Shorten says Labor opposes making “retrospective” changes.
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The rest of the speech leans heavily on Labor’s preferred election territory: health (Shorten will announce Labor will legislate to keep Medicare in public hands within 100 days), the Gonski funding, renewable energy, infrastructure.
I’m going to go quiet now until the budget-in-reply gets underway at 7.30pm so I can bring you Shorten at a glance first up when he begins speaking.
Down in the House, the long serving Labor MP Alan Griffin has said farewell to politics after a two decade stint.
This parliament is now in its final hours. Big night.
It really is very early days for me to give you a view on the Middle East coverage I’m afraid.
Michelle Guthrie, still facing questions, three days into the job. Liberal Senator James Paterson asks Guthire whether she’s comfortable with having a political activist as the ABC’s correspondent in Jerusalem. Paterson means Sophie McNeill.
Guthrie isn’t going to cop that one.
She isn’t a political activist, she’s a journalist.
Updated
I’m just having a bite of food to ensure I don’t fall over between now and the budget-in-reply speech, which is now less than an hour away. Michelle Guthrie is still in estimates, Malcolm Turnbull wound up the ABC interview by refusing to confirm he will call the election on Sunday. Current smoke signals suggest the election will be called Sunday, by the by. All things liable to change without notice.
Karvelas tells the prime minister the Seven Network has just reported internal Liberal party polling showing the government losing the marginal seat of Eden Monaro and going backwards in NSW. Is he worried about this? Malcolm Turnbull says he doubts the accuracy of the story, and he doesn’t intend to comment.
Michelle Guthrie is still being peppered with questions in estimates. Things have been mildly testy down there.
The prime minister, meanwhile, is on my wireless. He’s being interviewed by ABC RN host Patricia Karvelas. Like everyone else today, she wants the ten year costings for the company tax cuts.
Malcolm Turnbull:
The important point Patricia is not the number.
In another Senate estimates hearing, Labor senator Jenny McAllister quizzed Australian Electoral Commission officials about whether they were concerned about donations from the Fadden Forum, a fund which according to reports sacked Turnbull government minister Stuart Robert used to donate to independent council candidates before the 2013 election.
McAllister asked whether the donations might breach laws about associated entities declaring donations, and whether they might have been made to disguise the source of the funds.
AEC chief legal officer, Paul Pirani, said it appeared the Fadden Forum was not an associated entity because it was not an incorporate or unincorporated entity, but rather a bank account of the Liberal National Party.
Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said if the Fadden Forum is part of the party’s structure, “which it appears to be”, then it had met their obligations in the way donations were declared.
The new head of the ABC, Michelle Guthrie is before a Senate estimates hearing this evening. Right now she’s being asked about ABC Fact Check, will that continue post election? Guthrie says a decision will be made on that soon, within the next ten days.
Nick Xenophon asks if the new managing director is aware that Fact Check has been the subject of a lot of complaints by politicians?
Mick Millett, head of ABC communications, steps in to answer.
You can rest assured the decision won’t be made on the basis of complaints.
Xenophon wants the ABC to provide records of how many complaints there’s been about Fact Check by politicians.
Sean Kelly was a press secretary to a couple of Labor prime ministers. These days, he writes about politics at The Monthly. Sean’s column today says the prime minister has a habit of turning up to media interviews unprepared, and that needs to change if he wants to get through the election season in one piece.
I’m inclined to agree with that assessment. The good thing about Turnbull’s approach with the media is he refuses to behave like a scripted robot, a blessing, given there are entirely too many scripted robots in politics. The weakness of his interviews is the problem Sean identifies, being unprepared for obvious questions, and allowing himself to be lulled into traps, which are the speciality of broadcast interviewers.
Here’s Sean, who isn’t being the least bit gratuitous, and is in a position to know about this:
Telling a prime minister the awful truth about poor performances is hard. There are usually very few people close to a PM who are willing to do it. The cast will vary from leader to leader: it could include a chief of staff, or the Liberal party director, or a pollster, or a press secretary, or an MP.
Telling a leader that habits to which they have become accustomed – like preparing for public appearances in a certain way – are just not working now they’re leading the country is even harder.
But it must be done. If the PM cannot or will not make changes, someone must tell him to. What works as a minister often does not work as a prime minister.
Prime minister offers a glimmer of hope on electoral reform
The prime minister has done a podcast this afternoon with Michelle Grattan from The Conversation, and he’s flagged changes to the donations and disclosure regime after the next election.
Turnbull says in an ideal world you’d have limitations on campaign expenditure, and you’d restrict donations to people on the electoral roll, but he says there are also constitutional issues when you try and restrict various people and groups from spending. (That is, of course, true).
He says he’s very interested in change, but it’s a very challenging area.
I am very interested in the issue I assure you.
His comments are towards the end of the podcast if you want to listen.
Here is Labor’s formal response to the RBA appointments. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen. Check out the last line. Labor not delighted with Ian Harper’s appointment.
Labor extends its appreciation to Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens for his service over two five-year terms.
Governor Stevens has guided the reserve with a steady hand since 2006, through the highs of the mining boom and the lows of the Global Financial Crisis. The RBA is a vitally important national institution, and Governor Stevens has led it well.
I welcome the elevation of Deputy Governor Philip Lowe to the position of Governor.
Dr Lowe is one of the finest Australian economists of his generation. He joined the Reserve bank as a student in 1980, and has served with distinction, with breaks to complete doctoral studies at MIT, and a secondment to the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland.
I also congratulate RBA board member Dr John Edwards on his service. Dr Edwards term comes to an end in July after an illustrious career in both public service and in government. He has made a considerable personal contribution to the Australian economy, and I am sure he will continue to do so in the future.
Dr Edwards would have been very worthy of reappointment to the board for a second term.
I note the appointment of Ian Harper to the RBA board.
In last 24 hours, Govt has appointed RBA Gov, Dep President FWC, 5 Ambassadors, Human Rights Commissioner... Goes into caretaker on Monday
— David Speers (@David_Speers) May 5, 2016
Here’s the statement on the RBA appointments from Scott Morrison.
Dr Lowe brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role of governor, having served as the RBA deputy governor since early 2012, heading up many of the RBA’s analytical departments, and publishing on a wide range of issues relevant to the operation of monetary policy over his three decade career with the RBA. Dr Lowe also served as Head of the Financial Institutions and Infrastructure Division at the Bank for International Settlements (2000 – 2002), where he authored important research on the financial stability role of central banks in low-inflation environments.
