The Point Live: Angus Taylor to give first budget reply speech. As it happened.

Well the race baiting in that speech was appalling. And apart from a lot of declarative sentences, which are very similar to the Gina Rinehart endorsed/Advanced pushed talking points on fossil fuels, migration, globalisation, and rejection of climate transition tech, there is nothing in that that suggests how he is going to pay for any of it.

But that’s the point – he doesn’t have to. Just needs to stir up enough emotion that it starts to capture people. The thing is, One Nation does it better. And easier. And people who believe in the message Taylor is pushing don’t believe in his commitment to it – but they do believe in Pauline Hanson’s.

So he’ll probably push more people into voting One Nation ahead of the Coalition, while tying the nation up into a damaging, dangerous and hurtful debate that will turn vitriol against migrants for no other reason than Taylor wants some political relevancy.

What a depressing body politic we have.

Thank you for enduring that with us – I still can’t believe how many of you come back – and you’re bringing your friends – week after week. We truly appreciate it. I hope you get some quiet in the mean time – The Point Live will be back when Parliament returns on 25 May, but there will be plenty on The Point in the mean time, so make sure you check back.

And until we see each other again – please, take care of you. And those around you. Ax

Mike Bowers for The New Daily was in that chamber. Here is how he saw it:

(Also worth noting – Grog’s says that the chamber broadcast cut to Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor for Strings & Organ” which is also the music that ends the movie Gallipoli. Not sure you get more depressing an ending than that)

No one applauding that speech think there is any chance any of it will be implemented. And no one has any clue how they will pay for it.

What did I think of Angus’s offering?

The structure of the budget in reply speech highlights exactly what it was for.

Almost all of it was about scaring Australians.

Be scared of migrants.

Be scared of new cheaper forms of energy.

Be scared of bracket creep and tax.

Be scared to debt (even though most of it was accumulated during the pandemic under a Coalition Government).

Be scared to fuel stocks.

The most important thing is to be scared.

And then, right near the end, he committed to spend more on defence. He committed to spending 3% of GDP on defence.

Because now you’re scared, it makes sense to spend more on defending us from all the imaginary problems that he just talked about.

When you have no real solutions, what else can you actual offer the Australian people.

Angus Taylor finishes with:

There’s much work the Coalition must do to win your confidence.

But with the policies I’ve announced tonight – and the vision I’ve outlined – I hope you can begin to believe again.

Believe in our promise of better government.

Believe in the prospect of a fairer, freer, and better Australia.

That Australia is worth fighting for – now more than ever.

He gets a standing ovation from his side of the house- Labor is already leaving.

It’s a little awkward – he is standing there looking at his colleagues applaud him like he just won Miss Congeniality.

Milton Dick adjourns the house – parliament will now have a week long break.

Taylor:

In a dangerous world of coercion, crises, and conflict, we need to address threats and risks comprehensively – and get serious about our self-reliance.

Tonight, I announce that a Coalition government will develop a National Security Strategy and appoint a dedicated National Security Adviser.

Central to that strategy will be defence.

Unlike Labor with its accounting trickery, the Coalition will commit to spending at least three per cent of GDP on defence.

That’s what Trump has ordered countries to pay. And also there is no explanation of how he would pay for any of this.

We are now getting to the very loud One Nation part of the speech:

Tonight, I announce a far-reaching and unprecedented housing policy.

It’s also an immigration policy that puts Australians first.*

A Coalition government will cap immigration numbers based on the number of homes constructed each year.

Never again will a government be able to bring in more people than our housing can support.

That’s our commitment.

Let me also stress this point:

Given the magnitude of people coming in under Labor, immigration will need to be significantly below our cap in the first few years of a Coalition government.

We must allow the housing market to catch up. Only closer to the next election can we provide a precise immigration number.

It would be rash to do so now.

This government always exceeds its immigration targets – and will do so again.

By the next election, the situation could be even worse than it is today.

But this much I promise:

The Coalition will deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history.**

Our immigration cut will complement our plan to lift immigration standards.***

*That’s Trumpian language, and Reform language.  America first, Britain first.  Another dog whistle. 

**Who is building the houses?

***This means a discriminatory policy that priorities white people, from ‘acceptable’ white countries first.  It’s another way of saying ‘white South African farmers’.

He goes on to get even more divisive language, which echoes his recent speech about a discriminatory immigration policy. He also talks about people who disagree with the law having to explain why – which is funny, because when the High Court ruled in NZYQ, a finding which found indefinite detention was unconstitutional, Taylor was part of the opposition which argued very, very hard against the court decision. Huh.

As for the whole bracket creep is scary and Angus will index your tax brackets. This is all just for show.

Everyone has had all their bracket creep handed back through periodic tax cuts.

If John Howard had indexed the tax brackets in 2001 after he introduced the GST and this replaced all the periodic tax cuts, everyone would be paying more tax today.

Why? Because politicians love handing out tax cuts and they have always been over generous.

And who have they been the most over generous with?

High income earners of course.

Someone on about average fulltime earnings of $95,000 is better off by 1.9% or about $3,363 a year. But someone on $190,000 is better off by 6.6% or about $16,659 a year.

This is just a way of slashing revenue to create a bigger budget deficit which will then be used to slash government services.

Grogs:

Further to Matt’s point. 

When Howard lost office the second highest tax threshold was $75,000. If it had gone up with inflation it would now be $123,000 not $135,000

This is our Tax Back Guarantee. 

From 2028-29, we will index the bottom two thresholds to inflation. 

That will fully protect 85 per cent of income earners, with relief of around $250 in year one, growing to more than $1,000 a year in year four. 

From 2031-32, we will index the top two thresholds as well. 

That will fully protect all taxpayers from inflation. 

This is generational tax reform.

This is the big announcement. 

Would love to know how they are going to pay for it. 

It’s the type of announcement you make when you are almost positive you will never have to implement it. 

For example if you increased the bottom 2 threshold by 3% a year by 2029-30 it would cost around $14bn a year. 

By 2031-32, once you throw in the top two tax thresholds you’re looking at costing $26bn.

Now sure by 2031-32 there probably will be some income tax cuts. But cutting taxes every year is costly and means government services need to be continually cut. 

We need more tax not less.

If you’re feeling poorer under this government, it’s because you are. Labor is stealing from you with inflation.*

The Treasurer says inflation will reach 5 per cent next month. People see Labor’s inflation steal from them in higher grocery prices, power bills, mortgage repayments, and other cost-of-living expenses.

But Labor is stealing from Australians in another way, year after year, without new laws, without an election, and without you even noticing – until you look at your bank account.

When your wages rise just to keep up with inflation – you are no better off. But you pay higher taxes as though you’re better off.

More of your income goes into a higher tax bracket. And that’s why you feel poorer.

The higher Labor’s inflation goes, and the longer it lasts, the more the government takes from you.

Where Labor’s new taxes on housing and small business are an assault on aspiration, this is a stealth raid on Australians working hard to get ahead.

Consider this to:

Labor’s plan is to tax all of workers’ real wage gains away.

Living standards go nowhere.

Under Labor, a typical worker on $70,000 a year will see their entire real wage gains taxed

away by inflation.**

The worst thing about this tax is that it keeps going up, and keeps taking more each year, forever.

Under a Coalition government I lead, this will end.

Tonight, I announce our policy to ensure that you aren’t taxed more because of Labor’s inflation tax.

This is our Tax Back Guarantee.

From 2028-29, we will index the bottom two thresholds to inflation.

That will fully protect 85 per cent of income earners, with relief of around $250 in year one,

growing to more than $1,000 a year in year four.

From 2031-32, we will index the top two thresholds as well.

That will fully protect all taxpayers from inflation.

This is generational tax reform.

It’s fair, simple, and honest.

It will back Australians to work hard, take risks, and invest in their future.

It will force government to respect your money.

Any government that wants to tax Australians more should have the courage to front up and to take that tax increase to an election.

Under Labor, Australians work harder, pay more, and fall behind.

Under the Coalition, Australians will keep more and get ahead.

*Labor is not to blame for inflation. This is what smart people refer to as the ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ or (after, therefore because of) which basically means because inflation is happening, it is the fault of the government who is overseeing it.

Australia’s inflation has largely been driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, fossil fuel costs and the increase in energy and food costs that came with it) and the post-pandemic demand surges – which most advanced economies are experiencing. 

**Grogs and Matt will have more to say here.

“People see Labor’s inflation steal from them in higher grocery prices, power bills, mortgage repayments, and other cost-of-living expenses.”

Tim Wilson tried out the use of “steal” in Question Time and it was ruled unparliamentary.

Taylor is trying it on here. 

It is meaningless. As the Federal Court found today the higher grocery prices have come from Coles doing fraud on its customers.

A Coalition government will rewrite and simplify the legislative rule book, including: The Corporations Act, Tax Act, Competition Act, National Construction Code, and Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Take the Construction Code, as one example.

Labor has expanded it to more than 2,000 pages. The Code’s thousands of rules add tens-of-thousands of dollars to new housing builds. We want the Code closer to 200 pages*.

And we will go further. Regulatory bodies created by government set rules and enforce laws – and that’s important.

But under Labor, these regulators have become bigger, more powerful, and overbearing.

They’re regulating for regulation’s sake.

They need to get out of the way.

*This is the Abundance-bro fallacy, which suggests that cutting regulations immediately cuts costs.  Claiming you’ll cut regulations from 2,000 pages to 200 pages is a soundbite for a reason -because it doesn’t actually suggest they have seriously looked into why those regulations exist and what the cost of cutting them could be.  For example, do we remember how the Coalition absolutely demonised Labor’s Pink Batt Scheme, which was designed to very quickly stimulate the economy, but led to injuries, deaths and property damage  because some people rushing to take advantage of the scheme were not properly trained/regulations were not adequately in place.  Injuries, defects, litigation, fixing, deaths, property destruction, environmental destruction – all of that can cost more money than the regulation itself.  Do fire standards, building standards, energy efficiency standards, accessibility standards, safety standards, testing standards etc all fit in 200 pages?  Do you see why this is ridiculous?

“Third, all Australians prosper from having access to international markets. 

But blind faith in globalisation has hollowed out our vital industries and made our country vulnerable. 

We’re too dependent on other countries for critical supplies like jet fuel, diesel, and fertiliser. 

And yet, we have an abundance of resources beneath our feet. 

We could be self-sufficient and re-industrialise in key areas – if we stopped locking up our resources and turbocharged digging and drilling.”

I can’t even. 

I just can’t.

Does Taylor seriously think we don’t have oil production in this country because governments have been against giving oil companies approvals??

Sure there might be stonks of oil in the Great Australian Bight. But guess what – no one wants to get it because it would not make any economic or financial (ie profitable) sense to do so.

