Late General, welcome the Late Debate.
Well thanks for joining us on the Late Late Debate. I'm James Macpherson with this story and Caleb Bond coming up tonight along with all of the federal budget coverage. A man in South Australia has been charged with the crime of sacrilege. Yes, that's a crime and it carries a life sentence. We'll tell you what he's alleged to have done a little later when we.
Get to the papers.
Of course, how tomorrow's newspapers are reporting on Jim Chalmer's budget trigger warning it's not good and an interesting story in tomorrow's Can's Post twenty five percent of residents in the city arming themselves with machetes and guns to ward off youth criminals. We'll get to that a little later, but as I said, the big story tonight is the federal budget, and of course the headline doing the rounds
tonight was the shock at tax cuts. I'm still not sure whether the shock was that tax cuts were offered or that, having been offered, they were so pitiful. But before we get to Caleb's run through of Jim Charmer's speech, I want to show you a couple of tomorrow's front pages. The Adelaide Advertiser had a lot of fun with the budget.
They went with the headline Mike Happy meal Jim, because of course, the tax cut is just five dollars a week, which is sorry the Adelaide Advertiser, What did I say, he says.
The advertiser, your second guess.
The Adelaid advertising I know, Jim.
Chalmers has your second guessing yourself because he promised you a tax cut that isn't really a tax cut. But still learn second gainst.
Yourself after that tax cut. Yeah, I'm second guessing everything. MC happy meal Jim. They said five.
Dollars a week, the Adelaid advertisers worked out, is enough to buy you a McNugget, a six nugget Michappy meal once a week, which is sure going to alleviate the cost of living crisis. I like what they've done though, is they've compared the five dollars a week tax cut we will get in more than a year from now with the fifteen thousand dollars a week the pandas at Adelaide Zoo will get from the federal government to keep
them fed. So if you want to know where the government's priorities are there.
You go keeping China's panda bears chovvy to the front page of the Daily telling now they got the second gong from us. Chalmers grand offer to voters a five dollars tax cut Jim Pickings, The Splash reads Treasurer Jim Charmers has fired the starting gun on the federal election with a pitifully small tax cut and deficits as far as the eye can see. Of course, everyone's attention is on the fact that there is nothing bold in this budget.
It is more of the saying, despite the very thorough summarization of this.
Budget that you would have heard if you've been watching all day to day.
I think Paul Murray did the best job when he.
Said, this thing reads like someone's assignment that they wrote the night it was due. It's very simplistic and it's just more of the same case.
And then that's what he said, it was the easiest budget he's ever had to analyze. And I kind of have to concur with that, because much like the Daily Telegraph is saying, you know, this is a budget that is the starting gun for the election. Last year, Jim Charmers said that that budget last year was a budget for the future, and I said at the time, it's barely a budget for the here and now, let alone in the future. This is not a budget for the
next five years. I heard someone else in the evening say, it's a budget for the next five weeks. And if you listen to the language that Jim Charmers, the Treasurer, was using tonight, he's setting this up as you know, we've come this far, We've just got to go a little bit further.
This budget builds on the progress that we have made together. Our economy is turning the corner. Inflation is down, incomes are rising, unemployment is low, interest rates are coming down, debt is down, and growth is picking up momentum. We've come a long way together, but there is more work to do. This budget is our plan for a new generation of prosperity in a new world of uncertainty. It's a plan to help finish the fight against inflation.
You know he's talking about we've done this together, we have to finish the fight. We are turning the corner. All of this language is pointing to the campaign that the Albanese government is setting up. That is, you've helped us get this far in fighting inflation. You've helped us get this far in fixing the books, though we'll talk a little later about how they haven't really fixed the books.
We need your vote to help us finish off the job, which funnily enough, is exactly the same campaign that Bob hawkran in nineteen eighty seven. We're on our way, We're on the right track.
Australia have always been good at fighting.
That with a little more strength and patience.
Really are stress you'll vote?
Weren't happen ever?
Happenne together? Let's see.
Then? It makes you yearn for a better time, doesn't it. Why can't a political party come up with a positive message like that anymore? Great jingles, but of course the only thing anyone really cares about at the moment is cost of living, and it's got a few shows in this budget speech.
It's a plan to help with the cost of living. This is a responsible budget with five main priorities helping with the cost of living. The cost of living is front of mind for most Australians and it is front and center in this budget. New plans for cost of living and health are accompanied by new investments in housing.
He Ada Ada at a cost of living. Never mind the fact that you and your government have made it worse, Doctor Charmers over at the last three years. But there weren't that many cost of living measures in this budget. The major one, though, the plank of their cost of living relief is a measly tax cut.