Dr Lowe earned a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after being awarded the University Medal for his undergraduate studies in economics at the University of New South Wales. Dr Lowe is well regarded in the central banking community, financial markets, and the Australian business community, and will reinforce existing confidence in the institution.
I congratulate Dr Lowe on his appointment and also thank Mr Glenn Stevens for his valuable leadership of the RBA over the past ten years. International developments required Mr Stevens to steward the RBA through a challenging decade for the Australian economy, which included the global financial crisis, the passing of a once in a generation terms of trade boom, and the rise and fall of an unprecedented mining investment boom. The government thanks Mr Stevens and his staff for the role they played in helping the Australian economy navigate these significant challenges over the decade.
I am also pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Ian Harper as a part-time member of the Reserve Bank Board for a five-year term from 31 July 2016.
Professor Harper’s combined experience in public policy development and academia will enable him to make a strong contribution to Reserve Bank Board deliberations. Professor Harper recently chaired the Competition Policy Review (Harper Review), served as a member of the Financial System Inquiry (the Wallis Inquiry), and was the inaugural Chairman of the Australian Fair Pay Commission.
Professor Harper also brings strong academic credentials to the Reserve Bank Board, having spent two decades as a Professor at the University of Melbourne – first as the NAB Professor of Monetary and Financial Economics (1988–1992), then as the Ian Potter Professor of International Finance (1992–2002), and the Sidney Myer Professor of Commerce & Business Administration (2002–2008) at Melbourne Business School.
Professor Harper’s term on the Reserve Bank Board coincides with the conclusion of Dr John Edward’s term on 30 July 2016. Dr Edwards has made an important contribution to Reserve Bank board deliberations through a challenging period for the Australian economy and I thank him for his service. I wish him every success for the future.
The appointment of Dr Lowe will create a vacancy at the deputy governor level in the RBA, the filling of which will be considered in the second half of the year.
These appointments were made in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Reserve Bank Act 1959 (the Act). Under sections 14 and 24 of the Act respectively, the Treasurer appoints Reserve Bank board members and the RBA Governor.
New governor for the Reserve Bank
Down in the House, Scott Morrison is announcing Phillip Lowe will replace Glenn Stevens as the governor of the Reserve Bank – Lowe is a deputy governor of the RBA – and Ian Harper, architect of the competition review, will go onto the Reserve Bank board.
That’s a pretty big appointment to make five seconds away from the caretaker period. The shadow treasurer Chris Bowen makes it clear Labor hasn’t been consulted on this appointment, but he supports it nonetheless.
As flagged before, in the event you want some colour and movement from the suspension debate, Tony Burke had a very jolly time of it. Here’s a clip of his speech.
Morrison says everytime people hear Bill Shorten announce something tonight in the budget in reply, they will be paying for it.
And that’s the debate.
Give me a minute and I’ll be back with the afternoon, evening and night.
The treasurer Scott Morrison is currently working through the times when Labor people have sounded more positive about company tax cuts, including when Labor cut the company tax in government.
Tanya Plibersek:
We said how we’d pay for it!
Scott Morrison:
With the mining tax, and they think this is an excellent point Mr Speaker.
That was a crisp speech by Burke, I’ll see if I can chase up some video of it in due course. Some sharp counterpoints in it.
Malcolm Turnbull, still looking relentlessly forward.
Mr Speaker, what they propose is a ban on negative gearing which will have the consequence that no Australian who lives by the sweat of his or her brow will be ability to offset an investment loss against their personal income. It might be a salary or wage or professional income.
So that will mean is that somebody who seeks, someone on average earnings or less as is the case with 70% of the people who lodge returns with negative gearing, those people in the future will not be able to purchase an investment property and offset a net rental loss against their income. This will take thousands of people out of the investment market. It will ensure that rents will go up.
Every measure we have set out will drive growth and jobs.
Every single one - trade, innovation, investment, backing enterprise – everything Labor has proposed stands in the way of jobs, stands in the way of enterprise, stands in the way of growth.
Labor’s Tony Burke is up now. He says he thought he’d ask for an extension of time, but he thought the backbench would kill him.
It’s slightly bizarre, watching the Turnbull pitch down the barrel in the middle of a parliamentary debate. Not one glance back to the colleagues. Not one.
Malcolm Turnbull amends the motion so it would say the following: that this House welcomes and supports the government’s economic plan for jobs and growth.
Now he’s sailing forth, looking down the barrel of the camera for a pre-election pitch. No shouting, just a fireside chat, delivered in the parliament.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We have to continue with this agenda for economic growth. We can’t afford to risk it by changing tack in the way the Labor party would propose.
I think he has a stitch #auspol
— Ewen Jones MP (@EwenJonesMP) May 5, 2016
Pay that.
Bowen was completely hoarse by the end of that Castroesque soliloquy. He gets a round of applause from his own side.
Chris Bowen:
You thought you could get away with it!
The prime minister thought he was such a good explainer. The world’s greatest debater would get away, he thought, with a ten-year tax cut plan, without explaining what the cost is.
‘Of course. I will be able to do it. I am of course Malcolm Turnbull’, he thought, ‘self-evident that I will get away with it.’
He doesn’t get away with it!
Pyne has just extended Bowen for another five minutes.
Chris Bowen, continuing.
Weren’t they leaping in their seats in excitement about the coming election ... the members for Tasmania, for the Central Coast of NSW, looking forward so much to going ... of redefining small business as any business under $1bn, giving big business a tax cut – that’s their re-election pitch to the Australian people, almost $17,000 worth of tax cuts to someone on $1m – that’s their big pitch for re-election.
Well, good luck. Good luck with that. But tell the truth about it as you go.
We funded our plans over ten years. The same tests apply to this prime minister. He thinks he’s above it. He thinks he’s the smartest person in Australia.
You might be, I cast no judgment, but you’re still required to be honest with the Australian people. You’re still required to tell the truth.
The prime minister is required to be honest with the Australian people. And if he can’t be, then he doesn’t deserve that trust. He doesn’t deserve that mandate.
The prime minister doesn’t deserve the term in his own right that he so desperately craves.