“Second, prioritising net zero and emissions reduction above all else has seen cheap, always-on power dismissed for expensive, sometimes-on, industrial-scale renewables – mainly sourced from China. 

Power prices have soared – causing households to struggle, businesses to close, and industries to move offshore. 

Far from a future made in Australia, our future is being made abroad. 

Australians have been fed the lie that our economy can function on solar, wind, and batteries alone.”

Honestly what can you even say about this crap? 

Power prices as I showed earlier has soared due to gas prices. 

Goddamn it’s 2026 people. 

Climate change. It’s real

“Honesty about what’s holding Australia back and leaving Australians behind. 

First, mass migration is changing Australia for the worse. 

The number of people coming in far exceeds the number of houses going up. 

Consequently, the great Australian dream of home ownership is vanishing for old and new Australians alike.”

Odd that a bloke would say it is time for honesty and then utter absolute tosh.

Matt Grudnoff has for a long time been calling out this crud.

Since 2014 housing stock (ie the number of dwellings) in Australia has risen 20%, while the population has gone up 17%

Yes migration has increased a lot in the past 5 years

See if you can work out why they like beginning their growth from the COVID years

“That starts by fighting against the assault on aspiration at the heart of Labor’s Budget.”

Labor is locking out young Australians from the opportunities afforded to older Australians to build wealth and prosperity to get ahead. 

This Prime Minister is one of the many Australians who has benefitted from these opportunities. 

Now he is pulling up the ladder of opportunity for the next generation not only by whacking higher taxes on housing but also on their savings, investments, and small business.

If some one you have a feeling you have heard the phrase “ladder of opportunity” before. Let me take you back 22 years….

“To know a fairer, freer, and better Australia, we also need something that’s been missing for too long – honesty. Honesty about what’s holding Australia back and leaving Australians behind.”

Scapegoating is the exact opposite of honesty. It hurts the group you’re scapegoating but it also hurts everyone else. Because the Australian people’s problems don’t get fixed. They just get worse.

“The number of people coming in far exceeds the number of houses going up.”

No, it’s not. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over the last 10 years the population has increased by 16% but the number of homes has increased by 19%. Beware of politicians that want to frighten you. It’s usually because they have no real solutions to offer.

“We’re too dependent on other countries for critical supplies like jet fuel, diesel, and fertiliser. And yet, we have an abundance of resources beneath our feet. We could be self-sufficient and re-industrialise in key areas – if we stopped locking up our resources and turbocharged digging and drilling.”

You know who is self-sufficient in fuel? The US. The biggest oil producer in the world.

You know what happened to their petrol, diesel, and jet fuel prices. They went up as much as they have in Australia.

Why? Because they’re owned by private corporations who demand the world price. If we drilled, fracked, and mined every square inch of this country, when the next oil crisis came along, we would still pay the high world price.

If we don’t want to be impacted by an oil crisis, we need to get off oil.

An Australia where those we welcome to our shores are all determined to embrace our values, to work hard, to contribute to this nation, to become Australian.

Enough with the crud dog whistling that suggest there are a stack of migrants who don’t want to do that.

Here are the facts:

• Most (91% or 2.4 million) permanent migrants aged 15 years and over had an education level of Year 10 or above. This was slightly higher than people aged 15 years and over in the Australian population (89%) as reported in the 2021 Census.
• Just over half (51% or 1.4 million) of permanent migrants held a Bachelor degree or higher. This was higher compared to the Australian population (29% of people aged 15 years and over held a Bachelor degree or higher).

Migrants are better educated than the general Australian population – ie migrants make Australia smarter. 

Also

In the 2022-23 financial year, the proportion of people aged 15-64 years who received unemployment payments was:

• 4.3% for permanent migrants
• 6.4% for the total Australian population

Permanent migrants are less likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population.

Angus wants a time when:

“An Australia where a single income earner – on an ordinary wage – has enough for a home deposit and to pay off a mortgage steadily”

That hasn’t been possible for at least 3 decades. It used to be true. Then something happened. See if you can find on the graph where it all started to go wrong

An Australia where life is affordable. 

An Australia where we have cheap and reliable energy. 

An Australia where industries thrive and businesses boom. 

An Australia where we innovate, make, and build things of ambition – and farm, mine, and drill with determination.

“Hey True Blue, don’t say you’ve gone
Say you’ve knocked off for a smoko
And you’ll be back la-ater on
Hey True Blue, Hey True Blue”

Ok Let’s look at this – cheap and reliable energy… so not coal fired power which sure as heck ain’t reliable

As the good folk at Reliability Watch note:

“Analysis of winter performance across the National Electricity Market (NEM) shows that coal power is increasingly unreliable, even during cooler months when electricity demand is typically lower and the grid is under less stress.

Between 1 April and 30 September 2025, more than a quarter of Queensland’s coal-fired generation capacity was offline on average. At an average of 26%, Queensland recorded the highest outage rate in the NEM despite having the youngest coal fleet in the country. While NS and Victoria recorded 22% and 16% respecitvely. This directly challenges claims that age alone explains coal’s growing unreliability.

Across the NEM, coal-fired power stations experienced 142 outages during the winter period. The vast majority, 119, were unplanned breakdowns, not scheduled maintenance. More than half of all outages occurred at just three power stations: Gladstone in Queensland, Bayswater in NSW and Yallourn in Victoria.”

It can’t be gas energy because that ain’t cheap. And because it is sthe most expensive for on electricity generation and the way the National Energy Market worls is mean as gas price goes up, so too does electricity

So I welcome Angus to embracing renewables!

Am glad we are now drilling with determination. 

I say, it’s the lack of determination that really affects a good drilling. 

Fourth, during the pandemic, many Australians were reliant on government.*

But that crisis fed the mistaken belief that bigger government is the solution to every problem.**

Anthony Albanese promised that you would be better off under big Labor government.

But big government hasn’t led to better government – or Australians being better off.***

*Taylor’s government. 

** Again, it was Taylor’s government and government is supposed to serve its people, particularly in times of economic and global uncertainty.  It’s like claiming that WWII wrongly convinced people that governments were the solution to every problem. Government intervention stopped Australia from falling deeper into economic crisis – and showed how easy it was to change settings.  It was also Taylor’s government that then started the ‘gas led recovery’ which is government intervening in the energy market – but in a way Taylor liked, so I guess this wouldn’t count.

***Government spending as a share of GDP in Australia remains below many comparable economies, so not sure what markers he is using here, other than far right dog whistles. 

Third, all Australians prosper from having access to international markets.

But blind faith in globalisation has hollowed out our vital industries and made our country vulnerable.*

We’re too dependent on other countries for critical supplies like jet fuel, diesel, and fertiliser**. And yet, we have an abundance of resources beneath our feet.***

We could be self-sufficient and re-industrialise in key areas – if we stopped locking up our resources and turbocharged digging and drilling.

*The Coalition have historically been the ones pushing for free trade agreements, as part of their neoliberal project.  It has been the Coalition which has pushed for more of these agreements and aggressively pursued them.  Australia’s agricultural and mining industries – the two industries Taylor’s Coalition claims to support above all else, rely heavily on ‘globalisation’.  But like Morrison before him, who dipped some toes in the anti ‘globalisation’ Trumpian talking points while prime minister, Taylor is hoping to court the same group of people, who respond to far right conspiracy theories around ‘globalisation’.

**Five of Australia’s six closed refineries closed under Coalition governments. 

***This is a deliberate nod to fossil fuels

Second, prioritising net zero and emissions reduction above all else has seen cheap, always-on* power dismissed for expensive, sometimes-on**, industrial-scale renewables – mainly sourced from China.***

Power prices have soared – causing households to struggle, businesses to close, and industries to move offshore.

Far from a future made in Australia, our future is being made abroad. Australians have been fed the lie that our economy can function on solar, wind, and batteries alone.

(He also claims net zero is driving up inflation with no evidence and commits again to scrapping it.)

*Always on? Have we paid any attention to Australia’s aging coal fired power stations?  The fires?  And the shut downs?  The most recent issues in the  Strait of Hormuz is a pretty obvious example of a fossil fuel shut down. 

**Renewables are increasingly on.  Batteries are also providing backup to this. 

***Because Australia shut down manufacturing, and also the ‘free’ market tends to go where things are cheapest.  But the thing is, once the tech is installed, it relies on free Australian resources – like the sun and the wind.  Not a finite and increasingly expensive (both in monetary and environmental terms) fossil fuel. 

To know a fairer, freer, and better Australia, we also need something that’s been missing for too long – honesty.

Honesty about what’s holding Australia back and leaving Australians behind.

First, mass migration is changing Australia for the worse.*

The number of people coming in far exceeds the number of houses going up.**

Consequently, the great Australian dream of home ownership is vanishing for old and new

Australians alike.

*This is not only dishonest, coming as it does, after an appeal for ‘honesty’ makes it maliciously dishonest.  Claiming ‘mass migration is changing Australia for the worse’ is another racist dog whistle, and once again, dressed up racist rhetoric.  He has no evidence here, other than his feeling about the vibe, so let’s keep going.

**First of all, he is assuming that one person is living in every house, which is also not true.  It’s also assuming that there is one fixed stock of housing in Australia – that it too doesn’t fluctuate.  Australia has a housing distribution problem, not a supply problem (in all areas) and in large part, our construction industry would fall apart without out migrant labour.  So migrants also build houses.  Migrants also pay taxes, and are a big part of the reason why we have had any productivity growth at all (even if it’s sluggish). 

That starts by fighting against the assault on aspiration at the heart of Labor’s Budget. That starts by fighting against the assault on aspiration at the heart of Labor’s Budget.

Labor is locking out young Australians from the opportunities afforded to older Australians to build wealth and prosperity to get ahead.*

This Prime Minister is one of the many Australians who has benefitted from these opportunities.

Now he is pulling up the ladder of opportunity for the next generation not only by whacking higher taxes on housing but also on their savings, investments, and small business.

*Australians aspire to own a home of their own to live in. They aspire for their children and their grandchildren to own a home of their own to live in. The Coalition seemingly aspires for wealthy Australians to own 10 homes for other people to pay to live in because that will make them even more wealthy.

“Aspire” means so much more than what Angus things it does. I aspire to live in a country that looks after young people, old people, the unemployed, and the disabled. I aspire for a country that has world class health and education that everyone can use.

If your definition of aspiration starts and ends with just yourself, then frankly that says more about you than anything else.

Here we go.

He let’s you know what you are in for, from the beginning – it’s an imitation of One Nation, dressed up in fancier rhetoric.  Kinda like the speech version of that Karl Stefanovic AI video that was all about missing sausage sandwiches and riding bikes.