Every Australian taxpayer will get a tax cut next year and the year after to top up the tax cuts which began in July. This will take the first tax rate down to its lowest level in more than half a century. These additional tax cuts are modest, but they will make a difference. The average urner will have an extra five hundred and thirty six dollars in their pocket
each year when they're fully implemented. Combined with our first round of tax cuts, this is two thousand, one hundred and ninety dollars, and the average total tax cut will be two thousand, five hundred and forty eight dollars, or about fifty dollars a week.
I mean, seriously, what he's talking about there is the Stage three tax cuts that he changed, so a lot of people actually got fewer tax cuts last year, and then adding that on to the measly tax cut. He'll give you this year, which is well, actually it's not this year, it's next year. Five dollars on July the first, twenty twenty six, and then ten dollars on July the first,
twenty twenty seven. It's hardly a major tax cut. And he tries to make it sound like we are putting more money back in your pocket, but we know, thanks to the illusion of bracket creep, they're not putting any more money back in your pocket. This is the reality of what the Albanesi government has done to take more money from you. A decade ago, the income tax receipts that the federal government took in were two hundred and
fifty eight point eight billion dollars. Remember that number, two hundred and fifty eight point eight billion dollars just ten years ago. This financial year there'll be four hundred and ninety seven point six billion. Now that's one and a half billion dollars more than we were told in the midyear financial update they would be. And it's ninety two two point two seven percent more than they were taking from you ten years ago. The income tax take has doubled,
almost doubled in ten years now. In that time, inflation's gone up by about thirty percent, and the working population is increased by about twenty five percent. So yes, they will have taken more money in income tax, but that doesn't explain a near doubling in the money they have taken. So keep that in mind. Four hundred and ninety seven point six billion this financial year. Next financial year, they're going to take five hundred and twenty two point seven billion,
yet more tax from you. Then here after that, which is when you get your five dollars off every week. Remember this is when the tax cup comes through. They're still taking more money five hundred and forty seven point five two billion, twenty twenty seven, twenty eight, five hundred and seventy billion, twenty twenty eight, twenty nine, six hundred and five point three five billion over the forward estimates
in the budget they released tonight. That's another one hundred billion dollars in income tax they're going to take from you over the next four years. And the Treasurer has the gall to stand up and say we've given you tax cuts of thousands of dollars, or any tax cut you've been given has been eaten up by bracket creep and the increased in costs you've had to pay, and all this extra money he's taken from you, what's he done with it?
In this term, we've banked around seventy percent of tax receipt upgrades.
So you don't cut spending in line with the extra money that you've taken. You just squirrel that money away and put it somewhere else and say, we'll fantastic we've been able to take it from you without you even noticing we've done it, and then we'll tell you you've given we've been giving you a tax cut. If you're getting more tax from us, how about your offset that with less spending so you don't have to keep taxing us?
More strange thought, I know. The only other cost of living measure, of course, was one that we already knew, and that's an increase in the power rebate.
Electricity prices in the official data went down twenty five percent last year, but they're still putting pressure on households around the world. Two rounds of energy rebates have helped take some of the sting out of energy costs. Tonight, we're providing another one point eight billion dollars in energy bill relief.
Did anyone else hear that he said power bills went down by twenty five percent last year. Twenty five percent, Jim Charmers, what planet are you living on. None of us who looked at our power bills over the last year could possibly say that they've gone down by twenty five percent. What he's trying to tell you is the subsidy that we brought in means you paid less for power.
It didn't mean the actual power bill went down. It was money that the federal government took from your taxes and then handed to power companies so that when they sent you your bill it didn't look quite as large as it actually was. It did not change the cost of energy. A power bill. The average power bill in New South Wales on July the first this year will be one thousand dollars more than the Albanesy government promised before it
came to power. Remember they said two hundred and seventy five dollars off by twenty twenty five, but we'll give you another one hundred and fifty measly dollars in a rebate, not an actual cut to your bill by the end of this year. And despite all of this that it's not actually working. We're not getting these real cuts. They're still going to spend more on green energy and metals.
In this budget. We're investing more than three billion dollars to support the production of Australian made green metals like aluminium and iron, building on the tax incentives for critical minerals and green hydrogen that we legislated last year.
Now, I will note that he never really mentioned renewable energy in this budget speech, for very good reason, because he knows that's why our power bills have gone up. But he's still talking about, oh, we're going to invest in green metals. He must have missed the story in The Australian earlier this month that said ninety nine percent of green hydrogen projects in this country haven't gotten past the concept stage and it's green hydrogen that is so
important to making green metals work in this country. He must have also missed, of course, that the smelter at Port Agusta in South Australia the still work. Sorry in South Australia have fallen apart in the last month. It's not happening, and yet they're spending more money. And he had the gall Dr Chalmers to say that this government had exercised spending restraint.