Updated
The government doesn’t move the gag. I suspect Bowen thought the government was going to gag him.
Manager of government business, Christopher Pyne, is grinning like a Cheshire Cat. He thinks Bowen is unprepared for a twenty minute speech. I suspect from Bowen’s high adrenalin opening that he’s right. But Bowen ploughs on regardless.
Bowen is nothing if not relentless.
Chris Bowen:
Well, Mr Speaker, what a budget. What a budget! What a launch of an election campaign. The prime minister is off to see the governor-general and launches his election campaign by not being honest with the Australian people and not being honest about the reasons he’s being dishonest with the Australian people.
He could come clean, stand up and reveal the costs.
Here it is. The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, is moving to suspend the standing orders.
Updated
Sounds like we are building up to a suspension here.
Q: Since the government came to office, schools, hospitals and pensions have been cut and the deficit tripled, and now the government is running scared of revealing the 10-year cost of its budget centrepiece. Why is the government delivering the exact opposite of what it promised Australians?
The prime minister is on to what state treasurers think of Bill Shorten. Not much is the short version.
Malcolm Turnbull:
What the leader of the opposition has done – he is presenting Gillard’s unfunded promises with a fresh coat of paint.
They call out “rubbish”, Mr Speaker.
Tonight they will tell us where they will fill in the black hole.
Updated
The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen.
Q: I refer to the prime minister’s repeated claims in previous answers that previous budgets have not outlined 10-year costings. Given the 2014 budget outlined $80bn worth of cuts to schools and hospitals over 10 years, why does not this budget reveal the 10-year cost of his budget centrepiece? And why is the prime minister not honestly explaining to the Australian people the reason why he won’t tell them?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Is that the best you can do? A good question addressed to the shadow treasurer.
The shadow treasurer knows full well ...
Updated
Labor persists with company tax cut costings. The prime minister persists with not giving them, for the reasons he’s previously invoked.
The Tasmanian independent, Andrew Wilkie, wants to know about public service jobs in Hobart, given the great big efficiency dividend in this year’s budget.
Malcolm Turnbull starts out with a statement that Tasmania’s economic future is not served by hiring more public servants but by the economic activity that will come with the government’s jobs and growth plan. I’m not so sure this is the strongest offering Turnbull could be making in sight of an election – don’t you worry about those public servants – given Tasmania (a bit like Canberra) is chock full of them.
Someone else evidently thinks a correction is in order too, because a brief arrives about the CSIRO and the new ice breaker and 40 full-time jobs. Turnbull changes course.
Updated
Bill Shorten again.
Q: Does the prime minister know the Treasury 10-year costing and is simply refusing to say or does he just not know how much the cost of his budget centrepiece will be over 10 years?
That question gets flicked to Scott Morrison. Morrison says the government is sticking with conventional budget practice, just like Labor, which had a policy of not releasing 10-year costings.
Updated
A former colleague of mine when we both worked at the Age, Tim Colebatch, has had a stab at the cost in a piece published by Inside Story. As with all his work, it’s very much worth your time.
Tim says he thinks the cost is $11.5bn a year, rising to $15bn in 2019-20.
Tim Colebatch:
We can get an idea of the ultimate cost by applying the 25% tax rate to the expected 2016–17 company tax take. It would cost us (other taxpayers) $11.5bn a year, rising to $15bn by 2019–20. That’s more than the entire budget support for universities and TAFEs combined.
It’s almost four times the amount we give in official development aid (which, net of administration costs, will be just $2.9bn in 2016–17). It’s more than the government will be spending on all transport infrastructure combined.
It’s a big amount to gamble on the hope of a long-term payback.
Updated
Labor is back to the company tax cuts. Turnbull is asked whether the economist Chris Richardson is correct when he says the tax cut will cost $55bn.
Turnbull says it depends on what his assumptions are. He might be right, he might not be right – only time will tell.
The prime minister says Labor is entitled to ask for these costings but the government will stick with conventional practice.
Malcolm Turnbull:
The medium-term projections, also set out in the budget papers, don’t identify the individual line items and they have not and have not been historically provided in the budget papers.
What we have done is set out in the budget papers detailed four-year estimates, as has always been the case, and then a medium-term outlook that sets out what the overall outcome of the budget is likely to be over that 10-year period, recognising the many uncertainties that attend such a long projection.
That has always been the case and what honorable members opposite are asking the government to do is to provide a detailed element in the Treasury’s calculation, which it has never been the practice of the Treasury to provide before.
Updated
The first Dorothy Dixer is on Neil Prakash.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Mr Speaker, the first duty of every government is the safety and security of the Australian public. No government can guarantee the absolute absence of terrorism but we must not let terror groups like Daesh change us.
We will remain secure and free. We will keep our borders secure and maintain the shared values of freedom and mutual respect for all cultures and faiths that have made ours the most successful multicultural society in the world.
Updated
The manager of government business, Christopher Pyne, has objected to interjections from the former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan. He says Swan has been swearing profusely. Swan rejects this characterisation. Pyne rises to his feet.
Christopher Pyne:
Mr Speaker, I do not want to repeat the word he was using because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. But he knows ... He knows he just told a gross untruth to the House. The word that he used could not possibly be parliamentary.
I’m happy to write the word down for you and hand it to you, Mr Speaker. But I will not put it on the Hansard and give him the respect that he’s looking for to have that remark repeated.
The Speaker, Tony Smith, decides to caution Swan, who remains in the House.
Updated
Here is the reference material at budget paper two, page 41. The costings over the four-year cycle, not the 10-year cycle.
Budget paper number two, page 41 #qt pic.twitter.com/SEN60lm0AC
— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) May 5, 2016
Updated
Question time
Labor opens today, unsurprisingly, on the 10-year cost of the business tax cuts.
Q: Why did the prime minister make the 10-year plan the centrepiece of his budget when, by his own admission, he hasn’t even asked Treasury to identify the 10-year cost?
Malcolm Turnbull:
The leader of the opposition’s childish efforts this morning, rehearsed now today, overlook the fact that as he well knows the Charter of Budget Honesty Act stipulates the budget papers must contain details of policy and estimates for the budget year and the following three years.
The prime minister now has a different page number for where the costing is in the budget papers. It’s now budget paper number two, page 41.
Updated
By the way, this is the last question time of the 44th parliament.