I want to tell you about my vision for a fairer, freer, and better Australia for all.

An Australia where life is affordable.

An Australia where we have cheap and reliable energy.

An Australia where industries thrive and businesses boom.

An Australia where we innovate, make, and build things of ambition – and farm, mine, and

drill with determination.

An Australia where a single income earner – on an ordinary wage – has enough for a home

deposit and to pay off a mortgage steadily.

An Australia where a mum or a dad can afford to take time off work to do the most

worthwhile thing in life – raise a child.

An Australia where those we welcome to our shores are all determined to embrace our

values, to work hard, to contribute to this nation, to become Australian.

An Australia where we have confidence in our nation’s future.

An Australia where we have hope.

This isn’t the Australia we know today.

But we have known it.

And we can know it again.

We can restore our standard of living and protect our way of life*.

*This has become a pretty well known far right dog whistle.  ‘Our way of life’ is a nod towards nationalism, and usually, in countries like Australia, means whiteness.  This isn’t about economics, but identity politics.

We’ll step away and do some other things (like staring directly into the abyss and feeding cats) before coming back for Angus Taylor’s first budget-in-reply speech at 7.30pm.

Go treat yourself for a few hours Ax

Dave Richardson

This budget contains a good deal of discussion about government forecasts, and it is worth discussing how well the government does indeed forecast outcomes. GDP forecasts are fairly critical in their own right and also given they underpin other forecasts the government makes for tax, spending and other items. The raw data is shown in Statement 8 of Budget Paper No 1 which has the following graph for GDP.  The green bars are the outcomes in terms of annual economic growth. The blue dots are the budget forecasts for the same period. All are expressed as percentage change. 

Figure 1: Outcomes v budget forecasts 

Source: Budget Paper no 1. 

This graph has a number of striking features. Note first that the government had forecast two serious downturns that never happened, in 2009-10 and 2020-21. The forecasts were out by 2.7% and 3.5% respectively for those years. 

On average the forecast errors were 2.8% which is relatively high when it is considered that the range of outcomes has been just 4.4%, from the -0.1% in 2019-20 and 4.3% in 2021-22. It is interesting to note that over the period shown in Figure 1 the average outcome was GDP growth of 2.6%. If the government had used 2.6% as its forecast every year, the average forecast error would have been just 0.75%.  

A former Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Mr Ian Macfarlane, in evidence to the House of Representatives Economics Committee, 11 May 2001, made the following point about economic forecasting:

Economic forecasting is a very imperfect art—I would not use the word ‘science.’ It, by and large, has not improved in 30 years. I have been through all the attempts to improve it—all the large econometric models, the small econometric models, the leading indicators, all the surveys of expectations—and basically it is about the same as it always was.

Indeed, the government would have been better using a rule of thumb that says next year’s growth will be the same as this year’s. The average error would then have averaged 0.96% rather than 2.8%.

Things were lively on the opposition benches it seems!

The government’s changes to capital gains and negative gearing will begin to undo decades of damage to the housing market caused by Howard-era.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg Jericho and Elinor Johnston- Leek discuss the federal budget, the latest wages data, and why the government is making Australian workers wait-o for the WATO.

Anthony Albanese and Katy Gallagher have released this statement:

I am pleased to announce the Governor-General has appointed Ms Jacqui Curtis PSM as the Australian Public Service Commissioner.

Ms Curtis is a senior leader in the Australian Public Service and brings extensive experience to the role. Ms Curtis is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Australian Taxation Office, having held the role since 2016. 

She previously held senior roles at the ATO and the former Department of Human Services.

Ms Curtis also holds the whole-of-APS role of APS Head of Profession for Human Resources, with responsibility for lifting professionalism, capability and ethical standards at system scale.

Ms Curtis was awarded a Public Service Medal in 2022 for outstanding public service in driving change and building capability in the APS as inaugural Head of the APS Human Resources Profession. 

Ms Curtis’ term will commence on 9 June 2026 for a five-year period.

We would like to thank Dr Gordon de Brouwer PSM for his service and leadership as Commissioner. We would also like to thank Dr Subho Banerjee for acting as Commissioner since February 2026.

Anara Watson

Rebekha Sharkie, Member for Mayo, has just spoken to the House about regional access to healthcare:

“When we look at the health gap, regional Australians experience higher costs of health care and worse health outcomes than our metro counterparts. 

In fact, the national rural health alliance in 2021 saw that there was an $848 spend gap between a person who lives in regional Australia and a person who lives in metro Australia. Well, for the 2023-24 year, that’s blown out to over $1000 per person. 

And what that means is that we die younger… it’s a post-code lottery.”

Sharkie MP is right: the rural heath divide is not an unavoidable geographical fact; it is the predicable and preventable result of bad health policy. 

As Australia Institute research has found, Medicare is failing regional and remote Australians, with rural people getting sicker and dying younger than their city counterparts. Unless Medicare is reformed, rural and remote Australians will keep being treated like second-class citizens. 

And again we learn not a whole lot. It is just the independents who are asking about the missing gaps in some of the budget coverage and other than that it is just broken record, on repeat.

Which Labor would be quite pleased with, because it means no one is focusing on the detail. Like this is one of the worst budgets for social services in modern political history.

The dog that ain’t barking since Tuesday night is the cuts to the NDIS. 

No one apart from The Greens are asking about it.

The Libs don’t care about. 

The Nats don’t care

One Nation doesn’t care.

And the ALP are very happy. 

Just remember through that in 2029-30 the budget forecast a $16bn cut.

IN nominal dollars funding is flat, but in real terms the cut is huge – roughly 10%

It’s quite awful how we can go through Question Time and these huge cuts don’t even rate a question

Rather bizarrely there has been almost no talk about what the budget will do to inflation. 

Mostly this is because (as I noted in my Guardian column on Budget night) the level of public demand (which is the increase in the amount of government spending and investment) is bugger all

So perhaps not surprisingly the budget has had no impact on the likelihood of a rate rise next month

Lucky senate watchers. We are still going in the house. Clare O’Neil is taking a dixer on housing and loving it.

Nicolette Boele gets the next non-government question:

The budget confirms retrospective changes to the capital gains tax for international investors in clean energy. This may give rise to sovereign risk given three quarters of all clean energy investment is international, offering a discount on sales in the next four years will cause a fire sale of renewable assets, and then a chilling of investment after 2030 . Why is the government rushing to increase taxes on renewables instead of gas on exports, and what modeling has Treasury done on expected impacts to clean energy investment?

Jim Chalmers:

We’re not rushing. This is a measure that’s actually been in various budgets and updates for a little while now, and the purpose of it is to make sure that we are not providing additional tax breaks that are not enjoyed by Australians.

And it’s all about when it comes to the transitional arrangements referred to by the Honorable Member. It’s all about recognizing that the transitional arrangements are necessary to make sure that we protect some of these investments in clean energy.

And I know that that’s an interest of the Honorable Member, as it is in the interests of a lot of people here. So the budget that we handed down took further steps to transform our energy system, making it easy to build and easy to invest. We’ve got the generational reforms to the national electricity market.

I pay tribute to the energy minister for the work he does with the state colleagues on some of those transformational recommendations in the NEM. We’re investing another $500 million to accelerate environmental approvals. That’s important, too when it comes to building more clean energy, and we’re strengthening the super performance test to make sure that there aren’t any unintended barriers to investments in areas like renewable energy that can still deliver strong returns for members.

Now when it comes to these tax arrangements for foreign investors, we’ve been consulting on legislation which is all about ensuring foreign residents pay a fair share of tax in Australia, our land and natural resources belong to all Australians.

And what this recognizes is that there’s an area of long standing uncertainty. Some of these court cases, which have been playing out, costing the Commonwealth money, are because there is an ambiguity between the intersection of the state arrangements and the Commonwealth arrangements, the ATO has made it clear they’re not going to go back a long period and revisit all of these decisions, but where there have been court cases, we have to responsibly step in and clarify the law and make sure that it’s working as it’s intended to.

So that’s what that element of of that is. We’ve heard a lot about the significance of these reforms for investments which are already in train. That’s why we’ve got this proposed time limited, targeted concession for clean energy investments, which will support the sorts of developments that the Honorable Member wants to see in our economy.

As do I so I welcome her question.

We are currently completing a second round of consultation on the draft legislation. I’ve been doing some of that myself and also the Treasury and we’re considering all of those submissions, but overall, Mr Speaker, I assure the honorable Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker, we’re not rushing. This is a measure that’s actually been in various budgets and updates for a little while now, and the purpose of it is to make sure that we are not providing additional tax breaks that are not enjoyed by Australians. And it’s all about when it comes to the transitional arrangements referred to by the Honorable Member.

It’s all about recognizing that the transitional arrangements are necessary to make sure that we protect some of these investments in clean energy.

And I know that that’s an interest of the Honorable Member, as it is in the interests of a lot of people here. So the budget that we handed down took further steps to transform our energy system, making it easy to build and easy to invest.

We’ve got the generational reforms to the national electricity market. I pay tribute to the energy minister for the work he does with the state colleagues on some of those transformational recommendations in the NEM. We’re investing another $500 million to accelerate environmental approvals.

That’s important, too when it comes to building more clean energy, and we’re strengthening the super performance test to make sure that there aren’t any unintended barriers to investments in areas like renewable energy that can still deliver strong returns for members. Now when it comes to these tax arrangements for foreign investors, we’ve been consulting on legislation which is all about ensuring foreign residents pay a fair share of tax in Australia, our land and natural resources belong to all Australians.

And what this recognizes is that there’s an area of long standing uncertainty. Some of these court cases, which have been playing out, costing the Commonwealth money, are because there is an ambiguity between the intersection of the state arrangements and the Commonwealth arrangements, the ATO has made it clear they’re not going to go back a long period and revisit all of these decisions, but where there have been court cases, we have to responsibly step in and clarify the law and make sure that it’s working as it’s intended to.

So that’s what that element of of that is. We’ve heard a lot about the significance of these reforms for investments which are already in train. That’s why we’ve got this proposed time limited, targeted concession for clean energy investments, which will support the sorts of developments that the Honorable Member wants to see in our economy.

As do I so I welcome her question. We are currently completing a second round of consultation on the draft legislation. I’ve been doing some of that myself, and also the Treasury, and we’re considering all of those submissions.

But overall, Mr. Speaker, I assure the Honorable Member that we are focused on making Australians big beneficiaries of this energy transformation, and unlocking investment in Australia’s energy system is a really important part of that work.

Anara Watson

Liberal Senator Anne Ruston has just asked about Albanese’s “betrayal” of the Australian people over the government’s planned changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. 

Senator Wong seems a little tired of these questions: “maybe work out what you stand for, and who you are, before you start lecturing others about anything to do with policy or politics”.

