From the Skyinging Center.
This is Paul Murray life.
Thank you KG to everyone on our camber team. All right now, no more bs, no more mucking around, no more sitting on the fence. The barefoot investor Scott Paper is a man who many people turn to for some financial advice or somebody they read often. He today did the first thing he's done in twenty years when it comes to a federal budget. He didn't bother going to Canberra because as you have all learnt by now, it's all handed out and leaked and mentioned, and even the
budget surplus was known in the papers this morning. He refers to it essentially a sort of really boring political theater.
And in that spirit, let's begin this evening. While we will get serious and we'll have our debates, let's also poke fun at these people who pretend they are changing anyone's life, when, of course, all this document is about every year, regardless of who the politician is, it's about saving their backside, about telling you that your world's going to get better because woos seventy five bucks every three months.
You know this garbage.
Jim Chalmers did something that no treasurer I have seen in the past has done. He invited the cameras in to watch him like a gladiator, leave his office and walk into the Parliament. And it's the best bit of TV I've seen since Goldberg was wrestling back in w c W.
If you're a in them, you can see.
The wide screen.
Without the pyro and not quite as interesting and probably just as fake. Now tonight we're going to have an all star panel of Sky News mates and friends and colleagues. I'm so pleased, Chris Kenny and Andrew BOLTI here, I'm so pleased. We're going to have the team Red Blue. You'll hear a lot of reaction that's coming in as well. But right off the top our budget tradition, the five
things you need to know about this federal budget. Number one, the reality here is that every household getting a three hundred dollars power rebate means that you, in actual fact, are going to be paying for midionaires to be able to take three hundred bucks off their power bills. The Treasurer, in order to take a line politically out of this budget, has said every household.
Will get three hundred dollars. Wait till I tell you how that three hundred dollars is being doled out.
Just as every Australian tax player will get a tax cut, every Australian household will get energy price relief. From July one, Australians will receive an energy rebate of three hundred dollars and one million small businesses will get a little bit more.
That's right, this bloke who thinks he'll be the prime minister one day. The working class hero thinks there is no difference in cost of living pain between this house in the suburbs of his own electorate, or this house and every other mansion in the country. That's what every household means.
Now. The reality is is that people at the.
Rich end of town have largely been the ones that have been spending and spending and spending. They're still going on overseas holidays, They're still buying new tellies, while people at the other end are cutting back on medicine, cutting back on food, and because the Reserve Bank only has one leave at a pull, they put up the rates
in part. That's why because of the spending that has been done by those who have the money to spend to slow the entire economy, you in suburban Australia have had the python around you thirteen times in all but a dozen since this government came to power. Also, the reality of all of this. Now they're going to get the headline and it's going to cost billions of dollars of taxpayers money that three hundred dollars power bill gift
from the federal government. But as Andrew Clenell explained in our coverage a little earlier this evening, this is how it will actually work. And maybe the fireworks just become a bit of a sparkler that's running out and.
You get seventy five a quarter. All of us, you know, Gena Reinhart gets it, Twiggy Forest gets it, we all get it. Everyone watching gets it. And I think it just rolls pretty much straight onto your bill.
Wow.
I don't know about you, but I will never forget this day, just like the great days in history where you know where you were, well, you will.
Forever say to yourself, where.
Was I on the fourteenth of May in twenty twenty four when this government ended the cost of living crisis by handing power companies seventy five dollars a quarter. You don't get the money, and then if you choose to spend it on something else you can. No, No, it goes to the power companies. The lefties will blop about it because it's fossil fuel companies. But that's the change to your life, because just like tax cuts, you don't pay an annual power bill. You pay a quarterly one.
And if you pay a monthly one, it's twenty five dollars. Wow, thank you, doctor Jim. You've solved all my problems. What this is actually about is about trying to get around the key broken promise of the last election, the one when the Prime Minister said this.
Households will benefit by two hundred and seventy five dollars on average, reducing power prices by two hundred and seventy five dollars prices two hundred and seventy five dollars, two hundred and seventy five dollars, two hundred and seventy five dollars a year, two hundred and seventy five dollars, two hundred and seventy five dollars a year.
See, because they think you're stupid, they think you have no memory. They think somehow they can tell you, they can gaslight you on a detail. Enough that you will forget the reality power prices since those promises were made are up by the best part of one thousand dollars. Oh, so they're going to find a way to bring it down for one year only for three hundred dollars, and
that's better than our two seventy five prom No. No, the two to seventy prime promise was on the power prices of May in twenty twenty one, not on the power prices of May twenty twenty four. And when challenged on the two seventy five number, this is what the treasurers said to again Kieran Gilbert in our coverage early It's to night.
The number you're referring to is a forecast in twenty one about an outcome in twenty five. We're providing energy bill relief in the here and now, we did in the last budget, we are again in the next budget. But there'll be more relief for more people in this budget.
No, No, that wasn't modeling. That was a promise.
One so much so that we could feel the entire extra thirty minutes of this show, in the full ninety minutes to show you how many times they said it. But now they didn't say it, and twenty five dollars a month is apparently going to make you completely forget the your power bill has gone up by how much since this mob came to Power number two. No matter the spin, what we've told you about the tax cuts remains as true today as the first day we said it. In the real world, the tax cuts are too little,
too late. They do not change the lived experience of Australians.
Now.
For workers around the country, they don't pay their tax annually. You pay your tax weekly, fortnightly or monthly. So when they turn around and talk up to the big number about the end of the year, that's not how you actually pay tax. So in the same way they're going to say three hundred dollars off power bills, it's not three hundred dollars off power bills. It's twenty five dollars a month off power bills. And you don't get the money.
The power company gets the money. The reality of the too little, too late tax cut was that if you earn forty five thousand dollars, you're only going to get fifteen dollars a week, twenty two dollars a week if you earn sixty grand thirty two dollars a week if you earn eighty grand or forty one thousand dollars, if you earn forty one dollars, if you earn one hundred thousand dollars, it won't be that generous to them.
That'll be next year's giveaway if they're still waiting for an election.
But again the treasurer, who has been spinning the annual figure the penny, has dropped that the lived experience of people and why they don't buy the bs about the tax cuts is because you pay it weekly, fortnightly or monthly. So by the Treasurer's own admissions, he now says what the average figure is going to be for the tax cut per week, and think about whether this even touches the sides of the middle of the financial problems you're facing.
The average benefit is one eight hundred and eighty eight dollars a year.
Which is thirty six dollars a week.
Our tax cuts are better for families and communities, women and young people. They are better for business, and they are better for the economy.
Now remember how way back when when the Howard government handed out a tax cut and they were able to break it down by the fifty two weeks a year. It was a milk choke and a hamburger. Well, this might be slightly more generous, but it again doesn't change your life. Let me put this in terms that Australians will understand. The number one beer in the country is Great Northern. You cannot buy a case of Great Northern
with this tax cut each week. And if you're somebody who really has the backside out of their strides, you wouldn't even be able to afford a six pack a week of Great Northern.