Martial arts by meme. What on earth has happened to Bill Shorten’s head?
Bill Shorten needs to explain how his higher taxes are not going to hurt jobs & growth https://t.co/lbq5WvhpBr pic.twitter.com/mZ07FlZhM4
— Mathias Cormann (@MathiasCormann) May 5, 2016
The other day I described something as “dank” to my 17-year-old. She looked at me in total disgust. “Never say that again, Mum,” was the advice. I tried to tell her that’s what old people now say in an effort to look hip. She left the room.
Updated
If you are wondering why I’m light on for Magic Mike this morning, he’s tied up with a task. He’s back through the course of this afternoon and evening – and of course we’ll go right through til stumps on the budget in reply speech. All aboard the black hole express. Question time is just over the horizon, crouching tiger, hidden dragon. Soon there’ll be martial arts in the tree line.
Updated
Back to black holes. Just some free advice: if you are going to go the black hole, it’s best if you first cover up your own. Pro tip.
Someone should give me a job in a ministerial office.
Updated
Back in Senate estimates, the Greens LGBTI spokesman, Senator Robert Simms, has been asking the attorney general, George Brandis, about the marriage equality plebiscite, for which Brandis said plans are “well advanced”.
Brandis has ruled out suspending anti-discrimination laws for the same-sex marriage plebiscite campaign, as the Australian Christian Lobby managing director, Lyle Shelton, has advocated.
Brandis pointed out there were “very obvious practical problems with that – among them that most anti-discrimination laws in this country are laws of the states, not the commonwealth”.
Officials confirmed the plebiscite was expected to cost $160m, to come out of contingency funds. Brandis said no decision had been made about whether to give public funding to the “yes” and “no” campaigns but if there were, “of course, both sides would be entitled to equal treatment”.
Asked if ACL would get public funding, Brandis said “not necessarily” and who received funding would be determined after a decision was made to give it.
Updated
Cormann is reminded quite correctly that the government is “rightly critical” about Labor’s 10-year spending commitments, so why doesn’t that same principle apply to the 10-year company tax cut commitment in the budget?
We are back to the medium term.
Updated
Phil Coorey from the Australian Financial Review is over today’s fan dance. He asks if it doesn’t insult the intelligence of voters when the major parties, both the Coalition and Labor, conflate various costings and pump up black hole figures 0n budget day and on budget-in-reply day?
Q: Doesn’t it insult the intelligence of voters that you are giving numbers that don’t stack up? You are doing it to Labor.
Mathias Cormann:
Don’t let Labor off the hook. Increased spending which is not funded leads to increased taxes, which hurts jobs and growth.
Updated
Q: Minister, if treasury has done them and you know them, why can’t you tell us what they are?
Mathias Cormann:
As I just indicated to you, the costings are released in the budget papers in the usual way.
Q: Over 10 years?
Mathias Cormann:
I see on the day of the budget reply you don’t seem to be all that interested in the fact that there is a $62bn budget black hole in Labor’s costings.
First question is of course the 10-year company tax costing. Where is it? How come there’s a projection of the tobacco excise measure but not the company tax measure?
Mathias Cormann:
We have obviously costed all of the measures in the budget in the appropriate way, consistent with the costings conventions under the charter of budget honesty.
Updated
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, is up now in the Blue Room on the subject of Labor and black holes ahead of the Shorten budget-in-reply. Black holes and unfunded spending commitments.
Cormann is outlining various questions Shorten must answer in his address tonight. We’ll be into the questions Cormann will answer shortly. The questions from journalists.
Updated
On 3AW, the radio host Neil Mitchell joined the quest to find out how much the company tax cut will cost earlier this morning. Mitchell’s a determined fellow but he didn’t have much luck either. The treasurer told him he could “look it up”. Scott Morrison left out the bit about the costing not being there explicitly if you do look it up. Here’s the exchange.
Q: And what’s it going to cost over the 10 years?
Scott Morrison:
Well, I’ve said it’s incorporated into that ...
Q: I’m sorry, I haven’t got the budget in front of me. What is it?
Scott Morrison:
Well, I’ll let you look it up, mate.
Q: Why?
Scott Morrison:
I’m sure I’ll be able to deal with it in question time later today.
Q: Why do I have to look it up?
Scott Morrison:
Because that’s what’s in there. The underlying cash balance incorporates all of it, it stays in surplus over that period of time on the projection and the point about that, Neil, over 10 years ...
Q: Why can’t we just tell people?
Scott Morrison:
You can make all sorts of projections which the Labor party found out to be very rubbery at the other end.
Updated
Ratings agency Moody's questions key budget projections
Ahead of the budget, the ratings agency Moody’s observed the government would need both expenditure cuts and revenues measures to get the budget back into shape. That advice is off the government’s script. The government says we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, so Moody’s observations weren’t all that helpful.
Post budget, the agency has issued a new assessment about the path back to surplus. It isn’t sounding convinced about the government’s direction.
Here’s the statement:
Moody’s Investors Service says that the Australian government will face challenges in achieving the objective of fiscal consolidation outlined in its FY2017 budget in view of an environment of subdued nominal GDP growth and given sizeable spending obligations.
Moody’s notes that successive revisions by governments towards more persistent deficits in recent years highlight the difficulties in curbing spending and, overall, expects the government’s debt burden to rise somewhat higher.
A slower pace of fiscal consolidation will leave public finances vulnerable to negative shocks, particularly to a potential marked downturn in the housing sector and a reversal in current favourable external financing conditions.
Moody’s sees a mixed economic environment for the FY2017 budget and, while forecasting robust real GDP growth at around 2.5% during FY2017, also expects lacklustre nominal growth, weighed down by muted corporate profitability and wage growth, which will adversely affect budget outcomes.
This expected modest nominal level of GDP growth will challenge the government’s revenue projections. Revenues have undershot previous projections, partly because of the fall in commodities prices and its impact on profits and wages. With the adjustment to these lower prices still under way, profit tax and income tax revenues are likely to grow only modestly in the next few years.
The rise in the tobacco excise, the restriction on tax advantages on superannuation contributions and the clampdown on tax avoidance will be – as highlighted in the budget – the main sources of increases in revenue. But the combined total for the expected additional revenues over the next four years will be offset by various tax rebates as part of the Ten Year Enterprise Tax plan and other changes to superannuation taxation.