And with that, Question Time ends.

Prime Minister. Labor promised not to change housing taxes, yet it misled.
Labor promised not to change investment taxes, yet it deceived.

Labor promised not to change taxes on farmers and small businesses. Yet it bent the truth. The prime minister promised his word was his bond. When did the Prime Minister decide that the truth doesn’t matter?

Albanese:

And of course, the member for Hume promised that they’d be better off If they made him leader.

The broadcast camera goes to Taylor who is blinking so much he appears to be glitching.

Albanese:

He promised.
He promised that if they made him leader, then they would have this wave of success going forward.
And what happened, of course, was that the member for Farah, who wasn’t even allowed to have a budget reply, undermined from day one as the first female leader of the Liberal Party, and that he got together with the member for Canning, on the day of the funeral of one of their former colleagues, to plot removing the first female leader of the Liberal Party, and then they wondered why they have a problem with women. They wondered why they have a problem with women.

But of course, what we know is that the member for Hume has said himself that the best indicator of future performance is past performance.
Well, this is one of the architects.
This is one of the architects, along with….the new deputy leader, were the architects, the policy architects of the debacle that was the last election campaign, and that’s why you can look at past performance, because they managed to go to an election saying they would oppose and reverse tax cuts. They said they would oppose and reverse tax cuts, but they still had a higher deficit, higher chances, and higher deficits, is what they came up with.

And then, with regard to the budget, the other night, they’ve said that this will create fights around the family dinner table. Well, that’s where they get aspiration. And they get Australians all wrong, because not only do Australians want to get ahead, they want their children and their future generations to get a hell.

And this guy interjects…

Dan Tehan wants RESPECT placed on Taylor’s name and he demands ‘this guy’ be withdrawn. It is.

Albanese:

…It’s coming very soon, Mr. Speaker, it’s coming because they have no policy going forward and they have the height to interject about division, about division. They are the parties seeking to
divide Australia.

The Prime Minister has decided that “ramping up” is the phrase to use about PRRT. 

The problem for him is that one fossil fuel item is actually going up – the Fuel Tax Credit. 

In the next financial year the fuel tax credit will cost $10.7bn by 2029-30 it will be up to $12.8bn.

The credit is money that the government gives to farmers, miners and transport for notionally paying the fuel excise despite not using public roads (this is a very dodgy argument).

Each year it keeps going up. 

Ramping up if you will.

By contrast the PRRT? The ramp is still there… just the opposite direction

Melissa McIntosh, who loves to consider herself a potential Liberal leader (and whose seat of Lindsay is one of those under threat from One Nation) wants to know:

Last year, the prime minister said changes to negative gearing quote would push up rents. Budget papers* confirm rents will rise as a result of the government’s new housing tax**. Why is Labor pushing up rents for all Australians when it promised not to?

* They did, estimating it might be by 2%

**Changing a tax concession that is only used by housing investors (not housing in general) is not a ‘new housing tax’

Albanese:

You need to look at the whole housing package that we put together. Our budget helps with the cost of living. It builds resilience, and it backs aspiration, and it is going to help more Australians achieve the dream of owning their own home.

And we do that by, as the person next to the member for Lindsay knew when he wrote his book, that you do that by giving young people a crack and by fixing the system, we want people to be able to aspire to a better life for themselves and their families. Importantly, negative gearing will still be available for new builds, so people can invest in themselves and invest in the nation. And that’s the big difference of the change that were brought in on Tuesday. The change that were brought in will allow negative gearing to still exist, but because people will invest if they are looking to invest in used negative gearing, in new builds rather than old properties competing with first home buyers, what it will do is to also boost supply, and that is the position that we have.

Importantly, the package makes it very clear in the Budget papers that there will be more houses, not less, as a result, as a result of the message of the things that are in the budget, that are in the budget, and that’s on top of the measures that we have spent four years implementing, that are now rolling out, in spite of those officers doing everything they could to block the housing Australia, Future Fund everything they could to block build, to rent everything they could to block, Help to Buy everything they could to block all of the measures that we have put in place to help build supply now, one of the things that we have done is not just housing, but of course, when it comes to helping people, helping people, which goes to the question we have.

The reforms that are in the budget about Medicare, about making sure that cheaper medicines are available, that there’s more built, building, bulk billing, record funding for hospitals. Our budget helps people under pressure. Right now, we’ve had five separate tranches now of tax reform, tax relief, cutting people’s taxes because we want people to earn more and keep more of what they earn.
Those opposite, those opposite, have never, ever in their history, in their history, put in a submission of the Fair Work Commission saying there should be an increase in real wages. And they opposed, they opposed our tax cuts, they’ll oppose our tax cuts yet again.

Anara Watson

Matt Canavan has asked just about Net Zero: “Why is the government continuing down the net zero path, when your government won’t even promise that it will lower energy prices?”

Penny Wong’s response: “If you cared about price, why is it that you opposed energy rebates for Australian businesses and Australian households?”

And Cannavan with a supplementary: “Your own Budget documents show that mining investment growth will slump to zero by 2027-28. If net zero is working, why aren’t we getting investment in mining?”

To that, Wong responds: “You are a demonstration of the way in which ideology ensured that we had coal-fired power stations exiting with no plan for more supply… you only like some forms of energy and not others.”

Over in the other place, Senator Penny Wong has crumbled under questioning from Greens Leader Senator Larissa Waters over a gas export tax.

Accused of putting fossil fuel giants and Labor donors ahead of sick and disabled Australians in the budget, Senator Wong says a gas reservation policy (which would not raise a single cent) is “superior” to a gas export tax (which would raise $17 billion) “because revenue for Australia matters”.

That’s not just bad maths. That’s Coles “down down” level BS.

Here’s how it went down.

Greens Leader Larissa Waters:

In an interview with SBS news last night, the Prime Minister said the proposal for a gas export tax was a slogan and that no-one seems to know what it means. The ACTU clearly knew what it meant when they proposed a 25% flat tax on all gas exports to replace the broken PRRT. The ACTU has also been clear that a flat 25% gas export tax would have raised $17.1 billion in 2023/24 and would raise far more in the coming year of war time profits. Does the Prime Minister really think that the peak union body doesn’t know what it’s asking for when it comes to a gas export tax and is simply spouting a slogan?

Minister representing the Prime Minister, Penny Wong:

I don’t think the Prime Minister and leader of the Labor party need a lecture from the Greens about the ACTU. We engage with the other part of our movement, the organised trade union movement, regularly and closely and personally, so I don’t think we need any assistance from you in managing … in understanding where the trade union movement is coming from. Nor the relationship between the trade union movement and our political party. In relation to gas taxation the point I would make is this, the government has put in place a reservation. A reservation is superior policy. It requires producers …

I know you don’t actually think the economy matters, but we do. We actually think jobs in Australia matters, revenue for Australia matters, good income for Australians matter. The reservation is superior policy because it requires producers to supply Australia first. It will deliver lower and more stable prices and shield the Australian economy and will ensure that important manufacturing jobs in this country can continue to operate, can continue to flourish, given the importance of energy prices to so much of Australian manufacturing. So that is the real world of working people in which we operate, where we understand the importance of ensuring that facilities that require access to gas, to domestic gas, are supplied and we understand that the workers and thier families that rely on that policy and that’s what this government has delivered.

Supplementary question – Greens Leader Larissa Waters:

As the Australian Services Union has noted, the $17 billion raised by a gas export tax is “vastly more than the roughly two billion than we currently receive under the PRRT. These public funds could resource the vital community services Australians rely on.” Why did the Prime Minister reject the opportunity to tax gas giants to fund services like housing, public health and aged care, and instead raise funds by cutting 160,000 families off the NDIS?

Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Penny Wong:

Well, we’re very familiar with the ASU, in fact I am a member of the ASU and I’m also familiar with the campaign that the ASU ran in relation to social and community workers who have seen Labor governments deliver for working people again in terms of better wages and better conditions. For those workers particularly and workers more generally – and the case in terms of gender bias in the industrial sector and the worker women particularly being undervalued also something that this government has acted on.

Point of order, Senator Waters:

Just a point of order on relevance. I am an ASU member as well. The question was why aren’t you listening to them and why are you punching down on disability families.

Senator Wong continues:

The government has been very clear about, in the middle of a fuel crisis, and the biggest shock in global energy markets that we have lived through … (time expires)

Second supplementary question – Greens Leader Larissa Waters:

This budget cuts four billion dollars from climate and renewable energy programs, while keeping $47 billion for fossil fuel subsidies, giving millions for new gas fields and to prop up the destructive native forest logging industry. Why is the Prime Minister using the budget to keep the gas and coal industries happy, the loggers happy and Labor’s corporate donors happy?

Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Penny Wong:

This government is working with the community and with the private sector to steer Australia through the worst energy crisis that the globe has seen. And I’d invite you to actually look at the analysis of this.

And we are making judgments to ensure that Australians get access to the diesel, jet fuel and petrol and fertiliser that our economy needs. And we make no apology for that. And we will continue to do that because that is the right thing to do for the nation and for the community.

Tony Burke has pre-emptively taken aim at Angus Taylor’s budget-in-reply speech in a dixer he just took in QT:

Tuesday night’s budget confirmed that net overseas migration is now 45% lower than it was at its peak. And what’s important to remember when it reached that peak, every single migration setting when it hit its peak were the migration settings left by the former government.
Every single one of those, the 45% reduction that has occurred has occurred under changes that have been made by this government.

Three key changes represented in the in the budget that that was brought down on Tuesday night. First of all, on our permanent intake, 70% of the permanent intake will now be taken by people who are already on shore, dealing with the fact of the increased numbers of people who have been on one temporary visa after the another, who employers want, but we have not been able to find the permanent place when are shifting the permanent program to more of those places being taken from people who are already onshore rather than offshore than ever before.

Secondly, the to have a ballot system to start to put some limits around the Working Holiday maker visa, to put some limits around the backpacker visa, a visa which I might add, those opposite ruled out making any changes to before the last election.

But the third thing that we’ve done that’s represented in the reduction of the numbers is to bring down the numbers on international students. Now, international education functions differently to any other industry in Australia.

International Education is the only industry where you have to be able to find a home for every single customer, and when we got to those peak levels, under their settings of net overseas migration, half, half of that peak was international students. Those opposite might have forgotten that we brought in legislation for government to be able to put limits on international students, those opposite might have forgotten that when we did that, we said it was so that we could limit numbers of overseas students to take into account student housing, and what did they do when there was something to limit What was putting the upward pressure on net overseas migration? What did those opposite do for the one piece of legislation that said, on the biggest part of net overseas migration, we’re going to link it directly to housing. Those opposite voted no. Those opposite declared they were opposed to it.

