Speaker 1: I love that twenty six the worst is behind us.
Speaker 1: We've got cost of living relief one point two million
Speaker 1: before the end of the Decode New York.
Speaker 2: Past from the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm
Speaker 2: Claire Harvey and this is our budget special.
Speaker 1: Jim Charmers had to actually use the r word recession.
Speaker 3: We eat these policies and call it reform.
Speaker 4: There's no surplus until twenty thirty four.
Speaker 2: We're here in Canberra in the Australian's Federal Parliamentary Press
Speaker 2: Gallery Bureau in Parliament House. Hello, Breg Brown, Sarah Issen,
Speaker 2: Matthew Transton, under the close supervision of officials.
Speaker 5: Just as a reminder you of each agreed to not
Speaker 5: share information outside the room, only discuss it with others
Speaker 5: in the lock up.
Speaker 2: It's called a lock up because journalists get access to
Speaker 2: the budget papers six hours early at one thirty pm
Speaker 2: on Tuesday, and we're locked in to our offices.
Speaker 5: Surrender your mobile phone, smart watch and other devices.
Speaker 2: So we can't spill any secrets or do any insider trading.
Speaker 2: Before Jim Chalmers stands up to make his budget speech
Speaker 2: just after seven thirty pm, Speaker this.
Speaker 6: Is the most important and ambitious budget in decades.
Speaker 2: Today we decode a federal budget the government thinks will
Speaker 2: consolidate Labour's grip on power. When a budget comes down,
Speaker 2: you'll be amazed to learn they don't just hand us
Speaker 2: all the answers on a plate. The journalists have to
Speaker 2: dig through the tables in a massive stack of printed
Speaker 2: books to work out what's actually going on. Oh, there's
Speaker 2: about to be some SWEARINGSSI.
Speaker 4: Has taken not yet announce.
Speaker 5: Look at the billions there?
Speaker 7: Shit, how am i?
Speaker 2: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's Political editor. Jeff, we've heard
Speaker 2: of smoko and servo. Now we've got waow. I need
Speaker 2: you to say it in your accent and then tell
Speaker 2: us what it is. What o?
Speaker 8: And it made me think of you know, Albo and
Speaker 8: Jimbo down at the king O in Canberra cooking up
Speaker 8: a wato. And it's just another very highly political term.
Speaker 8: So we always heard about a thing called the Lamington
Speaker 8: which was a limido. So that was for low and
Speaker 8: middle income workers. And whenever a government didn't really want
Speaker 8: to go the whole hog on tax reform, but they
Speaker 8: wanted to give a bit of a sweetener out. They'd
Speaker 8: cooked this up and now labor have scripped it on
Speaker 8: doing anything really on bracket creep. You know, it keeps
Speaker 8: people happy, so they bake it in. They're saying that
Speaker 8: they're baking this in permanently, but it is also an
Speaker 8: instrument that you could take out at a future date.
Speaker 2: Yeah, working Australians tax offset. We knew it was coming
Speaker 2: because Matt Cranston, the Australian's economics editor, broke the story.
Speaker 2: We didn't know it was going to be baked in
Speaker 2: for at least the next ten years, maybe forever. What
Speaker 2: does that actually mean?
Speaker 8: Yeah, well that was It was devastating run up to
Speaker 8: the budget. It's unheard of for any media organization or
Speaker 8: a journalist to get typically the centerpiece populist policy, and
Speaker 8: Matt Cranston got that we have a cost of living crisis,
Speaker 8: the threat of recession, more rate hikes, and it's something
Speaker 8: they can do which they can argue won't drive up inflation.
Speaker 8: So it's one of those treasury political inventions.
Speaker 2: The government says it's about rewarding people who work as
Speaker 2: opposed to people who get income from assets or from savings.
Speaker 2: Does it also help labor win elections.
Speaker 8: Look in this day and age, what does two hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty bucks really mean. I'm sure people will pocket it,
Speaker 8: but when it goes through your tax process, you might
Speaker 8: not even really notice it because the cost of everything
Speaker 8: is going up. So I don't see this as an
Speaker 8: election winner. I think it's a stop gap towards what
Speaker 8: they're holding back to do before the twenty twenty eight election.