Limits to the effectiveness of spending restraint are further evident. With education, health, social security and welfare accounting for around 60% of total spending, achieving significant expenditure restraint will be challenging and commitments in these areas risk largely offsetting efficiency savings.
At the same time, the unfavourable upward trend in Australia’s debt is mitigated by a high level of debt affordability, with interest payments amounting to around 4% of revenues, although this marks a higher level compared with 10 years ago. In an environment of low interest rates in domestic markets and given favourable external financing conditions, affordability will likely remain high, although vulnerable to a change in financing conditions.
Updated
Down in the House, the former speaker Anna Burke has bid farewell to politics with a side swipe at Labor on asylum policy. She said something needs to be done about offshore detention and the public wants something done about it. Her colleague Laurie Ferguson is taking his turn now.
In estimates, I can hear the Liberal senator Bill Heffernan roaring at the attorney general, George Brandis, in a committee. My colleague Gabi Chan is watching that and if there’s something we need to know, she’ll bring us up to speed.
Updated
Politics this lunch time
This morning has run like a careening bus, so let’s stop for a minute and take stock, even though the bus continues to swerve around us.
Today, Thursday:
-
The government is refusing to disclose the full costs of the company tax cut over the next 10 years, even though the government regularly characterises Labor’s long-term policy ideas, like needs-based school funding, as being funded with absent or funny money. Both the prime minister and the treasurer say the costs of the measure are factored into the medium-term projections, which show Australia limping back to surplus, so don’t you worry about that.
-
The former prime minister Tony Abbott has kicked a hornet’s nest by first suggesting the mining industry needed to reward the former resources minister Ian Macfarlane for scrapping the mining tax. The reward seemed to be giving Macfarlane a job in his retirement. Abbott went on from that to recount an anecdote about getting cash in an envelope from a millionaire. Let’s have that one again. “I recall quite some years ago, as a relatively new member of parliament, that a well-known millionaire invited me for a pre-Christmas drink,” Abbott said. “As I was leaving he gave me an envelope and said, ‘that’s your Christmas present’. When I opened it up, it contained $5,000 in cash. I can tell you, the Abbott family in those days could have used that money, but it did not feel right. I rang Bill Heffernan for his advice and he said: ‘Once bought, always bought. Give it back and say to that person, ‘please write out a cheque for the campaign’.” A more compelling presentation for the worthiness of a federal integrity commission is rarely made and never so accidentally, which really does tell you something.
-
The Australian government has confirmed that Australian intelligence agencies told the Americans about the location of the jihadist, Neil Prakash, who was killed in an American military strike.
-
Clive Palmer’s unveiling of new Senate candidates got lively when the Liberal MP Ewen Jones thought he might offer a few helpful thoughts on looking after the workers at Queensland Nickel.
- Estimates are on, the valedictory speeches are continuing and the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, is building up to tonight’s budget-in-reply address.
Onwards, upwards.
Updated
If you’d like to view that exchange.
.@EwenJonesMP crashes @CliveFPalmer's press conference. Full argument ensues. #auspol @SBSNewshttps://t.co/JiKhIt6mPm
— David Sharaz (@DavidSharaz) May 5, 2016
Updated
The Clive Palmer circus has touched down in another parliamentary courtyard. There are evidently more Senate candidates to announce. But the member for Herbert, Ewen Jones, has joined the spectacle today and decided to engage in a little sledging from the sidelines. Queensland Nickel is in his electorate.
Ewen Jones:
When are you giving back the money that’s gone to Palmer United from Queensland Nickel? What about the purchases you have made?
Clive Palmer:
None of that is true.
Ewen Jones:
It is true.
Clive Palmer:
Of course it’s not true. You are just desperate to lose your seat.
Ewen Jones:
If I lose my seat ...
Clive Palmer:
You know they spoke to you in October – I spoke to you in October and you told me to get stuffed, the government wouldn’t put any money in. That was in 2015.
Ewen Jones:
This is your company, Clive.
Clive Palmer:
The Australian government is a disgrace. There’s 14,000 workers in Whyalla. Why don’t you go down there and get the government to stop those people losing their jobs?
Ewen Jones:
I am looking after Townsville.
Clive Palmer:
You are looking after yourself, nobody else. You don’t look after anybody else and you will soon be unemployed.
Ewen Jones:
And unemployable. I am happy to be unemployed. I am happy to be unemployed if it means you ...
One of the new Palmer candidates, to Jones:
Goodbye, Ewen.
Would you like a tissue?
Updated
Still in other chambers, finance officials have revealed that taking university fee deregulation out of the budget has saved $1.5bn because the government will be lending less in HELP debt as a result.
Deferring removal of the student loan fees by a year will save about $0.5bn.
Labor’s Penny Wong asked for a breakdown of savings but the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, directed further questions to the education portfolio. “Why don’t you just say, ‘because we’re cutting funding from universities’?” Wong asked.
(A direct answer to a direct question? Dream on – this is a committee.)
Updated
In other chambers, the president of the the Australian Human Rights Commission, Prof Gillian Triggs, has told Senate estimates this morning asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island and Nauru should be moved to a “safer place”.
“Our position at the AHRC is that because of the prolonged detention on these two islands, the failure to provide a durable solution or settlement, coupled with the particularly poor and dangerous conditions, means that they must be moved to a safer place for settlement,” Triggs told the hearing.
Her comments follow a call from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees for those held by Australia’s offshore detention regime to be moved to “humane conditions”. Two refugees on Nauru have set themselves on fire in the past eight days. And last week, PNG’s supreme court ruled that the detention on Manus Island was illegal and must be ended.
Asked if a safer place for settlement meant moving people to Australia, Triggs said matters of policy were for the government to decide but that Australia “seems to be a logical step, particularly in light of the supreme court decision”.
Among broader concerns for the physical safety and mental health of those in offshore detention, Triggs said she was particularly concerned for homosexual people on Manus and Nauru, where homosexuality is illegal.
“A particular couple on Nauru, we are told, are fearful of leaving their living quarters because they are fearful of being attacked,” Triggs said. “For people of a different sexual orientation, it is a difficult, distressing and potentially dangerous situation.”
Australia sending homosexual people to a place where they could face violence, discrimination, criminal charges, or persecution for their sexuality could be regarded as “refoulement”, a breach of Australia’s international legal obligations, Triggs said.