If they’re opposed to doing anything on backpackers, opposed to do anything on students, for family visas, it’s already the case for a parent visa, which you can’t apply for until their 67 it’s a 33 year wait. The only thing left that they will attack will be the skills that we need.

One of the lines that the Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been really trying to push since the budget is that all the changes to taxation – whether it be the CGT discount, trusts or the Working Australian Tax Offset (WATO) is to reduce the gap between what wage earners pay in tax and what those who earn money from investing pay.

All the benefits from the CGT discount, negative gearing, trusts etc meant people who earned money from those paid less tax than wage earners – because there really is not much you can do to avoid paying PAYG tax. 

The Treasury department looked into the difference and found that for eg someone who earns $150,000 through wages paid 29% average tax, while someone who earned $150,000 with a significant amount coming from investments paid just 27.5%

One again you can read more about this in my Guardian column here

Here’s one reason why the govt feels pretty confident about its tax policy on CGT, negative gearing and family trusts.

It mostly goes to the very, very richest. 

The Treasury did some really new and good analysis for the budget and looked at people lifetime income to see how much benefit people get from the CGT discount, neg gearing and trusts.

They found that someone who was in the richest 1% would gain on average $732,523 over the course of their life in benefit form those 3 tax breaks. 

By contrast someone on the median income would gain just $12,356. A massive disparity. 

I had a look at all of these things in my Guardian column which you can read here

Sure nurses teachers and police negative gear, but really, the more you earn the more you negative gear

If you’re a real estate agent, set up a booth at the next surgery conference and you’ll do well. 

If you want to know just how ridiculous the chamber is getting, Albanese is made to withdraw a comment after he says:

Now I wonder why the member for Cook rather than my opposite (Angus Taylor) asked that question.
I wonder why?
I wonder why, Mr. Speaker, why a question about properties or wealth or inheritance or trusts wasn’t asked by this bloke, but they get the new kid, the member for Cook, to ask the question, to ask the question, Mr. Speaker. I wonder why that’s the case, because yesterday, when a similar question was asked, and I said to the Leader of the Opposition that, you know, we have had discussions. We have had discussions as well about people’s family and being raised in this place, I had that discussion, as I’ve had with other leaders….
And he said, he said, Oh, well, wasn’t me. He said he wanted to ask the question the….

Dan Tehan gets up and asks for the comment to be withdrawn. Because that is apparently the biggest issue at the moment.

Albanese does and then continues:

The premise of the question was completely wrong as well, because what I did was buy a house in Marrickville and lived in it, yeah.
And what I’ve done now, because I have publicly declared, got married last November, Jodie and I, I note that she is removed from the equation. Jodie and I have chosen to buy a home for ourselves for down the track. That is what has happened. All declared, all declared.

And what we are doing, Mr. Speaker, at the house I bought first in Beauchamp Street, Marrickville, the same house that I ended up that my former wife and I raised our son in Beauchamp Street, Marrickville.I bought that house, and we lived in it, and then we sold it. It was our family home. The family home is sacrosanct to me and to everyone else and to everyone else, and that’s why we want more people to own a family home.
That is what we want people to do, and it is absolutely extraordinary, and shows their failure to actually have any legitimate criticism of our policy that they chose to go down this road.

The Liberal MP for Cook, (he has a name, but honestly, he looks like he’s straight out of the Liberal MP factory and has just been sent out straight from the box to ask stupid questions and I refuse to let it stick in my head for at least a term) wants to know:

The Prime Minister bought a property in his 20s. He claimed the CGT discount. He negatively geared his way to a $4.3 million property in Copacabana. Now today, the Australian reports 20 out of 23. Of the labor cabinet owns more than two properties they can continue to negatively gear. Why are younger Australians being denied these very same opportunities the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues continue to benefit from?

Just a reminder – here was Grog’s earlier:

Well yesterday the most recent housing lending data was released. So, we know exactly how many first-home buyers are investors. 

In the first three months this year it was 1,786 people (595 a month) – or about 1.3% of the 140,000 people who took out housing loans. 

It is a minor part of the market and certainly not the segment that a government should be worrying about:

Sophie Scamps excellent question on gas and the PRRT unfortunately gets a bad reply. 

The PM says we are all worried about supply. 

Well seriously 83% is being exported

He then suggested that the PRRT has been revised up. And that’s because it is working as it is meant to because it is “ramping” up  

That is 100% wrong. The only reason the PRRT was revised up was because of an increase in the oil price.

But here’s the thing it was revised up since the December MYEFO but DOWN from last year’s budget

Albanese also suggests it is a policy of the far left to put a 25% tax on gas exports… that’s a strange way for a Labor PM to describe the ACTU…

Sophie Scamps the independent MP for Mackellar asks:

Prime Minister, you’ve spoken about how the petroleum resource rent tax is designed to ramp up over time, but it seems like the government revenue the gas industry promises is always around the corner. Since 2000 prices of goods and services have doubled, Australia’s nominal GDP has quadrupled. Gas Industry revenue is over five times higher, and yet the PRRT raises less money than in 2000 Prime Minister, why won’t the government accept that this ramp up is never coming and simply tax our gas exports?

That sound you can hear is Grogs gearing up to pick through the prime minister’s answer.

Albanese:

Can I say the first point, most important one is that the government, at the moment, is focused very much on getting fuel here.

That is the priority that happens when you have a conflict in the Middle East and where around the world there is a massive economic impact on inflation, on access to resources and access to fuel, and indeed, in many countries in our own region, they’re having compulsory public holidays once a week, because in order just to get by, that is what is occurring in Sri Lanka, in Philippines and other countries when it comes to tax, the gas companies are taxed through a range of ways, through company tax, through the royalties that they pay, as well as through the PRRT indeed, in the budget on Tuesday night, contrary to the suggestion in the member’s question, PRRT revenue was resigned, revised up by $1.6 billion In this budget, and that’s because the very design of the PRRT, which we reformed in our first term, is designed to ramp up over time.

Because when you have tens of billions of dollars of investment made in order to secure resources that are available to Australians, as well as for export, then over a period of time, that makes sense, otherwise you won’t get the investment.

What we also have done, of course, is announced the details of our gas reservation plan of 20% of exports in the East Coast that follows on from the Western Australian domestic reservation plan as well, but I’ll make this point about wa domestic reservation, there wouldn’t be any gas to reserve were it not for that foreign investment that’s occurred.

It’s as simple as that. That is just a fact.

And so populism can occur at the far right or the far left. What our government’s job is to do is to make sure that appropriate policies are put in place in this crisis. We are absolutely, absolutely focused on getting more fuel here. We’re engaging with our partners in the region, and we honor, of course, our existing export contracts, because that is the way that you engage in international trade. If you don’t do that, then it comes back, certainly to bite you. And one of the things that has been very positive is that we have benefited from the relationship that we have built in the region, whether it be Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, South Korea, Japan, we have benefited from the consistency in which we operate, and that, I think, is absolutely important. We will introduce the domestic gas reservation scheme so more Australians gas stays in Australian homes and businesses. And I note as well that gas prices are down, not up.

Well yes, gas prices are not going up – and do you think that might have anything to do with the fact that there is so much attention on gas company profits at the moment and if they increased their prices as usual, then there would have been a revolt? Could that have anything to do with it? That public pressure is keeping it down?

Also not mentioned there is all the government subsidies and assistance in helping gas companies set up in Australia. But that’s just a pesky detail now isn’t it.

Jim Chalmers takes a dixer so he can say this:

We’ve seen enough Mr. Speaker, to know about the sorts of things that the leader of the opposition will talk about tonight.

And so we already know this, Mr. Speaker, ours is a plan to strengthen the economy.

His is a ploy to stave off one nation, Mr. Speaker.

That is the difference between the substantial budget that we handed down on Tuesday night in a considered and methodical way and the latest effort from those opposite this unseemly brawl amongst the three ring circus of the right wing parties in this country.

We have delivered a serious, substantial plan to strengthen the economy. His will be a ploy to stave off one nation.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I saw that the shadow finance minister was out this morning. Mr. Speaker, and this is what the shadow finance minister said about the budget reply tonight, she said, and I’m quoting I’m sure you will find out that everything is costed and offset in usual way, Mr. Speaker So, that’s the commitment.

That’s the commitment of the shadow finance minister has made this morning. Let’s see if the Leader of the Opposition follows through.

Anara Watson

It’s a rowdy start to Senate Question Time today. 

Penny Wong has just been asked by Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg: “Can the minister confirm that the government’s own budget papers show that the [Housing Australia Future Fund] has not built a single new home in 2025-26?” 

She’s danced around that one, but said “we have an ambitious target for more houses”.

It was not worth waiting for that question.

My question is to the Prime Minister – Labor misled, deceived, untruthed to Australians about plans to tax them more. Will the Prime Minister rule out changing his mind about introducing a death tax?

Labor’s Mary Doyle is booted out for heckling.

Albanese gives the same answer he has been giving for the last 48 hours – that Labor wants families to be able to get a family home.

“Labor lied to Australians….”

He is stopped by Speaker Milton Dick to withdraw the term ‘lying’ and cites former speaker rulings.

Dan Tehan then reads back what Dick said yesterday, where he said he was checking whether it would be directed to an individual.

Dick says he has done further research because Tehan raised it with him, and he doesn’t want the term used.

And following on from the research that I’ve done regarding referring to political parties, I’m just going to ask for that to be tempered. So if there’s another way that you can refrain rephrase your question to assist the house.
It is not it is not helpful for that term to be.

The Coalition are butt hurt, but there is not a lot they can do because it is the Speaker and the Speaker and he is the boss.

But Tehan now wants him to look at a “collective response” and that “this is actually true. It is actually true”. Which is not wrong, but also funny based on how many times the Coalition had a whinge about Scott Morrison being accused of lying.

Tony Burke is now here and says it’s an unparliamentary term.

Milton Dick just says he doesn’t want ‘lying’ used as a term, as he thinks it is a dangerous precedent to go down, so it’s a no to lying.

Wilson is back again.

That was seven minutes of our lives we are never getting back

The first question is on….broken promises.

Anthony Albanese is prepared for this. In fact you could probably say that the government is not sad that this is what people in the political and media classes are focused on, because it means there is not much of a focus on things like this budget being one of the most brutal for social services in modern history.

His question about tax policy, truth is that if the coalition had won the last election, the leader of the opposition had been the one delivering the budget on Tuesday night, we know that it would have contained a tax increase for every single Australian tax party, all 14 million of them. All 14 million of them.

Etc, etc, etc

Going through some of Tammy Tyrrell’s most recent comments and she recently called a 25% tax on gas exports a “missed opportunity”.