So they will go around the country saying everyone gets a tax.
Cut, it's not enough for a case of beer. Everyone gets a power cut. You're paying power companies to subsidize millionaires. And even if you think it's a good idea, it's twenty five dollars a month. Number three, the budget doesn't actually put out the other inflation fires. Now, obviously, look, I don't want to be crass, but imagine the least effective amount of liquid that you can put towards a fire.
And this is even less.
Why because despite the fact that Jim Chalmers said this as many times as he possibly could during his speech.
Cost of Living, Cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living.
In the last month, the inflation figures on a whole bunch of things that Australians have to.
Pay for are why higher.
Than the dream of somewhere between two and three percent inflation.
Have a look.
Tobacco is up twelve percent, insurance is up eight percent, fuel is up eight percent, Rent is up seven percent, bread and cereal, alcohol and tobacco, non alcoholic, housing, electricy.
Go on and on and on and on and on.
Nothing in this budget helps you pay those bills. Nothing. And if they think that the not even case of beer tax cut is enough, well guess what. It's immediately washed out by any one of those other increases, including petrol tax that they have refused to cut. And wait till they explain why. In a moment or two's time. Four smokers, drinkers and drivers, Congratulations, thank you, there's a cuddle in the mail. Why because you are the only reason this mob can post a surplus. The surplus is
nine point three million dollars. It's the first back to back surplus in decades, and isn't Jim Chalmer's amazing and all the rest of it.
I'll get to the future in a second.
But that nine point three billion is only achieved because the taxes they got this year, or do they expect to get this year out of petrol is seven point three billion dollars, which is why they won't cut the petrol tax. Diesel seventeen point four billion, which is why they won't cut that fuel tax. Tobacco eleven point five billion, which in and of itself alone keeps them in surplus. Literally, the tobacco tax in Australia is the only reason we're
in a surplus. Hardly gold stars for great economic management right, let alone the bier which a tax cut still can't afford. If it's we're talking about a case or a sixty if you're earning forty five grand or spirits, well, remember a bottle of Bundy rum is more than sixty percent tax. The well forty two billion dollars in petrol, diesel, tobacco,
beer and spirit taxes. That's the only reason they're in a surplus and the only reason the deficit isn't thirty billion dollars today, which brings me to point number five. Things are going to get worse and I mean really worse than the next of a while. Bear it inside the documents. Something nobody will say in the little five minute guard to the budget on the website. The expectation of an interest rate rise is interest rate cut is nothing this year. It's in fact not until the middle
of next year. So currently, people who are having to find anywhere between an extra fifteen and thirty thousand dollars to pay off their home no relief whatsoever.
But please vote for us because every household gets a power bill cut, every worker gets a tax cut, and in terms of jobs, a shocking number of Australians are going to lose their job in the next twelve months.
It's not me saying it, it's the Treasurer saying it in the speech.
Slower growth means a softer labor market, with unemployment expected to rise slightly to four and a half percent next year, even as we create tens of thousands of new jobs.
Let me explain it this way. Current unemployment three three point nine percent. Expectation in this budget is that it goes up to four point five. It stays above four as far as the eye can see. If we hit a four point five percent unemployment rate. That's one hundred and three thousand, six hundred people who will lose their jobs. Oh but every household gets a power bill, and every
worker is going to get a tax cut. And then there's the actual government itself, because as I've shown you, the only way they got to surplus even with all of those taxes. Guess how deep they're going to go into deficit next year, the year after and as far as the eye can see.
Have a look at this.
This year surplus is nine point three billion, next is deficit is twenty eight billion. The year after that forty two, then twenty six billion, because magically everything changes, and then twenty four billion dollars. So while the treasurer will say, how good have I been, I've saved a bit of money on the debt. Okay, let's say one hundred percent
of what he says is true. So the eighty biding that apparently cut from the debt will now be replaced by an increase in federal government debt that will now take us to one point two trillion. All those deficits added together on top of the current debt takes us to one point one trillion dollars.
Oh but there's a power cut for every household, and there's a tax cut for every worker.
That won't be able to change anything about your life. So those are my five things. I'm can you know what yours are? To send me in my pulitsgunews dot com dot are you. Here are my dear friends and colleagues from the Kenny Report, which you can see five o'clock Eastern each and every night. Primetime starts with the Great Chris Kenny, none other than the King amongst us. The Great Andrew Bolt joins us as well. Lads, let's get through all of this. So anything I missed.
Chris, No, you're on the money.
I'm never going to complain about your smoke again and your cigars. I'm going to slap you on the back and thank you for keeping the country going on. This is a government that was prepared to sell out Israel to try and save a handful of seats, So why would we be surprised that they sell out the entire budget strategy to try and win an election.
This is quite extraordinary.
They're maintaining historically high levels of taxation, historically high levels of spending, historically high levels of debt, and they say they're going to cut immigration but keep immigration at historically high level. So all of the concerns that people have are only going to be exacerbated in coming years.
And it's all pitched.
They pick a slogan and an election campaign ad, and then they find our billions of dollars to pay for it.
That's what I think of this election.
It's all about slogans funded by our tax dollar.
My oath.
Andrew Bolt joining us from Melbourne, great man, love you to see you, tell me your thoughts and did I get anything wrong?
Then? The basic bottom line is we've got good times, you know, despite the Treasurer trying to tell us, oh, the overseas situation is not too good, which has been saying every single budget. If there's something wrong here, I was caused by overseas, never by labor. Things are pretty good. We've got record amounts of tax coming into the government's coffers.
And what does the Treasurer produce four more years of deficits one hundred and twelve twelve billion dollars added to the reading that this country's already in I find that unbelievable. And also he says unemployment's going to get worse. Inflation is a little bit sticky. But oh, by the way, he says, I've just cutted by half a percent of
this this rent subsidy and this energy subsidy. By the way, both of them are and saving for labor mistakes by taking money out of one of your pockets and putting it back in the other pocket. And you're supposed to feel better off.
I mean, what a joke.
Look, the whole thing is, he says, the treasure's big hope, right, is that this budget has taken pressure off the Reserve Bank and made it possible to lift to cut interest rates and cut your mortgage payments as well through that. In fact, it won't because what it does, this is the biggest con in the budget. He has given this subsidy, the rent and the money for your to compensate for the increases in your power bills thanks to global warming policies.
People that are hard up, what do you think they're going to do with extra money? They're going to spend it. What's the Reserve Bank trying to do? Take money out of the economy. The Government's just added money to the economy. Is going to mean the cut in interest rates that the government's hoping for will be delayed. This is just smoke and mirrors, more debt, more joblessness and higher interest rates for longer. That is what the government has done
with record income coming in. I can't believe it.