Next year's deficit is forty two billion dollars, lower than what was forecast at the last election and lower than at the midyear update. Gross step will hit nine hundred and forty billion dollars this financial year, one hundred and seventy seven seven billion dollars lower than what we inherited this man's will. I've avoid around sixty billion dollars in
interest costs over the decade. These are some of the dividends of our responsible economic management, achieved through a combination of spending restraint, finding savings and banking revenue upgrades.
Spending restraint pull the other one, doctor Chalmers. He fails to mention, of course, the gross debt is going to go up to a trillion dollars next year. Are trillion dollars the first time it's ever happened, something for which he hammered the Morrison government when it turned up in their Ford estimates. But he's about to do it, and
he couldn't even mention it in that speech. And you want to talk about spending restraint, mate, Let's go through the cost of your budget starting with your first budget in twenty twenty two. To twenty three, which was six
hundred and fifty billion dollars. Then your ex budget twenty three twenty four was six hundred and eighty five point nine billion dollars, and then the one after that last year was seven hundred and sixty two point eight billion dollars, which was actual up from the seven hundred and thirty four point five billion dollars they told it would be
in May last year. And next financial year the budget is going to be seven hundred and eighty five point seven billion dollars, So you put more than one hundred billion dollars extra on top when you've been in government and you tell us if you've exercised spending restraint. I look forward to the budget speech every year because I just want to see how much nonsense and lies you can fit into a half hour speech. And this one did not fail to deliver.
That would be a new record, I would assume.
And do you reckon that people are going to vote labor because they're getting five dollars a week in twelve months or so from now, I doubt it. All the newspapers are describing this as a modest tax break, so.
Very steel line from me.
Churchill Jim Chalmers is a modest man with much to be modest about.
But I love his language.
As you mentioned, Caleb, he talks about credit to all Australians.
It's collective efforts.
We've made a lot of progress together, we've turned a corner together. This language assumes that we are already partners with the Labor government. Don't worry about the ballot in five weeks time. We're already lockstep with them. It's like a sales technique where if you go to a car dealer and you're looking at it, I don't know an Audi A five, and instead of saying, so are you going to buy the car, he says, do you reckon?
You'd like it in black or in red?
The assumption is you're with us already, And very clearly his language was trying to convince voters you're already voting for us. We've already come this far together, We've just got a little bit further to go together.
Your vote is assumed.
I genuinely don't think that many voters watch the budget speech or the budget in reply. That's for us and you educated folk at home who take the time to June in and find out what the flogs running our country are actually doing. I mean, this is an embarrassment of a budget period, but it means that Dutton has a complete free field when he gives his budget in reply. He has the opportunity laid this week to actually make the bold moves that the Albanese government have clearly found.
There's not a single one in there where you're like, oh, actually I like that one.
We can take that one to the bank.
Dutton can go helter skelter if he wants to, and we know, and we've discussed previously, that that is what his party room wants to see.
He is being.
Implored by people whose jobs rely on it to be bolsheer the in the walk up to this election, to make bolder moves right now, got to say I agreed with Jack Lamby earlier tonight. There doesn't seem other than the promise of nuclear. When you think, okay, what's the biggest difference between what we've heard from the major two parties so far?
Other than the promise of.
Nuclear, there's no really clear laid out plan of Okay, this is our plan forward and how do you like it compared to the Albanesis. This is his opportunity to do that loud and clear, and given how utterly pathetic this budget is.
It shouldn't be hard. The Libs cannot fail this.
It's a low bar for him to clear on Thursday night.
I would have thought.
The other interesting thing, calib is you pointed out Charmers has announced one hundred and fifty dollars towards energy rebates. But that's only for the next six months, right, which begs the question what happens after that? Because we all know how prices are going to continue to climb. It's what one point eight billion dollars over the next six months, But after that, what happens more energy rebates?
How long does this continue?
Well exactly, I mean presumably it has to go go on in perpetuity if you actually wanted to keep delivering any kind of cost of living relief to people. And this is the problem. It happens so much with budgets now. It used to be a thing everyone would sit down on budget night and they tune in for the Treasurer's speech because they wanted to learn what was going to
be in the budget. These days, everything gets leaked before the budget speech is actually delivered, so we basically already know what's going to be in a part from the nasties that they don't want us to know, which is what we then pick a park on the night. But there was nothing in this apart from the tax cuts that were actually new. There was nothing you could walk away with and say, yeah, I can actually see some vision in this government for what they want to do
if they're re elected. They're only thinking as far forward as the election, and that's why they don't know what they would do when they get to the end of the year and they potentially go, oh god, we'll put on more rebats. They'ven't even thought about that because at the moment they're not worried about that. They're just worried about getting through an election.