Three years ago, we could have actually instigated this tax and we would have had billions of dollars in the budget to make things better now.”

It would be interesting to hear what she has to say about it now that she has joined Labor… 

The Prime Minister and the gas companies are on a joint ticket in their belief that revenue from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PPRT) will start to increase any day now.

Yesterday on SBS News, the PM when asked about why there was no announcement about a gas export tax said: 

“There is a PRRT there now… The PRRT was designed to ramp-up over time as the cost of the investment to create these projects is paid down, and that is what you would expect to occur.”

While he didn’t suggest by how much he expects PRRT revenue to ramp-up, thankfully the Budget papers provide the answer… 

Oops…. PRRT revenue is expected to do the exact opposite of ramp-up, and ramp-down all the way to 2030.

The reality is that Treasury and the ATO expect PRRT revenue to shrink in the cold waters of Bass Strait as legacy projects wind down and decommissioning costs surge, which are deductible against PRRT payments. All the while the gas exporters pay very little…

Last week the Western Australian state government released its budget.

It is very interesting reading because part of the gas export tax debate has been from the WA Premier Roger Cook banging on about how important the gas industry is to WA.

Alas his government’s own budget papers don’t share that view. 

This is important because the gas companies love to talk up how much tax they pay when you include royalties. 

Royalties are payments to governments for the resources because they are owned by the states. 

But in WA pretty much all of the gas is offshore – in commonwealth waters. So they don’t pay state royalties. 

But for some small projects the federal govt does raise some royalties on the gas and passes it onto the WA govt as a “North West Shelf grants”

These grants however are shrinking – drastically. By the end of the decades the amount of gas royalties paid to the WA government will 72% from the amount paid in 2024-25:

It means that next year, once again WA drivers and owners of cars will pay more in registration and license fees than gas companies do in royalties

Even worse if you add up all the revenue forecast over the next 4 years it’s not just drivers, but those paying the emergency services levy and gamblers will all pay less. That’s quite amazing given WA does not have pokies in clubs

Absolutely taking the piss.

Here is how the ASX has been handling all the news, via AAP:

Mining giant BHP has extended its record-breaking run, while Coles shares have buckled under the weight of a landmark court decision as the local bourse heads towards a fifth straight day of losses.

The S&P/ASX200 fell 23.3 points by midday on Thursday, to be down 0.27 per cent to 8,607.1, as the broader All Ordinaries gained 27.4 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 8,855.8.

BHP shares have surged almost seven per cent in three days, breaking its record high in each session to trade at $62.31, bolstered by base metal price strength after data this week indicated a rebound in China’s economy.

Rio Tinto and Fortescue also advanced but the rest of the segment faltered, with gold miners, battery minerals and rare earths producers losing ground.

Eight of 11 local sectors were trading lower by lunchtime, with consumer staples under pressure as Coles dropped 3.6 per cent after the Federal Court ruled the supermarket giant’s ”Down Down” discount campaign had misled shoppers.

Woolworths shares dropped 1.7 per cent, with the court to rule on its “Prices Down” campaign at a later date.

Energy stocks were also heavy, with the sector shedding 1.1 per cent after oil prices fell overnight on fears of potential US interest rate hikes and ahead of a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

The heavyweight financials sector eked a less than 0.2 per cent gain, as Commonwealth Bank shares bounced modestly after tumbling more than 10 per cent on Wednesday, which wiped almost $30 billion from its value to leave it with a combined market cap of $257 billion.

NAB shares have underperformed their big four counterparts, slipping 1.9 per cent to $36.18.

IT stocks tumbled as accounting software-maker Xero dropped almost nine per cent, after a US expansion ate into its full-year post-tax net profit, which fell by more than a quarter to $167.4 million on the previous year.

WiseTech also weighed on the segment, plunging more than four per cent as concerns around artificial intelligence disruption and trade uncertainty continued to weigh on the logistics platform’s prospects.

Megaport shares rocketed higher by more than a third after securing three major GPU, CPU, network, and storage contracts with two customers worth a combined $US$182.9 million ($A254 million).

In company news, Euronext Paris CEO Anthony Attia will become the next managing director and chief executive of bourse operator ASX Ltd, replacing Helen Lofthouse. Its share price gained 1.7 per cent.

The Australian dollar was buying 72.45 US cents, up slightly from 72.36 US cents on Wednesday at 5pm.

The currency is being supported by stronger commodity prices, improved risk sentiment and expectations of further Reserve Bank interest rate hikes, IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said.

Here is Labor’s newest senator with some of her colleagues – Labor just held one of its group photos in the courtyard and Bowers ran down to take you there.

The response to the ending of the Capital Gains Tax Discount and negative gearing (apart from new homes) has got the property industry all very rustled in the jimmies.

The Australian for example has been going hard trying to suggest this is actually going to be bad for young people because well… young people are apparently pretty rich take for example..

Oh lordy.

But there has also been the claim from the Domain real estate website that these changes will hit “rentvestors”. These are young people who are renting in inner city areas, but who buy a rental property in outer nice suburbs. Yes, apparently this is a huge thing that a government should be worrying about. 

Well yesterday the most recent housing lending data was released. So, we know exactly how many first-home buyers are investors. 

In the first three months this year it was 1,786 people (595 a month) – or about 1.3% of the 140,000 people who took out housing loans. 

It is a minor part of the market and certainly not the segment that a government should be worrying about:

Today’s latest dog whistle is to limit welfare to Australian citizens and exclude permanent migrants.

It’s all pretty gross especially given permanent migrants are more likely to have a job and less likely to be on unemployment benefits than those born in Australia.

Also people choose for a variety of reasons not to become Australian citizens. But they pay tax and contribute to our economy and society. 

People come to Australia to work and to earn an income not live on welfare. 

And remember as well Australia’s unemployment benefits are terrible – if you were going to pick a place to come and just live on unemployment, Australia is about the worst place to come among advanced economies. 

But who is Angus talking about? We know it’s a dog whistle. But the biggest permanent migrants who are also non-citizens are Chines, followed by Indians and then English 

Of course non-citizens can’t vote, but plenty of Australian-Chinese and Indians will be listening and knowing he is targeting their communities.

Such a gross policy.

Multi-millionaire Pauline Hanson was asked about whether or not she thought the Liberal party had maybe ‘borrowed’ from her policies for their budget-in-reply speech and she said she ‘hadn’t seen it myself, but had been told there was a ‘data breach’ among One Nation servers.

She went on to say that she had been told the Liberals had the data for “an hour”.

Which, what is happening. I don’t think anyone needs to breach One Nation’s servers to find out what their policies are – it is pretty clear where they have been heading – it has, after all, been 30 years of this. But my job is to keep you informed, so there you are.

Pauline Hanson said she “went without until I had the money to invest” which is not why I or my family was doing without as a kid, I can tell you that much.

Yesterday she was angry because this was a “redistribution of wealth” and now she’s angry because people who have received generous tax concessions will have to pay a little bit more tax and not receive as much of a subsidy from the taxpayer any more. She frames this sort of wealth as ‘not being a burden on the tax payer’ – which, are we serious? Are we pretending that negative gearing and capital gains tax discount ISN’T being a burden on the taxpayer?

Anthony Albanese also seems to have honed his message on the capital gains tax discount changes (helped through exasperation it seems).

Here he is speaking to ABC radio Sydney, where he was told about ‘Jeff’ who had messaged in to say he had built his retirement plan around the capital gains tax discount he would have received when he sold his properties off. Now people will be paying slightly more tax based on inflation and their real gain. You’ll also see people shift a lot of this in to superannuation, because those settings have not yet changed (but expect that to move to – anyone who has looked at the working age population compared to the retired and aged care populations and the amount of pressure we put on income tax, will see that there has to be some very big structural shifts in other areas in the near to medium term, or we’ll only see intergenerational inequality increase)

Albanese:

Now, let’s be clear that prior to 1999, this was the system that was in place. The Howard Government flogged off Telstra, right? They had, because they were flogging off public assets, they had a whole lot of money to throw at issues. And as a direct result of that, there’s been a distortion in the investment market as well, in terms of productivity. And one of the things that we need to do is to reform the tax system so it treats more equally income earned from people working and income earned from assets. Now, that is the fair thing to do. The whole system has been skewed away from people who are working, and that’s had consequences for younger generations in particular, going forward. There still will be, of course, a discount when it comes to capital gains, and there was no Capital Gains Tax before 1985. There’ll still be a discount, but it’s based upon real gain.
 
…You’re only paying tax on the benefit that you’re receiving after inflation. That is, you are keeping the real value of the asset and you’re only paying at the the rate on the actual gain.
 

At least according to what he is laying out in this pitch – seems like the Coalition is just openly abandoning any chance of forming government.

Here was Taylor a little bit ago:

Tonight I’ll be laying out the Coalition’s plan to restore our standards of living and protect our way of life and what you will see is a stark contrast to Labor’s budget of broken promises, higher taxes, lower standard of living and less housing, particularly for young Australians, what you will see in our budget in reply, is the focus on getting rid of Labor’s toxic taxes, taxes on homes, taxes on small businesses, taxes on hard working Australians savings, taxes on those trying to build a business and get ahead, build a career and get ahead.

And Labor has run out of money, and it is coming after Australians’ money. It is pretending that this is some kind of intergenerational fairness.

The truth is, it is an intergenerational fraud, because the advantages offered to older Australians will not be available to younger Australians.

Labor wants to see division around the kitchen table and around the Christmas dinner, and that is not the Australia I believe in.

You will see an end to Labor’s energy madness.

We have a minister who has overseen a 40% increase in electricity prices and a substantial reduction in our energy security as a country through his net zero madness and that must come to an end, and that means more affordable and more abundant energy for Australians, liquid fuels and other energy sources, of course.

And we need to see an end to Labor’s mass migration policies.

They reached 550,000 at peak, and young Australians have not been able to get into a home.

We’re seeing right now, not only young Australians unable to buy a home, but queues down streets of people trying to rent homes because the supply of housing has not kept up with the demand driven by Labor’s immigration policies.

We also need to see more houses built.

Labor has not only failed to meet its own targets on immigration, it’s gone way above those targets.

We’ve also seen them absolutely fail to meet their own housing targets, and the result, as I say, is young Australians not being able to get into a home.

You will also see a focus on putting Australians first.

This is a time when Australians are feeling deeply insecure, they are losing hope of the prospect of owning a home, of starting and running a business, of starting a family.

That’s not the Australia I believe in. It’s not the Australia I grew up in, but it’s the Australia I want to see again, and we will be putting Australians first in what we announce tonight, in everything we do between now and the next election. I’m happy to take questions.