Yeah, let's put us in boxes, guys, because I want everyone to be able to have a chat took across each other. It's mates talking on the telly to our mates watching at home, all right, So feel freebody at any time. Of course, Chris about the power side of things, there's a dirty little trick also in here. Remember Chris Bowen has effectively done the trick with the NBN, which is to move tens of billions.
Of dollars off the budget so we never see it.
But you still have to borrow money for it, right, in order to build the renewable infrastructure that in part has now seen and the cost of transition building this stuff is why people's power bills in part have gone up. I mean they can talk about Ukraine as much as they want. The moving from the car with four wheels the car with three wheels and telling us it will break the record of bathist is that's the cost of transition.
It's a trillion dollars. Yet they turn around now and say, well, we're going to light the fire and compensate you for the fire. It reminds me of Gillard with the carbon tax, will introduce the tax and compensate you for it.
Well, it's like they're treating us as hostages, you know, and they're denying us our liberties, and then they're saying, oh, here you are, here's a little glass of water.
It would be grateful for us.
The national self harm here in this energy policy is extraordinary. We have got historically high, the highest electricity prices we've ever had in this country. The reason we've got them is because labor and other governments have been subsidizing renewables, that've been subsidizing the transmission to connect the renewables, that've been subsidizing the batteries to try and store the renewables.
Then they realize that they didn't have enough energy, so they're now subsidizing the coal generators to try and maintain the power. And they've given us this unprecedented electricity cost burden. So now they're subsidizing people's power bills to try and let us get through the power price increases. They've inflicted on us. And to make it worse, as you pointed out, these subsidies which will pay the power bills partially on behalf of us to the power companies, will go to
millionaires as well. They will go to millionaires Malcolm Turbul, Cake Blanchett, Clive Palmer, they will get the.
Three hundred dollars rebate. It's obscene and absurd.
But also I mean remember what they were doing, this Labor Party complaining Andrew about when paper in a leave an Tony Abbott was trying to put in both.
Oh we subsidizing of the millionaires and all the rest of it.
But the argument of Jim Chalmers is, oh well, cost of living affects everyone, up and down the power scale, up and down the economic scale. I think this is going to be an issue. I mean, you see that the Liberal Party in their early response tonight is that they're going to wave it through because they don't want to get caught in that they voted against power relief thing. But then you heard some of those senators saying this isn't going to work. Is this going to be the
Amber claim? That means the compensation goes through and the Senate will amend it, or they just think that the politics become so difficult because Peter Dutton voted against a reduction in power bills for every Australian household.
Listen, a lot of the millionaires you're talking about, of course, were dudded of the tax cuts that they were promised four or five years ago. Now it won't make up make up a toinious fraction of the bracket creep that has given the government billions and billions.
More So, I'm not going.
To be too upset that people you pay the vast majority of the country's taxes, going to three hundred bucks back will be do I mean, the basic bottom line is here labor unable to curb its spending. And also, to pick up on what Chris was saying, it's quite right. You know, we've had all these green policies inflicted on us to insulate us from just a fraction of that pain. They're giving a three hundred dollars bailout on energy bills,
that's it right. But meanwhile they're doubling down with a Hail Mary, w your bets or nothing, bet the house on your last race. Green hydrogen. The happiest man in Australia with this budget is Andrew Forrest, you know, a billionaire green investor.
Government thinking millions of dollars of subsidies.
And marine hydrogen. No no, but it's come the government into green hydrogen in this budget. Right. The government's already our government's already tried to back other forms. I tried geothermal power, which was supported by Tim Flanner, flopped, failed. They tried wave generators, three projects all failed. They've tried all sorts of things, you know, solar and wind cutting it. So they've got to go for more gas explosion. They're big hal mirry. Now we're going to invest not in
that wicked nuclear power. It's going to be in green hydrogen, which has been proven at scale nowhere in the world. And it's pouring tens of billions of dollars into this stuff, which is a gamble, and that apparently is going to fix your power bills and solve the lack of power in this country, cause by net zero policies it won't. It's a disaster. And boy, we'll get the bill later down the track.
I've been wilentless on this for as long as we've had access to the microphone that I just again, I'm not going to use the crudism, but you know that concept of being wet upon from up high and they
tell you it's rain. I get this feeling right that Again, when you're sitting around and you're putting together a budget, the Treasury is all very excited because a billion here and a billion there and six point four billion here, and they're able to sit back and say, you know, the tax cuts cost US one hundred and whatever billion dollars over ten years, and the power bill relief it costs X billion dollars over years.
But I go back to the.
Lived experience of the consequences of the promise right now. All of that means they've got a talking point, right, and they're going to hammer it and hammer it and hammer it and hammer it about every household and every worker. But Chris, one of the reasons I've relentlessly talked about too little, too late when it comes to the tax cut is if at the moment, your average power bill in Australia I'm looking one of those consumer websites is
nineteen hundred dollars a year. The three hundred dollars you're not going to notice, right because it comes out in seventy five dollars chunks. If the average tax cut is thirty nine dollars a week, are you going to notice it now?
Instantly?
People are going to say, well, on what about the the people on ultra low incomes? Well, yes, those people will notice, but it won't change their life.
And that's what.
Annoys me, because the politics is we've changed your life. They have not.
No, they haven't.
But any tax cut is a good tax cut, and these are coalition tax cuts. Effectively, although labor reshaped them. Make sure that nobody over one hundred and forty seven grand I think gets it gets as much as they are going to get, and that takes away the aspiration. But the thing here is with the electricity rebate, right, they're doing nothing, as Andrews said that doubling down on
these green programs. They're investing tens and tens of billions of dollars of our money into more of these hail mary programs, and they won't look at the reliable energy we need. So our energy crisis is going to continue. Power bills are going to continue to go up. They're doing nothing about the fundamentals. So this one year three hundred dollars rebate that doesn't even make up for how much they've increased in the last two years, is just
going to disappear like peace in the wind. Sorry to be so crude, please, and I do not improve of problem only gets worse. It can only get worse, it will only get worse. And labor there's not a policy in this budget that seems to cast its mind more than six months down the track.
Well, so let's talk about the future here, Andrew where if they're telling us now that it's deficit next year, deeper deficit the year after that, that they've saved us from the dead of the evil Morrison government. Remember this is the bloke when he was the shadow treasurer one of the taxpayer buy virgin airlines. Okay, they wanted that to go even deeper, job keeper to go forever, all the rest of it, right, but still this government is going to be the one that's going to take us
over a trillion. It's going to take us to one point one trillion in the next couple of years.
Now.
The politics they're going to try to play here is oh, well, the deficit we said was going to be really bad, but it's only this bad next year, or we were able to squeeze it into a surplus.
But if the reality of.
The key economic document that the governman has said is one hundred thousand people lose their jobs and the country's going to one point one trillion dollars, how does anyone who even wants to hold water for the Labor party say this is a great document.