Well, to be fair to Jim Chalmers, I think a couple of weeks ago he wasn't even thinking he.
Would be delivering a very budget point.
As you said, this has been a last minute sort of schoolboy essay compiled together. The other interesting thing was the NDIS will cost fifty two million dollars, which is billion, which is a billion dollars more than Defense.
Will receive in the next twelve months.
That's a big thing too that deserves a lot of discussion, because of course defense is something that should be prioritized, but we're spending more on disability pens.
The NDIS is going to be continue to be a poison chalice for whoever's in government.
Meant the gift.
Look at those numbers on screen. He was trying to crow tonight charmers that, oh, you know, we're reducing spending in the NDAs. I mean, it's like saying we've reduced the debt. You make minuscule changes to what it's said over the forward estimates, even though it's still going up, and then try to claim that you've had a cut.
I mean, come on, it's going to grow still by eight percent per year for the next four years. The only performance worse than Jim chalmers performance tonight is the performance of school teaching graduates when they're given at the end of their studies a basic literacy and numeracy test. Reports today that ten percent of graduating teachers fail that basic test, which means they're unable to use basic punctuation in sentences and can't spell words like exaggerate or disappoint.
That's double the number of teachers who are failing this exam in twenty sixteen. Now, educators are clearly the product of the education system. But I think a clue as to why the education system is so bad is the
response to this news by various teacher representatives. The Education Union of Victoria, in response to news that ten percent of graduating teachers are failing this basic test, the Education Union of Victoria criticized the test, saying it was an inappropriate way to assess whether or not people were capable of teaching. The Australian Catholic University had a professor come out and.
Say, well, the problem was the order of the questions.
Caleb, because you normally have a test that goes from easy to difficult, but.
In this test all the questions were jumbled up.
Then there was the Central Queensland University professor who said, no, see, the way to understand what's really happening is to understand who failed this test by gender, by ethnicity, and by low caation.
Then we really understand what's going on.
And then to top it all off, the Education Minister Jason Clare, upon hearing about the terrible results here, said well, what we're going to do to fix this is instead of holding the test at the end of their studies, We're going to hold the test at the beginning of their studies. That way, this is what he said, they can have multiple opportunities to pass.
Problem solved.
There you go, That is why we've got so many problems in our school.
This is incredible.
Remember it was just last August that we learned via napland results across the nation that one in three school kids were failing the expected standard of literacy and numeracy. Really simple stuff. You've got to ask yourself, what the heck are our children being taught in school if it's
not literacy and numeracy. We've talked a nauseum about how our schools and universities has become hot bear zess pools of indoctrination, but it never becomes more obvious when you look at stuff like this going so our kids are failing, and then we find out our teachers aren't up to scratch, So how the heck are the kids supposed to be above the cut?
Anyway?
This also back in twenty twenty three, I remember the government did. It was just a consultation paper, but the FEDS released in July twenty twenty three, this consultation paper where they've gone to the.
Schools being like, how can we make.
Schooling in Australia freer and fairer and all round better? And that paper, I'll never forget this noted that only one percent of teachers in Australia, just under one percent, actually we're accredited to teach at the highest levels. There's only four levels available, but they all get to graduate standard. And all the teachers go, well, I'm paid now, I'm employed, I'm getting it done.
Why would I advance?
And so less than one percent of teachers in Australia, and there's hundreds of thousands of them, have actually taken it upon themselves to be like, well, I want to be the best in my field. I want to be paid a bit more. I'm going to put in a few more hard yards. And it does make you wonder, where's the passion for teaching?
God?
You know what, though, there was a time where teachers didn't go to university. They went to teachers college and they got a teaching diploma. And I would argue those people, of course did less in the way of tertiary education before they became teachers than anyone who's going into teaching today. And yet they were infinitely better teachers because a they were there specifically to be teachers, and when they went to teachers college they were taught how to be teachers.
They were taught all this other nonsense that your mind gets filled with ideological guff. In universities these days, the job was to teach you how to be a good teacher and to go off into the classroom and do your job. There's an old saying, of course those who can do those who can't teach. And I know it is harsh because there are lots of excellent teachers out there. The best teacher I ever had, certainly in primary school, missus London. She was an old school, fearsome teacher right
she went to teachers College. I've still got a Oxford Dictionary, a concise oxfordictionary from the nineteen seventies that she took to teachers College with her, which he gave me as a parting gift when she.
Retired teachers Pet Taylor.