On shifting sands, journalist Rachel Withers has the receipts:

For those asking, this is why the ACTU is asking for a 6% increase to the minimum wage during the Fair Work Commission review:

Australian Unions will argue for a 6% Annual Wage Review increase for the country’s 3 million lowest paid workers as Trump’s war continues to tear into workers’ living standards.

Unions had been claiming a 5% increase in minimum wages but have bumped that up to 6%; after Tuesday’s Budget forecast inflation is expected to reach 5% by the middle of this year – or even higher if the war’s aftershocks drag on throughout the coming year.

The ACTU’s claim will increase the minimum wage to $26.45 per hour, lifting the weekly rate to $1,004.88.

Even before the conflict, Australian workers’ real wages were 4.5% lower than they were in March 2021 after the last prices spike due to COVID, according to ABS data.

The nation’s three million lower-paid workers need a 6% minimum wage rise that gets ahead of inflation, so they can meet everyday cost-of-living expenses, catch up on some lost wage growth and provide a buffer if the global situation does worsen.

The claim is also affordable. While the Middle East conflict is expected to reduce Australia’s economic growth slightly, it will still be above the post-pandemic average, according to Treasury forecasts.

The upcoming Annual Wage Review decision is due within weeks and directly impacts the wages of 3 million workers whose pay is set by awards. It also benefits all working Australians by setting a minimum wage floor underneath the national wages system that people bargain from.

Here is how Mike Bowers from The New Daily saw that press conference:

Pat Conroy has announced that Australia has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Norwegian government “to further support the acquisition and domestic manufacturing of missiles in Australia”.

Conroy says the ” multilateral arrangement will enhance information sharing and collaboration between Australia, Norway and 10 other countries that use the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile, which are developed by Norwegian defence company Kongsberg. The arrangement will support Australia to become a regional missile production hub. “

Not many people remember this, but in 2018, Malcolm Turnbull and Christopher Pyne announced plans for Australia to become a ‘top 10 world arms exporter’. That policy has slowly been ticking along, mostly behind the scenes, because it caused so much ruckus at the time. But Australia is deliberately courting this industry – it is policy.

This one is in line with the 2026 National Defence Strategy and the 2024 Australian Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Plan. The government is spending $850m on investing in the domestic supply chain of these missiles, including its parts.

Conroy:

The Albanese Government is investing up to $36 billion over the next decade to make missiles in Australia and uplift our weapons stocks, making our nation more self-reliant and resilient.

This arrangement will support local jobs and a defence future made in Australia by enabling domestic manufacturing through cooperation with international partners.”

There was a big swing to the ALP and away from the Liberals in the Tasmanian senate vote at the 2025 election. The Liberal vote dropped by 8.48% and Labor’s rose by 8.19% This put the ALP on 2.46 of a quota. If Labor held that vote and Tammy bought a slice of her original 8.64% of the vote, a 3^rd senate spot for the ALP in Tasmania is well in play. 

Of course a few things to consider. Tammy originally secured 8.48% of the vote by running on the Jacqui Lambie ticket. In fact a lot of Tasmanians probably thought they were voting for Jacqui herself. Pauline Hanson’s daughter Lee Hanson secured 5.17% of the vote for PHON at the 2025 election and you would have to think if she runs again that vote will increase. 

Here is Anthony Albanese introducing the newest member of his caucus:

Bill Browne

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just announced that the independent Tasmanian senator Tammy Tyrrell has joined the Labor Party. Senator Tyrrell was elected as a Jacqui Lambie Network senator but quit the party to sit as an independent just over two years ago.

The move will only make a small difference to the government’s numbers. That’s because Labor and the Greens together or Labor and the Coalition together are already enough to pass legislation through the Senate.

With Senator Tyrrell joining the party, Labor has 30 votes and needs 39 to pass legislation.

The Greens provide 10 and the Liberals 23, so an extra Labor vote doesn’t make a difference here.

There are technically enough crossbenchers for Labor to pass legislation with One Nation and Senators Jacqui Lambie, Ralph Babet, Fatima Payman, David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe all voting together.

But any proposal that united all those crossbenchers would presumably have won over Senator Tyrrell too, even when she was an independent.

Senator Tyrrell’s term expires at the next election, due in 2028. Senator Tyrrell is the second defector to join the Labor Party this term, after Senator Dorinda Cox quit the WA Greens for Labor last year.

Dave Richardson 

Over the period 2021-22 through to 2029-30 military spending (under the heading “defence”) will have increased 70% and, as a share of GDP, our calculations suggest military spending will be 2.45% of GDP by 2029-30 up from 2.15% in 2021-22. This is still short of the 3.5% the Americans want us to spend but is well up from the amounts we have spent in the past. For example, in 2001-02 Australia spent just 1.55% on the military. 

The upshot is that since the Albanese Government was elected, the extra military spending will be up $30 billion by the end of the forward estimates. While most other categories of spending have been shaved and possible initiatives rejected the military seem to have a charmed life.        

The Defence Department gets away with very little scrutiny. For example, the budget provides expenditures of almost a billion dollars for the nuclear-powered submarine project. However, total payments are said to be zero because they say “The Department of Defence and the Australian Submarine Agency will meet the cost of this measure from within existing resources.” We are supposed to say “Oh that’s OK then” without questioning what changes will be made and, if there were military savings to be made, we may well ask why those savings had to wait until now. 

Aged care, childcare, health, education are all screaming out for resources while the military sit on spare resources apparently.  

Note: Our measure of military spending includes the expenses and gross investments recorded in the budget papers.

Pushed on aged care waiting lists and why the report on how long the average wait time was (more than a year now) was released during the budget lock up (along with about 20 other reports) Albanese says much the same as Clare O’Neil did earlier this morning:

The state of age care isn’t good enough. That’s why we’re throwing everything at it. That’s why we have billions of dollars of additional funding in the budget, both for home care but also for aged care residents.

We inherited a system that was defined by one word in the interim report of the Royal Commission, and that one word was neglect.

Since then, what we have done is pay people properly. For a start, because people were not going to have aged care residents weren’t going to be able to continue without a workforce. Now, that has led to literally many billions of dollars, double digits of additional Commonwealth funding to make sure that we have a workforce.

We committed to putting nurses back into nursing homes. We had that 99% of the time. People said that wasn’t possible.

And we’re also throwing extra funding at home care as well. We know that there’s more work to do, but we have passed through this parliament.

At the end of the last term, we passed the most significant aged care reforms that have been passed this century. This had been an area of neglect. My government is improving it, and will continue to do so.

“Throwing everything at it” is also the phrase Albanese used in response to the building industry.

There are more questions on the broken promise, which sigh.

There is also a question on whether or not the government will support the ACTU’s submission for a 6% pay increase to the minimum wage to which Albanese says that is up to the Fair Work Commission.

Is Tammy Tyrrell still against the social media ban?

She says it is a new start.

Q: You say that you’re not going to apologise to anyone, but a lot of voters hate this stuff. They hate what you’ve just done. They vote for an independent because they want a voice in the parliament that is not the major parties, and then that person turns their back on their independence and joins the major parties. Don’t you need to apologise to those people who elected you to do a particular job you’re now not going to do.

Tammy Tyrrell:

I’m still doing that job. It’s an interesting way to pose a question, though. The people of Tasmania need strong voices who are not afraid to admit when things need to be changed. They need to have people in the parliament that are willing to modify, change, cooperate and collaborate, and that’s what I’ve done in the last four years. In my very first main speech, I said that I’m not going to be judged by the media for flip flopping in your terms, the information in front of you on every single day in this place changes, and the country, Tasmania, the parliament, has changed in my four years here as a senator, and I know that Tasmanians understand that change is important. And there are people who are not going to like what I’ve done, but the people who elect me are always going to get value for money, respect and the best out of me and the government.

The first question at the press conference is about whether Anthony Albanese ‘lied’ to get elected when he said no changes to negative gearing and capital gains. Which is kinda hilarious because Labor in the end won 94 seats, because the Coalition vote COLLAPSED. So it wasn’t even people voting for Labor, it was people voting against the Coalition.

So what is the argument here? Labor’s primary vote barely increased in between elections. It held its base and that’s about it, and then the collapse of the Liberal and National parties saw Labor take 94 seats.

Albanese:

We have changed our position. We’ve changed our position, but we’re still making sure that we look after people who have existing investments by making sure that there’s a grandfathering of negative gearing, but also we’re making sure that negative gearing can continue. The difference between negatively gearing an existing property and a new property is that if someone goes out there invests in an existing property, they can build their wealth and build their assets and help themselves. If they invest in a new property, what they’re doing is investing in themselves and their future assets, but they’re also investing in the nation because they’re helping with supply, and we have thrown everything that we can at supply. Clearly, we needed to do more.

Tammy Tyrrell says:

I’m proud to join Labor. The Senate is an interesting place to live, work and play, and the people within here are amazing human beings. And as Senator for Tasmania, I want to have a seat at the table where I can make the most change and bring back good stuff to Tasmania. Born and bred in Tasmania. I know exactly where I’m going to retire down there. I know which gin distiller is my favourite, and I know exactly what Tasmanians are wanting out of this current government and the people that represent it. Tasmania has 12 senators, and we represent our state loudly and proudly, and that’s what I want to do for the next two years of my term, and maybe into the next term as well. I’m not going to apologise to anybody for joining labor. It’s a good fit. I’ve supported Labor very regularly over the last four years, but I’ve also pushed back when things for Tasmania is important. And I’ll still do that, but I’ll do it respectfully and calmly within caucus, and I’m very proud to be a Labor girl.

Anthony Albanese has announced that former Jacqui Lambie party turned independent senator, Tammy Tyrrell has officially joined the Labor Party.

That is two senators from outside who have defected to Labor – the Greens Dorinda Cox and now Tyrrell. It also means that Labor will now only need the Greens to pass votes in the senate (and presumably gives her a longer senate career, as one of Labor’s senate ticket holders.

Rod Campbell

We’re excited to publish research today from one of Australia’s best-known economists and policy thinkers, Prof John Quiggin, on how to fix Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).

Here is the hot take:

You can read more on Renew Economy or on our website.

Consumer group Choice has also welcomed the ACCC win against Coles in the Federal Court, for misleading customers with fake discounts. Thirteen of the 14 examples used were found to have been misleading.

Andy Kelly, Director of Campaigns at CHOICE said:

While the judgement is good news to hold supermarkets accountable for clear, transparent pricing – it reinforces the need for stronger pricing reforms. At a time when many households are facing cost of living pressures, it’s more important than ever for consumers to be able to trust that promotions reflect genuine discounts. Hiking prices whilst telling consumers that prices are down has allowed Coles to have its cake and eat it too.” 