Updated
Given I was highly truncated in my coverage of the Turnbull interview to ensure we got across the full range of issues – I skipped through to the nub which was the medium-term outlook – it is actually worth posting the full section on company tax costings, just so you get the full journey, which was, as noted, somewhat inelegant.
SPEERS: So, the company tax plan: what is it going to cost over 10 years?
TURNBULL: Well we have not – the Treasury has not identified the dollar cost of that particular item.
SPEERS: What not?
TURNBULL: Let me just go on. What is has does is set out a medium-term outlook in which, which takes account of the company tax cut and of course all the other tax arrangements. So, it takes a number of assumptions including the 10-year cuts to company tax which at the end of that period sees all companies paying 25% tax and as you can see from the budget papers is shows the budget returning to balance which is where is should be. Which is where we seek to bring it.
SPEERS: What price? This cut to company tax. I mean surely you’ve modelled this, there’s need some consideration on what it costs?
TURNBULL: The Treasury has modelled that.
SPEERS: So, what’s the cost?
TURNBULL: Well the Treasury has modelled that and set out in the budget, showing in the medium-term outcome.
SPEERS: I’m asking about the 10-year – you put a 10-year plan in the budget, what’s the cost?
TURNBULL: All of those costs are taken into account in the medium-term outlook and it’s set out.
SPEERS: What is the cost?
TURNBULL: Well, it’s set out there. You can see the outcome.
SPEERS: I can’t see it in the budget?
TURNBULL: You can.
SPEERS: What the 10-year figure is.
TURNBULL: You can see it there. The budget outcome, the balance over to 26-27 is set out there on page 3-11 on budget paper 1.
SPEERS: And what’s the figure?
TURNBULL: Well you can see it there. It shows the budget returning to balance.
SPEERS: Doesn’t say what the cost is though, not the budget returning to balance. What’s the cost of your company tax plan?
TURNBULL: The cost of the plan is set out in the medium-term outlook and shows the budget returning to balance.
SPEERS: So what is it? I don’t understand what the cost is? What’s it going to cost taxpayers to cut the company tax rate to 25%?
TURNBULL: Well, what it ensures is that we’ll have stronger jobs and growth. David, you’re asking for a ...
SPEERS: Dollar figure.
TURNBULL: No, look lets be quite clear. What the Treasury does and every budget does this, is set out very detailed itemised assumptions over four years. Ok, that’s why they’re called the forward estimates. And then they make their assumptions going out for 10 years and they set out what they call the mediu- term outlook and that medium-term outlook takes into account assumptions which include the 10-year enterprise tax plan which will drive jobs and growth over those 10 years. And is clearly affordable, lives within our means.
SPEERS: Well how do we know it’s affordable? How is it clearly affordable, what does it afford, what does it cost? It’s pretty simple question, prime minister.
TURNBULL: David, what you’re asking is …
SPEERS: The cost …
TURNBULL: ... for me to unpick every single line item of those assumptions going out to 26-27 and the budget papers do not do that –
SPEERS: I’m not, I’m just asking what the overall cost is. This is not a difficult question.
TURNBULL: David. David, I’m not going to add to the detail that is in the budget papers, and the budget papers set out.
SPEERS: Then why put a 10-year plan in the budget papers? Why not just put the four-year plan in the budget papers?
TURNBULL: Because what we, well, the budget papers set out a medium-term outlook and they do that every budget. And they make assumptions about tax rates, they make assumptions about GDP, they make assumptions about commodity prices. And of course, the further out they go, you know, the, the, there is a – the longer, further out you forecast, there is more uncertainty. One of the certain assumptions that is in the medium-term outlook is of course the policy which will be legislated to reduce company tax, down to 25% over 10 years.
SPEERS: The economist Chris Richardson reckons it’s about $55bn …
TURNBULL: Well look, he may well may be right. He may well be right. He may well be right in the dollars of 26-27. I mean, again, this is, you see. People can –
SPEERS: Let’s talk about today’s dollars before people get too confused on, in factoring in inflation. But $55bn is about right?
TURNBULL: No, I’m not. I don’t, look. What I’m saying to you is, we know what it will cost over the forward estimates, which is in excess of $5bn as Scott Morrison has said. And economists like Chris Richardson can make assumptions and they can, you know, work them out and they can forecast them just as the Treasury has done, but what the Treasury does, and this is, I’ve got to be very clear about this, they do this every year. We’re not doing anything differently. They provide very detailed, itemised assumptions over four years and then they say, ‘Our best forecast of what the budget is going to look like over the decade, over the medium-term outlook is as follows, and you can see there it sets out –
SPEERS: But you’re the one who has made this 10-year commitment and you’ve put it in the budget –
TURNBULL: Can I just say to you, I’m not confirming or commenting on Chris Richardson other than to say, he’s a former Treasury economist and no doubt you should heed what his advice is. It may or may not be correct.
Updated
Show us the money, prime minister
Down in the House, Labor is going to town on this morning’s Sky interview with the prime minister, which was, as they say in the classics, untidy.
The shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has moved that the House notes that “in an extraordinary interview with David Speers on Sky News this morning”:
- The prime minister said that Treasury “has not identified the dollar cost” of the centrepiece of his budget, the 10-year tax cut for big business;
- But a moment later, the prime minister said Treasury had modelled the cost;
- Still later, the prime minister said the cost of his centrepiece 10-year tax cut for big business was outlined on page 3-11 of Budget Paper No. 1 despite the fact that page does not mention companies or corporations or small businesses even once; and
- The prime minister said the $55bn cost of his centrepiece 10-year tax cut for big business nominated by economist Chris Richardson “may well be right”.
The motion condemns the prime minister ..
- For delivering a budget which is a fraud on the Australian people by having a centrepiece without a cost attached; and
- Calls on the prime minister to attend the House to finally come clean about the 10-year cost for the 10-year tax cut for big business.
The government has gagged the motion. They are voting now.
All today needed was a bit of George W Bush and Paula and the bounty of the internet delivers.
Updated
One of the many reasons to love the Canberra political blogger Paula Matthewson.