I know, I mean it's based it's the best dishonest budget, the craziest budget I've seen forever. For federal budget, I mean, the Victorian state budget takes some believing too, but federally, this is the most amazing budget I've seen, and it's
based on deceit. I mean, to pick up on what Chris is saying right here, we've had green policies and their state and federal labor green policies on global warming have caused power prices to go through the roof, and the government says, to compensate for that idiocy that we have created, we are going to give you three hundred three billion dollars three hundred dollars per perse per household, three hundred dollars per household relief from your power bills
of money that we're actually taking from you. I mean, in what universe is it power? Is it relief? To have money taken from you and then given back to you to compensate for the extra even more money that you've had to pay because of this government's errors. And let's not forget the other handout here of the debt relief, which is what one point three billion dollars more. I mean the money that they're just checking out comes, that is for low income people who are struggling to meet their rent.
What has caused the.
Explosion in rent immigrants another labor mistake, the immigration five hundred and fifty thousand people in a single year without building the houses to accommodate them. And so the mortgages and mortgages have gone up, sorry, house prices have gone up, and also rents have gone up. And to compensate for this labor error, some people are going to get a little help with their rent relief. I mean, seriously, seriously, it is a con fix immigration, fix your power. They won't do policies.
This is my point about it. That we're treating is like hostages.
Andrew.
It's like they want us all to be dependent on some government handout or some government repay and no repay remetter how much they punish us with their bad policies, We're supposed to be grateful for the little crumbs they throw back at us of our money. It's outrageous and the hope to see.
It through it.
But as you said, Chris, right, you know, if I'm still some repentance in this budget, it's say, oh, well, fainth heavens have seen the error of their ways. No, they're compensating us, yes, for their global warming policies.
But doubling down on them.
And an immigration they say, all right, look, all right, you know you got us. We're going to the immigration rate. When they have the immigration rate. Know this, it'll still be more than double the long term immigration that we've had. It'll still be much more than we need. It will still drive prices, rents and house prices through the roof. It will still crowd your cities. I mean, where is the lessons being learned here?
So let's talk about the question that is being discussed amongst the bubble, which is is this the precursor to an election? I think that it gives them a chance at one. Right, it's about trying to now again, prime Minister will decide when the Prime Minister decides. Now he's able to do so from August under the rules about when you can have an election and you can go all the way to a few months into next year.
That's the reality, right.
But their hope is that tax returns start to change after July, that the first of your bills is slightly down after the first quarter.
After July.
The hope is that the political message will be boomborm worm.
About every household, every taxpayer.
And on top of that, don't forget they're spending forty million dollars of your money to remind you about the two little too late tax cuts and how amazing they are. So who knows, but Chris, does it seem like they're giving themselves a window if they think this is the moment to go before this.
Year is done. Undoubtedly, Paul.
Now, as you know, I've been saying to you for quite some time that I thought an election later this year is very much on the cards. And one of the reasons I've been saying that is because we've been lucky. The whole country has been lucky with a couple of mild summers. If we get a normal summer, we are going to run short of electricity. We're going to have a February March where we don't have enough power in this country. That's what all the experts tell us. We've
just been lucky with the weather. So I've always thought labor would be very, very nervous about going to an election on the back of US summer of blackouts and electricity crisis. And now take the step back to this budget, all of this plays into it. There's the tax cups come through this electricity handout. They'll try and hope that there's a little bit of a dip in inflation for a while at least, that interest rates don't go up
between now and Christmas. And you get the Queensland election out of the way in October, and there is a window there for late November or even early December. Now, they wouldn't have made up their minds yet. You've got to wait and see how the cookie crumbles. But I think there's absolutely a chance that if these things line up, but before things go pair shape for them, they'll try to run off to the polls before the end of the year.
Because again, Andrew, let's talk about the truth here about how Labour used the next election, which is, even if they lose a few seats, even if they go into minority, there's enough people on the cross bench before you get to the Greens that'll be able to prop them up. Right current Newspole they could lose four, which puts them two into a minority. Well, I mean literally, Rebecca Sharky, Bobcatter. There's a whole bunch of options before you start to
get to Teals and Greens. And their assumption is the Teals aren't going anywhere. So no matter what happens, no matter what we say, the Liberals can't get anywhere near seventy six. Given that scenario, does the government then think, okay, we can kind of you know, put back a little stuff, a little bit in the horse, but it's going to be enough to get us over the line.
Look, they'd rather be in government and coalition with the Devil than not being government at all. But I'll tell you what if they're in coalition, if they rely on Green votes, not necessarily in coalition, but you know they have to dance to the Greens tunes, that's going to be terrible for Labor for the next election, and terrible for the country. They would rather avoid that. But when
an election will be will be totally now dependent. I mean, as both of you say, there is a window now for an election this year, but it will be totally dependent on two things, or essentially really. One one will be what are interest rates going to do? If they look like not coming down the government's in real troubles. They look like going up, that's fatal. They've got to go before that, absolutely. And the other is of course the poles. So it's pole watch now. From now on
it is pole watch. But I have to say when you have a look at the structure of this where they're saying it's going to be black ink sorry read ink from now on four years of huge deficits, rising unemployment, maybe not interest rate relief and this compensation for the power bills will last precisely one year.
That's it. One year.
That's all that's for.
I don't know that there are many good times coming, particularly if China slows or the money for our exports of iron ore and coal for even more. So i'd suggest that they're from now on it's a live well from August or so, it's a very live option. But everything now depends on the polls.
All right, Thank you guys, love you both very much. Of course, it's always tough to do it in real time because we don't go into the room and read it all for seven hours. I appreciate all of the brains you've brought to the show this evening. We of course see you at five o'clock and seven o'clock tomorrow night with a great Pety Britain on at six.
Thank you, guys, do appreciate it.
All right, quick break back with more plenty more to talk about here ninety minute edition of Paul Murray Live. We go all the way to the next top of the hour, and then the late debate will be here as well, so no one's going anywhere. I hope you've got the nice groove because coming up Michael Kroger, Joe Hildebrand, who will agree on nothing.
Looking forward to that next.
Let's keep it going special ninety minute edition of Paul Murray Live. Thanks for sticking with us to talk about the budget.
The messages, the reality, and a whole lot or nothing that's there as well.
Joe Hildebrand, of course, is from the Daily Telegraphed the Year of our to tell us that it's a great thing. Evan Michael Kroger, the man with his ear to the ground about how this really works. Let's get to it, okay, So headline thoughts, Michael about what they've delivered here about whether it moves the needle. Is there anything in it that legitimately is a great investment or changes people's minds about the government.
What do you think of the budget?
Well, according to the Daily Telegraph poll, ten percent think the budget was good or very good and seventy five percent think it was poor or very poor. That's the online poll at present, So.
That's a pretty good reason time. I think what it.
