What are Albo and Chalmers really up to with this Budget?

From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, March twenty four, twenty twenty five. A dispute between two high profile Australian Jewish women over the Gaza conflict and anti Semitism is hitting the courts, with police applying in Victorian courts for a personal safety intervention order to protect Sarah Schwartz. She runs an outfit called the Jewish Council, which is critical of Israel. That's an exclusive

Ah the budget, mister Speaker.

Lots of lofty statements, restraint and responsibility, uncertain times.

This is a budget for the here and now, and it's a budget for the decades to come.

Budget's freak me out a little. I've been around politics since the nineteen nineties and I've covered lots of budgets, but I'm not a full time press gallery specialist. When we go into the budget lockup on Tuesday, which is where we get the embargoed budget papers hours before they're publicly released, I'll park myself next to National Editor Dennis Shanahan and watch him fill it out the juicy bits. The lockup is a Canberra writual. This is how we captured it here on the front last time.

Welcome to the Budget twenty twenty four to twenty five lock ups. I'm not bringing mobile phones or smart watches in for the lock up. Not publish, transmit, release, or disclose in any manner budget information until the embargo is lifted.

That's a Treasury official reading the rules. We have to sign non disclosure agreements and hand over all our devices. The Internet is switched off the stack of papers we get is intimidating. It's about a foot high. There's also a stack of press releases where the government brags about all the great stuff it's doing. A lot of budget coverage you'll read is the top line stuff, new spending, how big the deficit. But the real story the journalists

I was trying to do a quick calculation.

This is at least thirty five thirty six budgets for the Australian on the trot.

So after a while they tend to.

Lose their mystery and their fear and shock and awe, and you tend to look at a few basics.

I learned under the great Alan Wood that when there's a.

Couple of pages in the budget, you can go there and you get a very good flavor of what the budget's really about. The other sort of old companion is Paul Kelly. And between Alan Wood and Paul Kelly, I learned to be able to look at the economics and the political side of a budget. And that's what Paul and I will be doing on Tuesday night.

Now, let's talk about this budget. Normally, budgets are held in May and that's when the last one was held. But this is March. We're having a budget.

Why well, it's election.

Simple is that when Anthony Alberanzi was elected in May twenty two, the election was always going to have to be held in the middle of May this year at the latest. And to his credit, Anthony Alberaneze has always said he wanted to go as close to full term as he could, and so what we're looking at is really the long term plan of the Prime Minister for elections and budgets coming to fruition.

Okay, so let's talk about what this budget is actually for. We've heard a little bit about what's going to be in the budget. A continuation of the energy bill relief that they brought about last time, which hasn't stopped. I might add power bills soaring by up to one thousand dollars per household. There's going to be some more helpful young people. First home buy is to get into the housing market. But strategically, Dennison, tactically, what is this budget going to do for Anthony Albanesi.

It was always planned as part of the big economic shift.

There was an overall economic plan.

That by the end of last year, the economy would be showing signs of improvement, inflation would be falling, interest rates would have come down, perhaps by one or two cuts from the Reserve Bank, and that the government would be going into this year with a growing economy, a better outlook and be able to bring down a budget and say where've succeeded. You can't trust the opposition.

So how's that going well? Interest rates have fallen once the headline inflation rate is down, unemployment is low, but prices are still high, particularly the rents, fuel and energy prices that we all have to pay. Last budget they gave every household a three hundred dollars energy bill rebate, paid directly to the power suppliers. This budget will extend it by an about one hundred and fifty dollars up

I don't think anyone in Australia can look at a gas or electricity bill and say it's less than twenty five percent than what it was last time, so it's just not credible.

But at the.

Same time, clearly the government has been campaigning since January. The Prime Minister has been spending a billion dollars a week, promising to spend a billion dollars a week, including eight billion on Medicare, another billion on prescription medicines just last week. So what we're seeing is a big spenders on because whatever's in the budget, it's going to be what's in the campaign and how the campaign is conducted which will decide the election.

Coming up. Where does Peter Dunton take it from here? So do you expect in those budget papers on Tuesday there'll be a big announcement of some kind of out something or do you think it's going to be Pi's some money that we've kept aside and we'll let you know what it is once the campaign gets going.

I think that there will be something. The Prime Minister has previously signaled that.

They're going to go for a model where people would only pay twenty to thirty dollars a week for childcare.

The Treasurer said.

No, we're not quite looking at that model, which tends to suggest they're looking at another model. If there is to be a bigger announcement than the energy rebate in the budget, it will be childcare. And of course you will talk about having better economic management, the economy turning the corner, and voters would be better off under this labor budget and this labor government than they would under a coalition government and a coalition budget.

So if it is childcare and we're looking at an election where childcare is a big front and center issue, is that risky Dennis? Given that people have kids in childcare for maybe ten years or maybe five years, and then they move on, they feel like they've done their hard yards and that's it. Is there a risk that some of the economy feels this is not really for me.

There's no doubt about that.

The problem I think for the government is that for this year, in this election, the over fifty fives will reach thirty nine percent of voters, and that is the largest cohort for the over fifty fives ever and the largest age cohort in the election.

So there'll be a large number.

Of voters more concerned about their superannuation than they are about trying to save money on childcare. For couples earning up to half a million dollars. So I think there is a real danger here that it will be seen to be a continuation of the whole US style Democrat offerings to the younger, sometimes more affluent people working couples than it is to those who are sustaining themselves in retirement or working without government assistance and paying higher taxes.

Now, of course Peter Dutton gets a chance to make a budget in reply speech where he sets out some ideas of his own. Last year he used it as an opportunity to talk about nuclear power, small modulate nuclear reactors as a way of changing the conversation to be about what he wanted if it is childcare. In this budget and we see Jim Chalmers positioning the government as restrained and responsible but listening again, where does Peter Dutton go?

I think that what Peter Dutton will do in his budget and reply and the Prime Minister has tried to say, oh, this should be an election manifesto. There are even members of Dutton's own Liberal Party who are quietly saying oh yes, not so quietly saying yes, he should put out a bigger agenda here.

I don't think he will.

For the first point, a budget and reply speech is not the place to put out an election at manifesto. It occurs late on a Thursday evening, it occurs at the end of the parliamentary sitting, it doesn't get live coverage, and by that time it is purely a reaction to the budget. So you're already on the back foot reacting

Okay, Dennis, I'll see you in the lockup.

See you there, Claire, You'll be next to me.

Thank you. Dennis Shadahan is The Australian's National editor. You can read all Dennis's coverage and all our experts right now at the Australian dot com. Dot a U. On Tuesday night, we'll release a special episode of the Front with all the budget bits you need to know and none of the spin. Make sure you follow us right here to make sure you're the first to know