Oops, found this as I was looking for a budget image https://t.co/D1b8sIY1fQ ping @murpharoo pic.twitter.com/tJqDW34vOw
— Paula Matthewson (@Drag0nista) May 5, 2016
Updated
Downstairs, the Labor leader Bill Shorten is giving the colleagues a pep talk ahead of tonight’s budget in reply speech. From the context of the remarks I suspect Shorten is at the Labor women’s caucus but I don’t know that for sure.
Bill Shorten:
Today is not an election launch ... but what I can promise this group is when it comes to the unequal treatment of women, we understand them.
What the conservatives pigeon hole as ‘women’s issues’ are all our issues.
Finance department officials have confirmed, meanwhile, in Senate estimates that they didn’t begin drawing up timetable changes to move the budget a week forward to 3 May until the prime minister announced it on 21 March. Officials said they began to think about the move because of public speculation but didn’t change the timetable until the government had made a decision.
Finance minister Mathias Cormann, at the table, also won’t answer the question about whether he knew the budget had been moved to 3 May before the prime minister announced it. (You might remember Scott Morrison was caught somewhat on the hop.)
Mathias Cormann:
I was aware the budget would be on 3 May on the day the announcement was made.
Senator Penny Wong asked repeatedly if Cormann knew before Turnbull announced it, and said it was a “little embarrassing” he would not confirm he knew before. Cormann repeated formulations he was aware “on the day” it was announced.
Updated
Tony Abbott, in one, off-the-cuff speech (that was meant to be about reflecting on the manifest glory of the Abbott years), making a compelling case for a federal integrity body.
Updated
Abbott: it gets worse
While we are all still digesting Tony Abbott’s comments on Ian Macfarlane, there was a little nugget from his speech that we haven’t yet covered.
The former prime minister in the adjournment debate was also singing the praises of the integrity of the retiring Liberal senator Bill Heffernan as “the only member of this parliament I have ever met who never sought promotion”.
Abbott then moved to a personal anecdote. He told the parliament that as a “relatively new member of parliament”, he was invited to drinks by a well-known millionaire.
Tony Abbott:
As I was leaving he gave me an envelope and said, ‘That’s your Christmas present. When I opened it up it contained $5,000 in cash. I can tell you, the Abbott family in those days could have used that money, but it did not feel right. I rang Bill Heffernan for his advice and he said, ‘Once bought, always bought. Give it back and say to that person, “Please write out a cheque for the campaign.”’
There are two things about this story.
The first is the spectre of politicians being offered envelopes full of cash. What for? We don’t know. But remember he is talking about an experience at the beginning of this career. Not at its height.
The other is that while the cash was rejected, the “softer path” is to make a donation as a party donation. That is, the knowledge of an potential expectation tied to a specific member can be attached to a particular apparently generic donation made out to a political party.
If you want to feel just a bit sick, think about that.
Updated
David Speers has moved on to housing. What about housing prices in Sydney? Turnbull says this is a supply side question. The answer to housing affordability is not Labor’s negative gearing policy. That will smash the housing market, Turnbull says.
Speers then moves to the super changes in the budget, and how they might encourage wealthy people to redirect money out of super and towards negatively geared housing investments. Turnbull says super remains a very attractive investment.
Q: You don’t think they’ll be taking huge amounts of money out of superannuation?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Super will remain a very attractive investment.
Q: What are your plans for Sunday? Will you be visiting the governor general on Sunday?
Turnbull says he’ll be visiting the governor general “shortly” and there will be an election on 2 July.
Updated
Speers presses Turnbull on tax growing as a share of the economy over the forward estimates while the deficit reduction is on the slow track. Turnbull says the tax share is growing because the economy is growing.
The Sky political editor then presses on the cost of the company tax cuts over the 10-year horizon. Where is the government’s costing?
Turnbull points him to page 311 of the budget papers, he says the cost is there. No, it isn’t, Speers says. (It isn’t, not in the explicit way Speers is asking for it). Turnbull then explains about the medium-term outlook in the budget process. Speers fully understands the medium-term outlook process in the budget. He doesn’t need that MalSplained™.
Speers just wants the 10-year costing, which as he says, isn’t that hard.
No banana, David.
Malcolm Turnbull:
I’m not going to add the detail that’s in the budget papers.
Updated
Malcolm Turnbull on Sky News
Sky political editor David Speers opens with the killing of Neil Prakash. Did Australia help point the US to Prakash, knowing this was a kill operation? Brandis said as much to Sky earlier today.
Turnbull says he won’t add to that, but says jihadists are enemies of Australia once they choose to wage war in theatres overseas.
The next question is on Papua New Guinea and the Manus detainees. What’s happening in the wake of the PNG supreme court decision? Turnbull says people offshore cannot come back to Australia.
Q: Does Australia have a responsibility here?
Malcolm Turnbull:
We are doing everything we can to ensure they are well cared for ... and encourage them to either return home or settle in PNG ... or a third party.
Q: Have you ever met Donald Trump?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I’ve never met Mr Trump, no.
Q: Is it time to build some bridges?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, we’ll see. Ultimately this is a decision for the American people.
Speers points to all the daily Trump nonsense on the TPP and China and the region.
Malcolm Turnbull:
It’s an election campaign in America and I’ll leave that adjudication to the American people.
Q: Surely you’d object to these things?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Surely I would not.
Updated
In addition to all the bits and pieces, we have the prime minister coming up on Sky News, and we also have two days of Senate estimates hearings. I’ll cover the prime minister, obviously, and will tune in to estimates as I can.
The Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, in a committee just now.
I for one am grateful that they are getting baton training.
(I have no context for this remark. Let’s move on.)
Updated
Scott Morrison has made a speech this morning to accountants about the budget and has been stopped by reporters afterwards. The treasurer is still selling the government’s budget, and given it’s Bill Shorten’s big night tonight, Morrison is attempting to establish the key test for the ALP.
This, of course, is about framing. The government tries to frame Labor’s key tests, Labor attempts to frame the government’s tests.
Scott Morrison:
Bill Shorten tonight needs to outline very clearly just how much more he’s going to spend. Because the more he spends, the more he will tax you. Every moment you see Bill Shorten’s lips moving tonight, he will be spending more, which means he will be taxing you more. And he needs to be crystal clear with the Australian people about just how much more he is going to spend. And that includes not proceeding with the savings that this government has been able to put in place. The savings that he has been blocking.
So tax and spend is the official frame. No shocks there.