Tells you is there's less likelihood of an election this year. I think that's very unlikely, very unlikely. I mean unless the Reserve Bank reduced rates at the September meeting. Labor can't go to the election without rates having come down. So that's not going to be till early next year, maybe November or December board meeting if Treasury forecasts are right. But they need rates to drop before they say to the elected, hey, we know what we're doing.
The jury's out at.
The minute on this. Fellow Charmers writing looks good sounds good that you know it's not very good, but they don't quite know that. If interest rates don't come down, they can't go to an election because they're going to think, La, we're being conned.
Yeah, I mean Joe again, so that window of an election. I heard your agreement, so I won't waste time asking, but your sense of does it match the times we're in because we know the anger that exists on costaly, Yes, we know what limit government can play. Does it match those times?
Yeah?
Well, I think the budget is actually meant to do nothing and that's exactly what it does, and that's.
A good thing.
I'll give you an exclusive here. We were thinking about going with Jim Chalmers's Jerry.
Seinfeld on the front page of the Telly and call.
You it's all about thing, and it kind of is because he's caught an ultimate economic catch twenty two. If he delivers relief for cost of living, which people are crying out for, that risks fueling inflation, which then makes things worse in the long term. And if you're an altruist or if you're just trying to win an election in a year's time.
That's a very very very bad thing.
So they can't do that, they don't want to do that, and they're not going to do that. And so you've got people saying in the same breath often and often the same people, either, you know, it's too much spending, is too inflationary, but it's not enough, it's not providing enough relief. So that to me, as John Howard said, when both sides are criticizing you, shows you've.
Probably got the balance about right.
I think the budget is pretty much a holding pattern, just to keep things as they are and just to hope that all those settings that are already in place flow through. Michael is absolutely correct. There is no way on earth the government is going to go to an election before rates start coming down or before inflation, which is next year, before inflation gets to that's right about
that three percent or below. The other interesting thing, of course, is this discrepancy between the Treasury forecast for inflation and the RBA forecast for inflation. Now an important thing here people saying, well, the Treasury is just making up treasures.
Rowing first, justica.
The justification has been, well, the RBA doesn't know what's in the budget. Well everyone knows now, But this means that Treasury thinks that far from being inflationary, this budget is actually going to be counterinflationary.
That's actually going to bring inflation.
Down more than if things were basically kept at the status quo. So I think that's an interesting thing as well. But it's like the Hippocratic ith, first, do no harm. This is a budget that just whatever it does, does not want to make things worse.
Ven Michael just the devil's advocate on alls, right, which is that that do no harm principle. But also if you don't make anyone happy, if your standing has changed since the last time you asked for the job, then the number of directors that are going to sit around and vote for you falls.
And this is a government that doesn't.
Have that huge backminch to be able to go to an election in a diminished position. And it's going to be a relentless thing because it's how I view the world, which is all these big numbers said on TV tonight and announced out of camera.
But if the lived experience is.
Seventy five dollars a quarter off your power bill and thirty nine dollars a week as a tax car when your car insurance has gone up by a couple hundred bucks when your petrol goes up and confluctuate by fifty bucks depending on what the week is. But the government's saying we're doing something, we're doing something. Why would anyone believe them?
Mate?
Gofilin once said of the Phraser government, it's a government that can't arise above its origins, meaning it got into government illicitly. Elbow can't arise above the origins of his government, which were deeply rooted, deeply rooted in those thousand or more quotes we've seen of Elbow, of charmers, the whole wong, the whole lot of them saying there's a cost of living crisis, crisis, crisis created by Scott Morrison. Right, they
kept using that phrase, cost of living crisis. I don't know, mate, I heard it five times a day.
Right.
That was the talking point for months and months and months.
What did that do?
It created the expectation in the minds of the electorate. Oh it's Scott Morrison. He's terrible. He's created this incredible crisis that Albow will be able to solve because he's got a plan to solve it. Now, the electric will not be taken for mugs right. They'll always work you out, as rich O, our friend Richo says. What they've worked out is this that Alba Nezi never had a plan. This was bull dust, This was politics. How are we
going to undermine Morrison? The Poland would have said, Hey, people a bit worried about cost of living, blame it all on Morrison. Create a sense of crisis. Use the word crisis in every center. Crisis has got to be attached to the word cost of living. Okay, it was all Morrison's fault. Albo could flick the switch and ease it now. So the two hundred and seventy five dollars, for example, which will be run by the Liberal Party night at a million times during the election. This is
his problem. He cannot rise above his origins. He conned people into thinking it was all Morrison's incompetence and he could fix this very easily. I don't even worry about it. The two seventy five of the checks in the mail, that is his main problem. Made people think he's a liar. People think he's a bulldos artist. People think the promises he made during the election were written on toilet paper. There was no modeling where's the modeling for two hundred
and seventy five dollars? On and on and on.
Well, and in fact about that particular promise. This is how Jim Chalmers is going to try to pretend they never made it.
Have a look, the number you're referring to is a forecast in twenty one about an outcome in twenty five. We're providing energy bill relief in the here and now. We did in the last budget, we are again in the next budget. But there'll be more relief for more people in this budget.
Joe, and I'm going to be done on you. But as somebody who is laborer.
On this, how does this work? Tony Abbott says, vote for me and I'll stop the boats. Yeah, you have to stop the boats. If you say to seventy five, you have to deliver to seventy five. And now if they say they're going to deliver three hundred, it's not. It's three hundred off the high for one year only, not a structural change. So are they allowed to really?
Well, I think that's where it's going.
I'm always very wary of making specific predictions of specific amounts astment.
You're not going to get it. That's right.
But what they will say, so, well, we've just cut power bills. Every time you say you said you're going to power bills, we're going to go down by two.
Hundred and seventy five.
That can come back and say, well, we've already taken them down by three hundred so more than that, we've
done that a lot. And they're already thinking in that way because they've said that they're rental subsidies and the power bill subsidies are actually bringing inflation down, so by five percent, but it's not even that though, but because the way they're framing it is that the government, by absorbing the difference in the cost between what someone otherwise would be paying, is a reduction in inflation, as though the government is sort of playing the role of the
market economy. So that's a little bit of sort of rubberiness there. But again I think that in terms of what people reward the government for or punish it for, again, they're not going to be making They're not walking into the ballot box tomorrow or next week. It doesn't matter
whether there's a bounce in the poles. What matters is whether people are seeing relief when the government goes the poles probably in the later first half of next year, and if there is an interest rate relief by then, an interest rate cut by then, and if inflation is sitting between two and three percent, so people think, right,
rates are going to keep coming down in the future. Right, They're going to look back to that budget, the last one that was sound down, said wow, the government got it right, and that is that is what if anything is going to get the most. It won't be this seventy five dollars that I'm not really seeing coming off my quarterly power bill, or as you say, the twenty dollars a week tax cut, or whatever you want to call it.
But my point is that it's Australian politics one of the failures of its change over the past generation.
Okay, from when we had a lot.