No, I wasn't a teacher's pet, but I did like that particular dictionary, so she gave it to me when I left. But when she left. Sorry, but she is the model of what a teacher should be in my mind. And you have so many people these days who don't seem to be there for the right reason. So is it any wonder that they end up not being the
best people for the job. And I remember maybe eight or nine years ago, there were stories coming out about people going through teaching degrees or being admitted to teaching degrees with eight hours of less than fifty so they were the bottom half of all school leavers and they were being admitted to teaching degrees. If we're doing things like that, is it any wonder that we have people coming out the other side who can't read and write properly.
And what an indictment on the university sector that they've been there for three or four years and they still can't read and write properly. For heaven safe, of.
Course, if you've been to a public school and how to walk around, you would know why they're not attracting the best and the brightest to the profession. Fifty percent of people who started teaching degree drop out before concluding it, and of those that actually finish the degree, twenty percent drop out of teaching altogether within three years. Because there's a lot less teaching than there is people management and behavioral management and class control.
They wonder we're not getting the best. Yeah, we're not ragging on teachers. By the way, if you're a teacher and you're you're at home watching this, I'm sure you're one of the good ones. I had my appreciation for teachers go to a whole other level when my sister became one and I watched the stress the mountains of marking she'd bring home. I genuinely used to think, oh, teachers.
Yeah, there's so many weights of holidays every year. Absolute slack rats.
Everyone must want to be a teacher.
I've changed my tune a lot over the last ten to fifteen years.
More on Disney's Nosedie.
We keep talking about these woke projects of Disney, and how recently, funnily enough, right on the back of the Trump administration coming to power, they've turfed a lot of their DEI projects and inserting particularly LGBTIQ indoctrination into cartoons and programs that are streamed into the little minds of millions around the globe. But their latest foray had already been created, that being the idiotically woke version of snow White.
They'd already produced it, they'd already spent the money.
So they had a very very low.
Key opening night with all the stars, but it wasn't the usual red carpet. They tried to keep it quite quiet. But it's finally been released at the box office, and once again the public has.
Said, we hate your woke bull crap.
Check this out.
It has only gotten eighty seven million in its opening weekend globally, it with just forty three million domestically. To give you an idea of just how poor that is, here's a few other movies and how they did on their opening weekend. The Lion King one hundred and ninety one million, Beauty and the Beast. These are all the not the old versions, but the newer versions that Disney has pumped out. Alice in Wonderland, what a classic, The Jungle Book, and then we've got snow White bringing in
less than half of any of those. I mean, how ammbarrassing. Once again the public has spoken. Disney thankfully has already got this memo.
They're cutting this out.
But in regards to this snow White movie, they'd already done it.
It's so bad that Dumbo back in twenty nineteen had a better first week at the box office than this movie. In other words, a flying elephant movie was more watchable than Snow White. Some of the reviews have been fantastic. Rolling Stone describe it simply as a nightmare. The Guardian said it was a.
Toe curdling coke sorry, toe curlingly terrible, which is conflicting.
When the Guardian say it's bad, you think maybe I should watch it, but no, they're.
Telling you I'm having visions of toes being curdled down. I don't lie.
It is visual. But my favorite review was Vanity Fair. I really like this. They said the movie was good enough for TV.
It's all Mark.
I think that's called passive aggressive.
It's a Hallmark movie. Surely they should have worked out. There was a slight problem when it changed from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to simply snow White, because the Seven Dwarves aren't actually dwarves anymore. They're people of various statues and races and sexuality, or.
A diverse group whatever else there.
They are a diverse group, and the actress playing snow White, Rachel Zegler, is not actually a white woman. She's of Colombian descent, and of course, in the original Snow White Tail, it's about she's having a daughter whose skin is as white as snow and hair as black as ebony, isn't it. I mean, what did you think was going to happen? We be Joe, specifically this actress for.
The job, and to everyone who hates when I win the wind victory came to the Louver in pieces and people still lying them to see.
Her, and I can only hold.
That despote my flawers and my craps and make bricks, and there are many of them that at every premiere and everything I do, people will wait in.