Speaker 2: Greg Brown is The Australian's chief political correspondent. Greg, we
Speaker 2: already knew this budget would contain big cuts to the
Speaker 2: National Disability Insurance Scheme and three big new tax changes
Speaker 2: negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts. What we didn't
Speaker 2: know is how much that was all going to rake in.
Speaker 2: So what are the budget papers showing us?
Speaker 4: Well, the NDIS raises nearly one hundred and ninety billion
Speaker 4: over the ten years, so that is the main crux
Speaker 4: of the government savings. Very optimistic assumptions as well. It
Speaker 4: really is down to the government now actually delivering on
Speaker 4: that now, given they've baked it into the budget. But
Speaker 4: collectively it's an increasing tax of seventy seven billion over
Speaker 4: the ten years. So those measures bring us to a
Speaker 4: balanced budget in eight years time. So even with higher
Speaker 4: taxes and big cuts to the NDIS, there's no surpl
Speaker 4: us until twenty thirty four.
Speaker 2: The government had to break promises to deliver these changes.
Speaker 2: They sell it as reform rather than just revenue raising.
Speaker 2: Is it going to be worth it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, Jim Chalmers says that over the forwards these
Speaker 4: tax changes are broadly revenue neutral, which is right. They're
Speaker 4: actually revenue raising over the longer period, and he's sort
Speaker 4: of leaving the door open to maybe we can give
Speaker 4: a tax cut in the future, but we really should
Speaker 4: judge him on what he's doing at the moment. The risk, Claire,
Speaker 4: I think is that it can leave the impression in
Speaker 4: the community that all they're doing is raising taxes and
Speaker 4: it is an assault on aspiration.
Speaker 6: This budget is ambitious in the face of adversity. We
Speaker 6: choose the hard rate of reform, not the path of
Speaker 6: least resistance.
Speaker 2: Richard Ferguson, you're the Australians can for bot give me
Speaker 2: a verdict?
Speaker 3: Well, A Treasurer Chris Bowen and Prime Minister Bill Shorten
Speaker 3: have released an extraordinary budget. What are you doing about?
Speaker 3: This is a Chris bow and Bill short And budget No, it's.
Speaker 2: Jim Chalmers an Anthony Albanezi.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. Oh I forgot. It's just that almost
Speaker 3: every policy looks exactly like Bill Shorten took to the election.
Speaker 3: Silly me is that the election he didn't win, that
Speaker 3: would be the election he didn't win. I am quite famously,
Speaker 3: but Jim Tarmers and Anthony Albanzi clearly believe that the
Speaker 3: Iran war has given them an opportunity to read these
Speaker 3: policies and call it reform.
Speaker 2: Anthony Albanese's the master political tactician of his generation. Is
Speaker 2: this showing Bill Shorten that this is how it's done.
Speaker 2: You white until a fifth budget and then get it
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that might be how Anthony ALBANIZI might
Speaker 3: say it. It was interesting The Australian reported just before
Speaker 3: the lock up that there had been a briefing note
Speaker 3: going around labor MPs which gave the seven different options
Speaker 3: to explain how the government had broken their promises when
Speaker 3: it came to not touching the Bill shortened policies on
Speaker 3: negative gearing, capital gains, tax trusts, etc. Etc. So they're
Speaker 3: trying to really frame this as these are the right
Speaker 3: policies for the right moment, and they did get away
Speaker 3: with it with the Stage three tax cuts. At the
Speaker 3: last election, Albanezy said I'm not touching the bill shortened policies.
Speaker 3: He's definitely touching them though.
Speaker 2: Paul Kelly is The Australian's editor at large. Paul Jim
Speaker 2: Chalmers says he's helping, not harming, in the war on inflation.
Speaker 7: Do you buy that there are good things and bad
Speaker 7: things about this budget? The point to make is the
Speaker 7: forecasts given the global energy crisis, are fairly optimistic. The
Speaker 7: government thinks we can get through that, okay. It's also,
Speaker 7: of course preparing for a major political war on taxation
Speaker 7: given the changes on capital gains to negative gearing, and
Speaker 7: the government clearly thinks it's position well to win that
Speaker 7: political war despite the broken promises, because it's going to
Speaker 7: pitch to a new generation of younger voters. So in
Speaker 7: that sense you can see Labor readjusting its position. Overall,
Speaker 7: most of the budget's savings come from the NDIS and
Speaker 7: they are incredibly large. What this means is that DUS
Speaker 7: savings now drive the fiscal consolidation and the return to surplus.