Of money and they just came up with ways to give it to you to where we sit today and all the government's up and down and in between. This night, Budget Night has been turned from from economic national statement into what's in.
It for you?
Everyone has got used to, Michael in a political generation that the next day your favorite news site will have a little thing saying calculator put in how much you earn and see what happens. Right, So governments are locked in this death spiral, and I mean financial death spiral and structural death spiral with the budget. The last people to try and do something about it Joe Hockey, and we all know the disgrace that was thrown in his
way when they were trying to fix the structure. They were trying to cut the can answer, but the cancer gets worse.
How do you think is it about?
Is the challenge now about the way people remember to seventy five?
Is that?
Is it up to the marketing of labor versus the marketing of the Liberal Party? Or is there a normal X factor in the suburbs that says, hang on, mate, you said you were going to stop the boats and you did it, or in Abbot's case, yeah, did.
So matter?
It's many things. First of all, governments federally always get a second term. Okay, that's not a law, but that's so. The likelihood is he gets a second term because history told you that, but in minority. Secondly, labor there'll be in a minority. Secondly, they did a magnificent job tarnishing Scott Morrison's credibility as explained in the Liberal Party federally,
by the way, we're hopeless and defending Morrison. Right, you never see a Labor leader attacked in the way that Scott was without the Labor Party coming out to defend them. All Canons are bellowing in support of the leader. They hardly lifted a finger to help to help Morrison's credibility, which is one of the reasons they lost. But mate, when you get into the government like this, right, no one ever thought Alberanzi was hawk or a Keating or even as good as Kevin Rudd. Right, But they were
off Morrison. They've been in government ten years, three prime ministers. They were giving Alba a go because Richer and everyone said, you conruined everything. He's a good blake, Albow give him a goa. So we all give Alba a go. Now the left it's thinking, is this blake any good? He seems to have lost control of everything, the borders, the immigration system, the detainees, inflation, government spending, crime is anti Semitism, Palestine, This bloke, this did take your pick. This bloke doesn't
seem to be succeeding at anything. Now he's on this green energy bin he's now a twenty two billion dollar venture capitalists. He's smarter than all these venture capitalists around the world. I think people are very worried about this twenty You know, this made in Australia, billions and billions flowing into venture capital that's basically where it is. Why does he do something smarter? It give the twenty two billion to industries in Australia where we have a competitive advantage.
Let all the other countries who are bigger and have more money than us spend all their venture capital money on green hydrogen et cetera. Right, and when they've wasted it all because the fourth Incarnation gets it right, when they've spent all that money blowing it all up and they finally get it right, then we'll buy the technology.
But in the meantime, Elbow, let's spend money in the farming industry, the mining industry, the services, in all industries where Australia has a competitive advantage, pharmaceuticals, et cetera.
I also think that when we're talking about you know, priorities and governments making decisions about what to spend money on, there's one sector and this this is just about decency. It's not about votes, but I think if you want to,
I can make a case for the votes. I haven't gone deep into the budget to see what happens here, but rather than this sort of piecemeal this and that, I would like to see if Australia isn't a cost of in crisis, which we are, three point seven million people haven't been able to be in feud in security people literally remember the cost of living inquiry out of Western Australia. When the FEDS went over there, they heard
stories about people who were freezing. All they wanted was a block of frozen of ice so that it to keep the food cold that was in the car, and then it would melt and become the water they would drink.
The next day. Right, give money to charities.
Like give serious help to the people on the front lines, to make sure that those who are like that bloke that we showed you a couple of nights ago who was talking to SBS that he was in a house. He was in a house in Queensland, but his rent went up, so now he's living.
By the side of the road.
I think that Australians want from politics at the moment. They want a massive idea on housing affordability. I think they want a massive idea on helping those that are the most most unfortunate at the moment. And Joe, because of the complications of inflation, et cetera, etc.
We don't get that.
If the government came out and said we're going to pass a law to morrow that says no financial institution can demand more than ten percent of deposit for your house right now, again, the economs will be screaming, yelling at the telly right now. But I'm saying that's what's going to move the needle, this sort of garbage. And I'm just while we're talking, I'm trying to look at the news websites and one of the lefty.
Ones is saying huge cost of living relief when we all know it ain't.
No, it's not huge costs of living relief. And again it can't be. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but they can't do I would love to see them do some really big stuff on this like that, but they kind of can't because of the environment. They are doing really big things on indigenous housing and indigenous education.
Rather than hydrogen, which makes Twiggy Forest happy. Daniel Andrews Happy, Malcolm Turnbull happy, as well as all of them getting.
Help with their power.
Look at why not move a billion dollars into the charity sector, well, because so that the people we all care about, you know, a.
Lot of what everyone was doing, a lot of stuff that charities are doing anyway, So for example, rent assistance, I mean, this is the sort of thing.
And again, but trying to invent green hydrogen as the future of the world.
Come Honestly, if that plays off right, yes there is a bit of risk, and sure if you can invent if Australia in Australia becomes a green hydrogen leader, it could be an absolute game changer. It is extraordinary the potential we have because frankly, they're really heavy.
That's going to a structural deficit of tens of billions of dollars. Is that the time to be trying to reinvent the wheel, trying to say we will fund the project that will you know, rediscover electricity.
Because what you want to be doing is if God willing, there won't be But if there is a recession or a softening of the economy, which is what going there is definitely going to be a softening. Right, we're trying to avoid a recession. What you want to do is back end load all that big infrastructure spending to keep the economy going and to make sure that it's going in the areas that are Australia's strengths, and that is in critical memorials, that is in someone law.
I venture capital funded because Twgg he's not doing Triggy is doing it and asking for money, and this government's going to turn around and give him and his political mates Andrews and Turnbull money off their freaking power bills. But if there's a great idea the.
Tax carts and get thousands of dollars in.
Tax coming, come on, come on, every household means the richest one as well.
And you know, so that's that's.
You know, the they're getting far less than they were going to under the previous government.
All Right, we've got plenty more quick break back with more lots of talking about including well some announcement about supermarkets. Does it actually move them, change anything? We'll find out with the lads. Jane Hugh joins us in a second as well. She's the shadow Finance Minister, no doubt she wants to talk about thirty thousand extra public servants on
top of the record number that we currently have. We know budgets are more about politics than economics, because the reality is it's all about winners and losers, as you see all over.
Much of the media.
It's also about the very simple messages that people are going to argue about in the next little while between Tim Red and Team Blue. The captain of Team Read is the Prime Minister, and here he is with a message.
Just for you.
Hi.
I want to talk to you about one of the major announcements we have in tonight's budget, and that's from July one, every household will get three hundred dollars off their energy bills. That's all households, not just some. Just like every taxpayer will receive a tax cut from July one thirteen point six.
Million, not just some.
That's part of our cost of living relief in tonight's budget, which we know is the number one priority tax cut for every taxpayer. Energy bill relief for every household.