Line to see. Well, I'm sorry they didn't line up to see you love quite clearly based on box office numbers. I mean, it's it's so insufferable, And that's what people have started to wake up to, the insufferability of the worker gender and the people who push the worker gender. I mean, look, can you imagine, as a mediocre actress who's managed to get herself a gig in a film that no one really wants to see, comparing yourself to
a piece of artwork in the louver? I mean, try it, not at all no, no, not at all, not at all. This there is no clues as to why this thing would have failed. Donald Trump. Meanwhile, he is carrying on with his tariff push. This time it's for different reasons. He's doing basically a secondary tariff to punish other nations for doing things that he doesn't like, in this case,
taking Venezuelan oil. Now he has beef with Venezuela because he says that they have been sending criminals, illegal migrants into the US deliberately, and so he is going to tell any country that if they want to take oil from the greater socialist Republic that is Venezuela, the great example of how socialism will work, where they've all starved and run out of money. Basically, if you take their oil, he will put at tax on any product that you try to bring into the United States, of course, to
discourage them from taking Venezuelan oil. He posted on his social media platform Truth. President Donald J. Trump announced today that the United States of America will be putting what is known as a secondary tariff on the country of Venezuela for numerous reasons, including the fact that Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully, as I said before, seat to the United States undercover tens of thousands of high level and other criminals, many of whom are murderers and people of
a very violent nature. Now that the biggest purchases of Venezuelan oil have actually been the United States at the top, but that doesn't matter because you can't tariff things that you make in your own country. But it's interestingly China has been one of the biggest purchases of venezuela and oil, and of course they're one of the biggest exporters to every country in the world, followed by India and Spain.
And India of course, is another country that the United States and other Western nations have been trying to build good trade relations with in the last few years. He has, at every point, I think, tried to use tariffs as a bargaining chip with people. He thinks if he can get something out of someone else by slapping a tariff on them, and then they do something, and then he takes the tariff off, which is of course what he did with Mexico and Canada when he wanted, you know,
people stationed on the border for Mexico et cetera. It's worked previously, will it work this time?
You said that it's not just a tariff, but it's a tariff on top of tariffs. Right, So China have already had a twenty percent tariff slept on all the goods they are exporting to the United States. So that means if China continue to import Venezuelan oil, their tariff on goods export to the US would go from twenty percent to forty five percent. Indeed, I can't imagine that would.
Happen, although it's very unclear as to how Trump would actually impose this tariff because you're Venezuela, I'm China, I'm buying your oil.
But Trump is going to tariff me for that.
I I everyone's very much hands in the air, going how is he actually going to do this, especially when you're talking about a big trade partner like China.
What I think he's actually doing here.
Because you know, typical Trump, he's weighted in. He's made this announcement. They're supposedly kicking in on April seven. Everyone buckle your belts. But like you say, Caleb, the US also gets a lot of oil from the Venezuela.
But this would this would make sense.
He's cracking down on Iranian oil production at the same time, while allowing OPEC and coizing up to the Saudis and the UAE, who also have a lot of oil, and leaving room for US producers at the same time.
So while he's burning.
These bridges, he's already made arrangements as to where they will get their oil from in future. So it's actually quite a significant power shift. Venezuela back in twenty twenty three was the owners of seventeen percent of the world's crude oil, so these guys are rolling in it. So for Trump now to say, sure, they've got a heck of a lot of oil, but you guys buy oil or gas from Venezuela, I'm going to come down and you like a ton of bricks.
Let's see if he actually does it.
Well, we're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll look at what's making news tomorrow. Obviously the federal budget a big story and a fascinating story for North Queensland residents arming themselves with machetes and guns.
We'll get to all of that in just a moment.
Okay, let's take a look at how tomorrow's papers are reporting Jim Charmers budget. I'll run you through a couple of the front pages really quickly. The Herald's Son in Melbourne is going with Jim's coffee shot, referring, of course to the fact that five bucks a week tax cut is worth about a coffee, elections, sweetener, poultry, five dollars tax cut amid cost of living crisis, weekly hip pocket help barely enough to buy a cuppa and it starts in twenty twenty six.
Then they've gone with.
A subheading bitter after taste, no doubt. The Mercury front page in Tasmania they've got roll of the dice, betting the house on cost of living relief. They talk about a no frills budget, which I think is rather kind. They point out that Jim Charmers has cautiously titled his budget turning the corner Together. Of course, the problem is we turn the corner and there's absolutely nothing there.
Or more corners.
The Canberra Times has gone with a fairly positive take on the budget. I think they're trying to help Jim Charmers the hard cell, they've said, but then they go for a surprise extra tax cut promised, not pointing out it's just a poultry five dollars. There's one hundred and fifty dollars additional power bill relief PBS medical scripts capped at twenty five bucks medical boost to lift bulk billing rates, and so they are trying to put a positive spin
on the budget. I'm not sure it's going to help the treasurerer that much.
But that's how those papers are reporting it.
Can I just point out if you're looking at the front of the Canberra Times, there cat and you've got Jim Chalmers, you know he's got his box, are good? He's there, and Donald Trump in the background looks like some petulant child who's fallen over. Are they seriously trying to suggest that Jim Charmers sums out best at Donald Trump? Didn't anyone really believe that?
It does suggest that?
And I noticed also that he's got he's got eggs in his basket there. It's labeled public service, but promise wondering how the hell he can afford eggs. I bought eggs today more than ten dollars.