But reporters are still chasing him over Labor’s framing question (well one of them) about Tuesday’s document.
Q: Will you be releasing the full costings of your 10-year corporate tax plan?
Scott Morrison:
It’s in the budget. If you look at the medium-term projections on the underlying cash balance, it goes out to 26-27 and our full tax plan is incorporated in those projections as provided for by Treasury.
So it’s fully accounted for. It’s there.
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Good morning to Matt Davey. Politics Live would be lost without him. Thanks for this, we are checking it out.
@murpharoo Hello. Michaela Cash has told @774melbourne that the Intern Programme will be compulsory, not voluntary. pic.twitter.com/neKUW0JZ6i
— The Matt Hatter (@MattGlassDarkly) May 4, 2016
Are Abbott's remarks consistent with his own code of conduct?
Back to Abbott for a moment because I am still doing yoga breathing on the story I opened with this morning.
Tony Abbott’s remarks raise a lot of questions, as I noted first up, but one thing I didn’t note first up was whether or not they are even consistent with his own ministerial code of conduct while he was the prime minister.
The Abbott ministerial code (which as far as I know has been picked up by Malcolm Turnbull) says the following about jobs after politics.
Ministers are required to undertake that, for an 18-month period after ceasing to be a minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as minister in their last 18 months in office.
Ministers are also required to undertake that, on leaving office, they will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a minister, where that information is not generally available to the public.
There is another part of the code that’s potentially relevant given the unplugged way Abbott expressed his view in the adjournment debate.
Ministers are expected to conduct all official business on the basis that they may be expected to demonstrate publicly that their actions and decisions in conducting public business were taken with the sole objective of advancing the public interest.
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Don't you worry about Donald
Malcolm Turnbull has done a radio interview with Triple M in which Donald Trump featured heavily. Turnbull noted of Trump (after some prompting) that he was the product of middle-class disillusionment in the US. The prime minister said the middle class in America had been squeezed during the recession, and income inequality was a big deal in the country, and that context was informing the presidential contest in the country.
Turnbull was asked about relations with Washington in the event Trump went from presumptive nominee to nominee, and from nominee to president. Host Eddie McGuire pointed Turnbull to regional disquiet about Trump’s foreign policy isolationism.
The prime minister noted that relationship with the US was bigger than any one president, or any one prime minister. Presidents and prime ministers could adjust the Anzuz alliance “a bit” but Australia would always have a friend and ally in Washington.
Malcolm Turnbull:
The Anzus alliance will grow and strengthen regardless of who the president is.
(Translation: Don’t you worry about Donald. I wonder if he had his fingers crossed when he said that?)
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Australian intelligence cooperated with the US to locate Prakash
Working through the developments. The government this morning has confirmed that Neil Prakash, a senior Australian Islamic State operative behind a string of failed terrorist attacks in Melbourne and Sydney, has been killed in a US military airstrike in Iraq. Shadi Jabar, the sister of the 15-year-old western Sydney boy who shot and killed police accountant Curtis Cheng last October, was also killed in a separate strike in Syria. The attorney-general, George Brandis, has told Sky News this morning Australian intelligence cooperated with the US in the “identification and location of Prakash”.
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Still cooling down, apologies, normal live blog transition will resume shortly. Many things on the go.
Hello, step back, I'm pretty cranky
Good morning and welcome to Thursday in Canberra, which is budget-in-reply today. On Tuesday the Coalition had its moment to make its economic case for government. Tonight, it’s Bill Shorten’s turn. A big moment, given the election is truly a heartbeat away.
But before we get to all that, it’s not very often I hear something in politics so gobsmacking that my mouth falls open. But last night, at the adjournment debate I did.
Tony Abbott, who has been quiet of late, made a speech last night that contained an observation that you could either characterise as incredibly naive, or laying bare the grimly transactional character of modern politics.
Abbott was paying tribute to the sterling qualities of the former resources minister Ian Macfarlane, who is retiring at this election. Macfarlane while in government had swept away Labor’s mining tax, “a job-destroying, investment-killing tax, which didn’t raise any revenue”. (I know a tax can’t simultaneously destroy an industry and have no impact on an industry but let’s move past that, because logical inconsistency is not our problem.)
Tony Abbott:
It was a magnificent achievement by the [member] for Groom in his time as minister ... and I hope the sector will acknowledge and demonstrate their gratitude to him in his years of retirement from this place.
I know you might need a minute to let that sink in, so I’ll give you a few seconds to read back over that statement.
Just in case your mind still blocks the meaning of that sentence let me decode: Abbott (a former prime minister, not some loose-lipped neophyte) is saying now the resources minister has been so kind to give the mining sector a big commercial benefit, now the sector should look after him.
Now you might say to me isn’t that how politics works? Isn’t this just a statement of the obvious? I would say to you that statement is nothing we should be complacent about, or just lapse into cynicism about – it’s dropping the mask moment that should make us all ropably angry.
In that rubric, public policy making is not about public interest, it’s about transactions, appeasing sectional interests. It’s about delivering for your mates (who happen to donate to the Liberal party), then having your mates look out for you. Meanwhile the public look on powerless, at the bottom of the decision-making pile.
That glancing statement from Abbott doesn’t make me cynical, it doesn’t confirm my biases, it doesn’t make me shrug my shoulders lightly and move on, it spurs me again to say the comfy and relaxed disposition sitting behind this observation from Abbott is appalling, and it has to change.
Integrity in the Australian political system should be a much bigger deal than it is, particularly if a former prime minister of this country is relaxed enough to just drop a reference like that into an adjournment speech. The US voting public is so angry with the political class in America, in part because they feel locked out of the system, that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the republican party in this presidential race. A socialist from Vermont is sticking it to Hillary Clinton on the subject of influence, and whatever you think of Sanders politics, the message is resonating. So for Australia: time to wake up politicians – this is not how the voting public wants politics to run.
Let’s push on with this and the rest of the day, another big one, hope you’ve packed provisions because I suspect we’ll be here for more than 12 hours.
Today’s comments thread is wide open for your business. Magic Mike and I are up and about on the twits – he’s @mpbowers and I’m@murpharoo. If you speak Facebook you can join my daily forum here. And if you want a behind-the-scenes look at the day and the looming campaign, give Mike a follow on Instagram. You can find him here.
Here comes Thursday.
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