Wouldn't spoken and authorized. You get the point.
Jane Hume is the Shadow Finance Minister Instituents US now from Canberra, so you know what the line here is. It's every household, it's every taxpayer. What's your response to that premise and about the reality for the Australians that, as the Treasurer said today, the tax cut is well less than a carton of beer a week and the energy relief is twenty five dollars a month.
Well, I think Albo was right on one thing that was that this budget is a typical labor budget through and through. It's big tax, big spend, and quite frankly, it's a con job because it's not going to tackle the number one issue being the cost of living, because it can bring inflation down sustainably. It's throwing subsidies at the problem rather than dealing with the problem at the source. There's three hundred and fifteen billion dollars in additional spending
since labor came to government. That's an eye watering amount. In fact, it's the biggest amount of spending that we've seen in a budget by the pandemic years since for about forty years since back in the Hawk and Keating days at the beginning of the nineteen eighties. For every four dollars, sorry, for every one dollar of savings that they've made, they've actually spent four dollars. Now, the RBA
are no fools. As much as Jim Chalmers might like to replace the board with people that he's picked, I'm pretty sure that they know that any changes that they've made in this budget aren't actually going to sustainably bring inflation down. And because of that inflation. Because of that, interest rates are going to stay higher for longer and Australian particularly mortgage holders are going to pay the price.
Earlier in the show, when I was trying to go through the five things that I've noticed about the budget, I make this point that in this budget, if the claim is electricity, and I don't believe.
It changes anything in that world.
Just look at the inflation figures from last month, right, everything from tobacco, petrol, bread, rent, all of it way up. Now, you've been chairing the cost of living committee that goes around the country and the types of people who come to those committees, we hear about how massive their concerns are. We're talking about people with jobs who live in their car.
This budget does not change their life. Yet the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are going to spend the next, however many months telling us that everyone benefits despite the fact that the people who truly, truly, truly, truly truly need it are the working poor, and I can't see anything here.
Now.
The cost of living crisis is clearly the number one issue. We are hearing the most horrendous stories of people coming to seek services from charities that have never been there before. People with two incomes, people with multiple jobs, people with mortgages are now lining up at food bank to help
put food on the table. Leez twentymen, the Great Las Twentymen, May he rest in peace, did appear before the committee, before the Cost of Living Committee, just before he died, actually, and told us the most saddest story, which was about a woman that had pawned her wedding ring to pay for kids' school uniforms. I reckon the announcements in tonight's
budgets are going to be cold comfort to families like that. Yes, everyone's going to appreciate some energy bill relief, but in the long term, that's not going to tackle the big issue.
It's only a band aid on a bullet hole. Unless you can bring inflation down sustainably, well, it's simply not going to make a dent in people's lives and the only way you're going to be able to do that with energy prices is to increase supply into the system, not go on these ideological jawns into whatever you think the future made in Australia might look like.
Now we know the noise the Labor Party made and the lead up to the last election, and we're not fighting the last election. The world is always looking forward. And when I say well, I mean collectively Australia and what we're going to be debating just in case the umpires are going to run off to somebody that Karen's going to run for the umpire, We've got the scenario where a tridion dollars debt, a trilion dollars debt, A trilion dollars debt is what they talked about before, by
their own forecasts. If they have paid off eighty ninety billion, the budget goes into such deep deficits over the next few years that we go back to a position of being even worse than when they took over.
What does it say to you.
As a document about how the federal budget is put together, that at its heart, apart from the sugar hits of excise taxes and resources, that the joint is hundreds of billions of dollars in the wrong direction.
And you think, what a waste the last couple of years have been, because there have been some pretty serious windfall gains that have that have been presented in this in this document to Jim Chalmers, to use his former bosses or his former idols words, he has been hit in the ass by a rainbow, those by those iron
ore and coal company tax receipts. You know, the commodity prices have gone up so high that company tax receipts have gone through the roof, and of course personal income tax receipts have gone up too because of bracket creep. Inflation is bad for all Australians, you know, it's the thief in the night that eats away your savings and erodes your purchasing power and reduces your standard of living. But governments love it because it pushes everybody up into
that next higher tax bracket. And of course they get more income receipts, more revenue, which is fantastic for your budget bottom line, and that's what's returned the surfaces. But rather than actually using that surplus to pay down the debt, instead they've continued to spend and they've spent on things that you know, quite frankly, we're not seeing the benefit from one of them.
And the one that.
Really gets up my wig is thirty six thousand new public servants. Thirty six thousand new public servants since laborcame to government.
Now, just to.
Put that into perspective, that's more than all of the people that work for Westpac. It's more than all of the people all of the people that work for Telstra, and they are now Canberra bureaucrats. It just hired in the last two years alone. That is eyewatering because I don't know about you, Paul, but I don't feel like I'm getting thirty six thousand new public servants better off in terms of service set up receiving from the government.
Not at all. To me.
It feels like it's again an extension of what we've seen with say Daniel Andrews Palichet to a degree here, which is Labour wants to build permanent majorities electoral majorities. By you are either dependent on the government for your job, or you are dependent on the government in terms of the handout, or if you're a business, your biggest client is the government right and hence we saw how that has worked and in my view, to the detriment of
places like the great States of Victoria and Queensinne. Jane, nice to talk to you. We're talking again soon.
Great to be with you.
Paul.
Jane hum the shadow Finance Minister, always on it and I appreciate her joining us this evening.
Back to the debate with Michael and Joe.
Straight after this quick break on Paul Murray Live, not even an edition of the show at the top of the hour, the late Debate is pulling the late shift tonight. I really appreciate you being here this evening, as well as the wonderful Michael Kroger and the equally wonderful Joe Hilda Brand Getting late for some but not for us.
We're just getting started.
As always, we don it all night Alive, average live rolling coverage of the world's most boring budget.
Could I just say you, guys, happier freedom. I was in the locker for six hour, No I come here, I know.
And they're all walking away going, well have you seen paid seventy six?
And you go okay, right, we all those people of the Australian.
Yeah, all right, God, love the os love all right.
Love.
One of the things that was in the was in the treasurist's speech again obviously one of the issues in and around cost of living, but particularly groceries.
Right.
I want to play part of his speech and then try to decode what the hell is saying because again, normal people don't sit around and watch this speech at seven thirty, but the government trying to front load it. There's something you should know about means I wanted to code it, roll tape speaker.
We know that Australians are feeling the pinch at the checkout. That's why we empowered the Competition Watchdog to hold supermarkets accountable.
That's why we're.
Taking steps to make the Food and Grocery Code mandatory and making our economy more competitive across aboard by strengthening the mergers regime and abolishing nuisance tariffs and reducing compliance costs for business. Because more competition means more choices, means lower prices and better services and better jobs means.
I'm going to pay less for me this year.
Joe means it's not his fault.