Well, jeez, are you buying the free range stuff?
What do you do?
I'm not paying.
Stuff? No, you busy psychopaths.
Cage eggs, Hey, you can get cage free, but not for free range is a scam. I think you need to know. But you probably need to work in the public service to buy eggs. That's probably the point they're trying to make them.
You've got of the os which Julie eviscerated, the man and the budget election tax cut war. After Jim offers cup of coffee relief the splash reads cost of saving Albow. I loved that Jim Chalmers has set up a tax fight with Peter Dutton weeks out from the May election
after unveiling seventeen point one billion in modest relief. We keep hearing that wor for millions of low income workers, which was immediately rejected by the Coalition as a cruel hoax, with Laver's tax package promising Australians earning forty five grand or more an extra five dollars, et cetera, exactly what we've just said. Now Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor is calling this an election bribe.
I would argue that that's.
Any election promise, but okay, it's certainly an election budget.
They're all bribes, baby, They.
Want one thing, and it's your vote.
But the Coalition has said that they will not be matching these tax cuts. So at least that's one one point of difference that we know that we'll see.
If that's a bribe, that is the worst bribe ever.
Not enough. Maybe a child could be bribed with five dollars. But give given given that the coalition has tonight so thoroughly attacked this tax cut, and it deserves to be a tax because it's not really a tax cut at all. It comes in next year, at which point this government may not even be in power anyway. It delivers no immediate relief to any five dollars a week. Please. But having done this, surely Dutton has to come out on
Thursday night with a much better tax cut. I mean, he can't stand up and come on, how could he not?
They won't be matching it.
Look, they don't have to match it. They can best at one hundred percent. But how can they not come out with a genuine tax cut? But how can you not come out with a genuine tax cut? So you've got the government saying we'll give you all, be it a tiny tax cut, a tax cut nevertheless, and then the opposition is going to try and stand up and say we'll give you nothing.
Five dollars is nothing, so I would say they're really not.
Five dollars Yeah, but it's still five dollars less a week. If that's what the coalition does, it's still five dollars less. I don't see how they could possibly offer no tax cuts whatsoever.
I just think that Ossie's are smart enough to know that that is nothing.
That is not enough for anyone to be like.
Okay, yeah, you've got my vote five bucks off.
Yeah yeah, but someone has to offer something real. I mean, we deserve a serious tax cut. The numbers that were on the front of the Daily Philography yesterday about bracket group come from Coalition numbers, so clearly, in some way tax is factoring into their thinking here. They have to come out with.
It all, Well, what you're talking about, because all these tax cuts are only ever a temporary sugar hit. Then they're gobbled up immediately by inflation, the cost of living pressures, et cetera, and so on. No one's going to feel that five bucks and they know it. So I don't
think you're shifting any votes. And we were saying just last night, how we'd give out two front teeth to actually have a leader who stands up and says, you know what, We're going to be fiscally responsible, of course, and we all need to tighten our belts kids, We need to pull our socks up. Things might be a little rough for a little while, but hey, at least this way, your children's children aren't going to be paying
off a trillion plus dollars of debt. I think responsible Ozsies would be like, actually, I like the sound of this guy, because we all know someone's got to rein it in.
So we'll learn a lot about Peter Dutton on Thursday night, won't we Because we'll learn whether he is looking at just a very short term five weeks so that to get to the finished line of the election, or whether he proposes something serious, as you said, and he actually trusts the electric The other part of this budget, Calub is that there's a billion dollars that's been tucked away by the government for a war chest over the next five weeks, and there's already been billions spent in the
last couple of months in preparation.
Promised sixty billion dollars worth of.
Correct and the spending is going to continue over the next few weeks.
They've made sure they've got enough money to keep doing that.
And they tell us that they've been restrained in their spending.
I mean, if that's their restraint, thank god they exercised it, because imagine if they hadn't even exercised that much restrained. To the second splash on the front of the OS, tactical budget for a poll Fails the Nation by Paul Kelly, he writes, this budget fails Australia's needs in terms of fiscal accountability, structural policy, productivity enhancement and strategic imperatives. It puts immediate election tactics before the pressing challenges facing the country.
Great article. Read it if you can.
But I think that sums up the entire thing.
Everyone's looking for a vision, something serious given the times that we're currently living in. That is what the nation needs, and yet we just seemed hopefully it don't improves us wrong later this week, but we seem to be a ship without a capable captain.