Speaker 7: If the NDIS savings aren't delivered, then fiscal policy doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to make those cuts in a fiscal way,
Speaker 2: but also in a moral and ethical way. For the
Speaker 2: Albanese government, they are going to face families saying that
Speaker 2: they've been cut off and that this is not fair,
Speaker 2: that these are not labor values. Is it worth the
Speaker 2: risk for labor to make those cuts.
Speaker 7: It knows the program is out of control, it knows
Speaker 7: the program needs to be reformed, and it's attempting to
Speaker 7: turn that into a political and financial plus. I think
Speaker 7: the other important point to make here when it comes
Speaker 7: to taxation policy is this new tax offset. This two
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty dollars going to each worker across thirteen
Speaker 7: million Australian workers. This is a golden chance for the
Speaker 7: Liberal leader Angus Taylor to outsmart labor by excelling, by
Speaker 7: excelling what Labour's doing. Taylor should announce in his Thursday
Speaker 7: night reply to the budget that the Opposition is committed
Speaker 7: to the full indexation of the personal income tax scale.
Speaker 7: That is a superior tax reform to what Labour's proposed,
Speaker 7: and it probably means that the margin a greater concession
Speaker 7: to workers than what labor has proposed. But above all,
Speaker 7: it would give Taylor a chance to seize the tax
Speaker 7: initiative and to introdesce a bold policy, and bold policy
Speaker 7: is certainly what he needs at the moment.
Speaker 2: Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor. Dennis, we know
Speaker 2: Jim Chalmers is an ambitious guy. He keeps telling us.
Speaker 2: So he also says he's impatient. This is his fifth
Speaker 2: budget and all those budgets we've been waiting for some
Speaker 2: genuine reform.
Speaker 3: Is this it?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. The budget has suffered from being
Speaker 1: oversold and really an underachievement because what we've seen and
Speaker 1: I think Jim Chalmers's treasure would always have wanted to
Speaker 1: change capital gains tax.
Speaker 7: We know that.
Speaker 1: We know that from previous times. We know that he
Speaker 1: wanted to change the negative gearing, so we know that
Speaker 1: this is where Jim Chalmer's heart is. We also know
Speaker 1: that this is where he wants to help workers way journers,
Speaker 1: and that's partly what they're talking about. Is this changing
Speaker 1: the balance between way journers and investors. Of course, a
Speaker 1: lot of those way journers are investors as well. But
Speaker 1: I think that the problem here is that it doesn't
Speaker 1: go as far as Jim Chalmers would have wanted to.
Speaker 1: And I think the reason for this. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason is that we've seen reports and the Prime minister's
Speaker 1: behavior suggesting that he has been in charge of the
Speaker 1: budget process in a large part, it's his budget, and
Speaker 1: I think part of that problem is that the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister is incredibly timid. He is afraid of upsetting voters
Speaker 1: that don't mind upsetting older voters. Now because we've seen
Speaker 1: older voters who traditionally support or more disproportionately support the
Speaker 1: coalition shifting to one nation, so the threat of older
Speaker 1: voters forming a block and voting for coalition MPs, against
Speaker 1: candidates against labor people has diminished. So they can afford
Speaker 1: to say up you to the older voters while appealing
Speaker 1: to the younger voters. And I think that that is
Speaker 1: the Prime minister's political strategy, and for old Jim Chalmers
Speaker 1: trying to say this wasn't a political document, it is
Speaker 1: a highly political document and the Prime Minister wants to
Speaker 1: shore up the younger vote, which was their strength at
Speaker 1: the last election. We know it was the strength at
Speaker 1: the last election because they actually lied to older voters
Speaker 1: all of these changes they lied about, and so what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is they were worried about the reaction to
Speaker 1: older voters at the last election. Now they're introducing them
Speaker 1: because the older voters are no longer the political threat
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 2: If that's still not enough budget for you, go to
Speaker 2: the Australian dot com dot au. It's where the scoops
Speaker 2: keep coming. This episode of the Front was presented by
Speaker 2: me Claire Harvey, produced by Kristin Amiott and edited by
Speaker 2: Jasper Lake.