Buddy should bring this up because I had the great priv I think it's under my name. Otherwise the cover's blown. The Daily Telegraph always does what he said, what he meant. Yes, it's me and Tim Blair often take turns doing it, but Tim was feeling a bit lazy today. So that was one of the quotes that I plucked out, and the other one was, of course this you know, there's international turmoil, these are very feebrile times and.
All this Trump's going to be president.
Basically, basically what he's saying is, I don't know if you've seen the movie Good Will Hold Hunting a very famous scene where Robin Williams counselor character grabs Matt Damon.
And says, it's not your file, it's not your failed.
And I had Jim Jarvis basically say that is what I want.
You to do to me.
Yeah, it's not my fault, not his.
Fault, it's the supermarket's fault. It's you know, the nebulous global forces fault.
And to a very large extent, he is right, that's definitely the mess.
But it has it was in twenty two, but again everything was personal there, cyclical. Michael, Again, how do you decode that language, because again, it is just a whole series of things that make it seem like you know, ice cream is going to be less, But I don't think it's going to be.
So mate.
You know, Joe's absolutely right. This government's never made a mistake. They've never got anything wrong. We heard one minister ever say we mess this up, even in take an extreme example, this fellow Giles, Andrew Giles. Nope is he going anywhere?
And nope?
Is he resigning?
Nope?
No eastting where he is?
Clara and El Nope.
I mean, no one's made of mistake and no one's got anything wrong, which is why it was I said earlier on. People are very the jury's out. They're looking at this bloke oulm and easy saying I'm not sure you're all that good. I didn't think you were all that good as opposition later because you couldn't even remember the unemployment rate. I'm not sure you're that smart. I don't know your team's that good. I know the Morrison's expired, the Morrison guns expiring. I've been sick of Scott and
the Liberals, so we'll give you a go. And you've promised all these things. Maybe you are a genius. And now they're looking at him thinking, you never admit a mistake. You've cocked up so many things. You lied to us about cost of living, all the stuff about inflation. We're now being bought off by Jim Chalmers in eighty two cents a day for our energy bills relief. You said it was easy to fix cost of living. Why we still got all this massive interest rate?
You know?
Why is interest rates home loans at six and seven percent? However, you said all this was easy. So the jury are now thinking, hey, and you know they work the stuff out. They can't go to an election until interest rates have gone down, probably two months in a row. Otherwise the pun is out there thinking you are just pulled as artists. Yeah, we don't believe a word you're telling us.
But even then, I was talking about this with a friend before the show, which was okay. So the cost of living squeeze or interest rates or whatever the problem is that particularly concerns you. Right, The python is squeezing you, so you're like raban a purple right. Oh, but you're only now going to be ever so slightly violent, so they think they're going to vote for you. That's what I don't understand, right, which is that it's not as bad as it was.
Is never really a great tactic to win over a room.
But I want to go through a couple of other things before we finish, including university places. Now, it seemed that the treasurer was talking about even more people being able to go to university. Now again, this is fine if the university degree equals a qualification for a job. That means you don't have to import another person from overseas. But I'm not entirely sure that's what he said. Again, let us decode tonight.
We're setting a national target of eight out of ten workers achieving a tertiary qualification by twenty fifty, and we're backing it in with new funding reforms.
To meet this goal.
We're investing three hundred and fifty million dollars for fee free UNI ready courses. These courses give those who would have missed out on studying a degree of foot in the door.
Now in Finnis, tertiary education does also mean trades, but that's not what his focus was.
Joe to code, No, I think that is actually his that is very much part of his focus.
And they had a be ready which didn't say had they had.
A big package.
Well, the Union, it is where a lot of the new sort of high end high tech jobs or coming in.
So that's that's right, the STEM stuff. So it's going to be that, and.
It's going to be the service. The service INDUS is age care, childcare. That's where all the big demand is going to be. But you know, people are going to have to to use the unfortunate phrase of Hillary Clinton.
Learn to code. So thank god I'll be before that happens.
But so it is very much a focus on UNI, it is very much focused on TAFE as well, and Jason Claire is absolutely evangelical mission. I was shocked to learn this, but the rate of people actually even just getting to the end of high school has dropped by about ten percent even more if you count, from about eighty three percent in public schools to now seventy three percent in public schools. So people aren't even getting their
HSC let alone getting into UNI. So to have eighty percent of people actually get a tertiary qualification TAFE or UNI, whatever it may be, is actually on top of that again, because that's finishing year twelve and then going on further study, and that is what people will need to do to be job ready and to get those jobs. And that is a real I can promise you that is a.
Really genuine man on a mission.
And look, I hope achieves that.
But Michael, isn't the reality too that we need builders and electricians and welders and a whole bunch of other people because the bigger the country gets, the more things need to be built.
And you know, God forbid those.
Of us who don't have new houses need them renovated and fixed up.
So to me, you know, labor always goes back.
To this university thing. And while Joe says that yes there's detail there about Taife, I think if you're trying to talk to normal Australia saying it's OK for your kid to pick up a tool and we'll be more than happy to back them in and will help them do it because there's a good chance they'll be.
Eating more than the Prime minister at one point in their look.
Maybe well, pre Whitlam, they didn't luck the university students because they've hated liberal and the trade has voted labor. After Whitlam, it's gone the other way. So all the working class trade is a self employed et cetera tending to vote for the Conservative Party, and all a majority of the students attending to vote the terch for students
attending to vote for the Labor Party. So yeah, there are it's a strange juxtaposition to hear a labor government not championing, you know, the skills of those people that can work with the hands. I mean, I wish i'd be great with the hands of soul, you know, I watch I watched carpenters at work and I had a block around the other day. I was just in awe of his skill. I mean, these joiners, these people that can cut wood and fix it. These people are freaks.
They're geniuses, you know, much better smarter than you know, lawyers that I used to be. These these guys are you know, and women should be on pedestals. So labor, labor seemed to you know, it's part of this what's happened from the seventies onwards is sort of you know, sort of you know, it's to be frowned upon. You know, we're the working class. No, no, we're part of that.
Is labor morphed into this sort of whitlam, you know, upper middle class, sort of upper class, inner city, woke sort of world in a party set where you know it's all about It's all about you know. They're the people I mix with now Kate Blanchets, that mixed with Kate and Guarant said, baby, we.
Call the.
Rest assured. Michael. Your concerns, I would be.
I've been working overtime to try to reverse that dread but labor to it's great.
I'm going to just put a lot.
Of money into type fee free type to get those skills up.
So it has really been doing it.
I got a jump.
Thank you guys doing it.
Wei shout it tonight.
I've got plenty more to say so on the other side ahead of the late debate about five minutes away here on Sky News. It is the privilege of a lifetime to have this job. It is particular privilege each and every year to be able to tell you exactly what I think about the people in power and how they use your money. I appreciate being part of the budget coverage here on Sky News and it continues now with the late Debate