I think this quote from Paul Kelly sums it up pretty much entirely. The sad truth is Labor doesn't trust itself all the public to redirect our national priorities from cost of living handouts and mini tax cuts to the mounting challenges that will cost Australia the longer they are denied and deferred. And that is exactly the problem. And it's so hard to get out of that rut because once you start saying you can have this, and you can have this, and you can have this, it's so
hard to take it back. If a government promises something, it takes a lot of gumption for someone else to say they're going to take it away from you. And that's the problem we find ourselves in now. I mean, almost everything that the government has promised thus far has been matched by the oppositions. There's no great differences in terms of spending so far. This is where we find ourselves no long term vision.
I've got to point out too, is that Paul Kelly referred to the tax cut as cute.
Was a coffee a week starting mid next year. That is quite cute.
Read Alert record cash crash.
The third article on the OZ reads Jim Chalmers has presided over the biggest deterioration in the country's underlying cash balance outside COVID and the global find out antial crisis with a forty three billion dollar plunge into the red
from a surplus last year. The country's gross debt level will also hit nine hundred and forty billion this year and more than one one trillion next year, with the interest expense also hitting a record twenty four point four billion this year, rising to twenty seven billion next year. That's something a lot of people don't factor in. The debt isn't just the debt. The interest is eye watering. It's like paying off your mortgage and you're just paying off that.
You're not touching the principle, you're just keeping your head above water.
That is what the government is trying to do and failing dismally.
And he will try to claim, and has tried to claim, Jim Chalmers, that this is due to the great work of the federal government, nothing of course, to do with commodity prices and all the extra income tax that they've taken from us. So that just meant that it's it's slightly better than it otherwise might have been, but it's still bad. I mean, we're in deficit for the next decade and that will be the legacy of this government.
Really quick before we go to a break. You've got the Cans post great story on the front.
People, well great, well, well it's a good story because it's a good front page. But it's not a good story for the people of Cans Knives Edge. It's there's one in four Cans residents are arming themselves with weapons, including Machett's guns at baseball bats to fend off youth criminals. A chilling survey has revealed data collected church most people have improved their home security and some I reliant on
weapons following recent crime events in the community. I mean, it's extraordinary to think there are that many people, of course feel unsafe in their homes, that they're arming themselves against what might happen. I know a lot of people have done it for a long time, but to think that one in four people are sleeping with the baseball bat ready to go, it tells you where they're adding CANSA.
It's a while since I lived in North Queensland, but ten years ago people were doing the same thing because of break in, So not that surprising but pretty shocking. Nonetheless, we're to go to a break when we come back. The man in South Australia charged with the crime of sacrilege. Will tell you what he's alleged to have done after the break Well, South Australian man has been charged with the crime of sacrilege. Yes, it's a crime and it carries a potential life sentence.
The police were called to a church at.
Murray Bridge, about an hour out of Adelaide, at three am this morning, where a man had allegedly broken into a church to steal some scripture books talk about wanting the word of God. He was charged and refused bail. And this is not the first time someone's been charged with sacrilege in recent days. Back in twenty twenty, a man was charged with breaking into a church and stealing guitars.
Sacrilege is part of the Criminal Code dating back to nineteen thirty five and it's defined as breaking into a place of divine worship and committing a crime. The rationalist society tried to get rid of this crime, but apparently it's to distinguish the fact that when you steal from a church, that's altogether different from stealing from somewhere else. So of course the man will face court.
But there you go.
In South Australia, if you steal something from a place of worship. That's a whole other crime.
Live.
He was even refused bail.
Do you want to get a few of those magistates over to Victoria or maybe Queensland where kids can literally break into cars and homes and.
Just get bail.
This guy was refused bail.
That's how serious I want to know. You know that the alleged crime he has committed is that he went all the way from Mount Gambia down at the very bottom of South Australia on the Victorian border, all the way up to murray Bridge, which is about five hours, to allegedly steal some scripture book.
Do you have just waited till Sunday?
He really really needed them now life imprisonment. But before we leave you tonight, check out this painting of Donald J. Trump, which he has taken to truth social to say, take this painting down of me in the Colorado State Capital building. He writes, nobody likes a bad picturel painting of themselves. But the in Colorado in the state Capitol, put up by the governor along with all the other presidents, was purposely distorted to a level that even I perhaps had
never seen before. The artist also did President Obama and he looks wonderful, but the one on.
Me is truly the worst.
She must have lost her talent as she got older, he said, referring to British artist Sarah Boardman. What remains to be seen is why this got his attention now, because it was unveiled six years ago in twenty nineteen.
So here he is. He's president again, and he's like, actually, there was that painting.
That I hated, and now they're health Democrats have declared that it will be taken down and replaced with one that quote depicts his contemporary likeness.
Wait till he sees the Campra Times tomorrow.
That's all from us sticking around, coming up his Newsnight with Christy Lloyd.
Good Night