The Nature’s Gift dog food ‘Down Down’ promotion was found not to be misleading as the tag did not include a ‘was’ price, despite having only been sold at a higher price for one week. Without requiring supermarkets to publish the previous price of the product, supermarkets could potentially remove the ‘was’ price and continue to engage in similar conduct.”

We continue to call on the Federal Government to implement the ACCC supermarkets inquiry recommendations in full, by introducing minimum information requirements for price displays and discount promotions, including the previous price of the product, the date range over which that previous price applied, and the percentage of the discount.”

Greg Jericho

The ACCC finding against Coles was about them offering fake sales. 

What they would do is have a product at a certain price (say $2 a packet) for a year or so, raise them for a 28 days to for eg $3 a packet, then drop them to $2.75 a packet and say “SALE SALE SALE DOWN DOWN DOWN”

The ACCC argued (and the court agreed) that this was misleading because it was actually a price rise. 

Coles argued price just went up due to cost increasing and they just were giving customers a sale. The court called bullshit.

We know this is bullshit because they were not able to really show any examples where prices went up and did have the fake sales. Essentially sales only happens to those products that had had price increases. 

But that Woolies also has a similar case before the court shows just how much Coles and Woolies collude without officially colluding. They just follow each other. 

This was something I wrote about a couple years ago when I reviewed how Coles and Woolies would take it in turns having things “on sale”.

For example, with Coke and Pepsi they always make sure they have the product on sale on alternate weeks:

This isn’t illegal, but it really highlights how they don’t compete against each other, but with each other against other supermarkets – because it means for eg Coke and Pepsi is always on sale at one of the two. 

The decision by the ACCC against Coles is big news – not the least because they have a similar case against Woolworths (odd how they both independently came up with the exact same pricing strategy)

I spoke on the 7am podcast earlier this week on the issue

You can have a listen to that here

Anara Watson

So, not only is the Malinauskas Labor Government in South Australia planning to remove the 10-year fracking ban in the state’s southeast, but it is in the process of chopping down some 600 trees for a golf course expansion. 

Theres been some significant pushback over the North Adelaide Golf Course’s redevelopment, with 2,000 protesters at the steps of SA’s Parliament House yesterday.

Source: ABC News

The SA government’s decision to chop those trees is pretty disappointing, given that it’s included on the National Heritage List as “the only Australian city to be completely enclosed by park lands and has the most extensive and intact 19th century park lands in Australia”.

And with the federal Labor government dedicating just 0.3% of total budget expensesto direct funding for environmental protection, the blows just keep on coming.

In question time yesterday, Jim Chalmers responded to a question Tim Wilson asked about migration numbers with ‘when you dogwhistle, they can hear you all the way in Goldstein too’. And that is the point that seems to be missed in all this most recent debate – that all of this is going to do nothing to make Australia better, improve any conditions for any one – and from a political point of view, it will not win any seats for the Coalition in anywhere where they would need to win, in order to win government.

Zali Steggall has picked this up:

Angus Taylor is once again trying to blame migrants for Australia’s housing crisis instead of dealing with the real policy failures that have driven housing affordability to breaking point.

There are media reports that the Coalition, if it won office, would seek to link migration caps to housing construction and strip support from non-citizens. These policies may please One Nation voters, but they won’t build a single additional home or fix the structural issues in our economic system.

At the same time, the Coalition continues to oppose reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions that overwhelmingly benefit property investors and distort the housing market. You cannot claim to be serious about housing affordability while defending tax settings that have locked so many Australians out of home ownership.

Many permanent residents and migrants are essential workers – nurses, carers, tradespeople and teachers – who contribute to our economy, pay taxes and strengthen our communities. Targeting families by denying access to basic supports like paid parental leave risks creating a two-tier society that undermines social cohesion.

Australia does need a sustainable migration program aligned with infrastructure and housing capacity, but that requires evidence-based planning and investment – not divisive rhetoric designed to scapegoat migrants for decades of housing policy neglect.

Dave Richardson 

Today the Financial Review is running two feature articles today that emphasise the spending restraint under Hawke/Keating during the banana republic period. One from Paul Keating, then Treasurer, and the other by David Cox, then chief of staff to the angry Minister for Finance, Peter Walsh, and later the member for Kingston SA. The Fin is trying to push the line that budget reform requires spending cuts rather than taxing. The main players at the time elaborate on that theme. 

Keating recalls the falling of the Australian dollar at the time and puts it down to the balance of payments deficits on current account. I recall the proximate reason for the dollar’s fall was America’s reaction to Australia’s decision to reject Ronald Reagan’s MX missile tests ending up in Australian waters. Nevertheless, the fall in the A dollar was used to panic Cabinet as Keating and Cox make clear. 

But it was not all about cuts and Cox concedes some important spending initiatives, especially the family allowance supplement, pushed by my boss at the time, Brian Howe, then Minister for Social Security. Bob Hawke took up the cause and promised no child need live in poverty by 1990. That promise was ridiculed by the right-wing press, but it did lift families well above the Henderson Poverty Line in what the ACTU’s Bill Kelty said was worth a hundred years of class struggle for working families. We could also mention the child support scheme, the reinterpretation of the dole as a labour market program and so on. 

The shame on Australia is that following the early 1990s there was no attempt to maintain the relative position of families relying on income support. An unemployed family of four went from 10% above the poverty line in 1991 to around 20% under by the end of the Howard Government and stayed there ever since. That is the sort of thing we did once and could well do again.

But in all this let’s not forget or downplay the revenue reforms following the 1985 revenue summit. The capital gains tax changes in the present budget take us back to the original capital gains tax introduced by Keating in 1985. Also we forget the fringe benefit tax, dividend imputation, foreign tax credits and a host of other changes in that period. I recall being abused by one of Keating’s staff for supporting those “lefty taxes”.  

Yes this budget concentrates on the revenue side and of course the financial press is keen to portray that as misguided. But don’t forget the 1985 tax summit and all the reforms that followed. The Albanese Government and Jim Chalmers can be located within that tradition.    

This has so far gone under the radar, but it will no doubt play a role in the coming budget in reply, given what the rest of the Liberal parties around the country are moving to:

Matt Grudnoff

With all the talk about how the housing crisis has been caused by rapid population growth, I thought it was time to remind people exactly what has happened to Australia’s population and the number of homes.

Over the last 10 years the population has increased by 16%. In order to just keep housing at the same rate it was 10 years ago we would need to increase the number of homes by at least 16%.

We have actually increased homes by more than that. Homes have increased by 19%.

The number of homes is growing faster than the population.

This housing crisis was not created by a lack of supply. It was created by an increase in demand. An increase in investor demand for housing. This is exactly what the changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount are designed to tackle.

If we push out property speculators then we will stop the rapid rise in house prices, and make housing more affordable for first home buyers.

The ACCC have won their case against Coles, winning the argument at the Federal Court that the supermarket giant created fake discounts to mislead customers.

Greens senator Nick McKim has some thoughts:

Coles and Woolworths treat customers with contempt because they have an iron grip on this country’s grocery sector.

As the Greens-led Senate inquiry found, Australia needs divestiture powers to forcibly break up the supermarket duopoly, as well as other oligopolies.”

We also need economy-wide price gouging laws, particularly during a cost of living crisis.”

The major parties are in thrall to the big corporations because of their political donations. The Greens are not. We need divestiture and price gouging laws now.”

The Greens have legislation already drafted and ready to go – the only thing we need is for a bit of courage from the Labor and Liberal parties.”

Bill Browne

It is the thirtieth anniversary of the distinction between “core” and non-core election promises.

Howard made the distinction to justify why his 1996 Budget broke so many election promises.

Ah, but not the core promises, he claimed.

In an interview with John Laws, Howard actually awarded himself a “gold medal” in keeping promises – despite cuts to the regional development program, higher education, the public service, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander funding and the ABC.

You might expect the media was as outraged by the Liberals’ broken promises as they are by Labor’s today. Not according to Laws, who said:

“Print media has fallen into line, their editorials are mostly glowing.”

But there was a justification for the soft treatment.

As Laws put it, “those who’ll suffer by the new bad news are the well off people so they’re hardly in a position to be able to complain too much”.

There you have it. If a well off person today complains about Labor’s changes to tax incentives, let them know of the precedent set thirty years ago. They’re hardly in a position to complain.

The Australian has flushed out a couple of unicorns (a 20-year-old with a $50k share portfolio!) who think young people get a big benefit from the capital gains tax discount and fear the changes to it will disadvantage them.

But let’s step back and look at who really benefits from capital gains tax discount.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Office 83% of the benefit goes to the top 10% of income earners.

But they then helpfully break this top group down even further. They give us how much the top 1% of income earners get from the discount. How much is it? 59%.

Well over half of all the benefit from the capital gains tax discount goes to just the top 1% of income earners.

There may be some unusual people with unique circumstances that benefit from the discount but overwhelmingly this is a tax concession for the one percenters.

A bit of breaking news and the Federal Court has ruled on the case brought by the ACCC against Coles over fake discounts.

The ABC is reporting that … Coles broke consumer law by misleading shoppers on discount prices, a federal court judge has found.

ABC:

The consumer watchdog sued Coles alleging it had misled shoppers with fake discounts on 245 common household items under its prominent “Down Down” promotional campaign.

Federal court judge Michael O’Bryan handed down his judgment in Melbourne this morning, finding that in 13 of the 14 sample products submitted to the court for judgment, the discount was not genuine, and would have misled an ordinary customer.

The discounts were not genuine, the judge ruled, because Coles did not sell products at a higher price for at least 12 weeks before discounting them.

Justice O’Bryan will also rule on a similar case against Woolworths at a later date.

Read the full report here.

Staff at Housing ACT will down tools and walk off the job for an hour today as part of a now-stalled pay dispute with the territory government.

CPSU members voted last week to commence strike action today, slamming the government for a pay offer which some members say won’t even cover the increasing cost of parking at their workplace.

CPSU regional secretary Maddy Northam:

These workers don’t want to stop work. They care about and value the work they do for our community every day. Now, they are asking the government to value their work, too. We know the community understands just how important these jobs are. They rely on them to access government services every day.

Ms Northam says the one-hour stop work is just the start of strike action, with workers in other sectors like health and education set to follow unless the ACT government comes to the table. The union says the first offer was below inflation.

Apart from highlighting the heartbreak of a young Liberal … sorry, “young Australian” … who had a $50k share portfolio by the age of 20 … the Australian has stuck up for that other cohort that it wished still read newspapers – billionaires.

Dear oh dear. We can’t be pissing off those poor billionaires, can we?.

Especially those wheeling out those tired old lines about reducing productivity or scaring off investors.

They sound like gas companies being asked to pay for … you know … gas.

So Young Liberals are unhappy and billionaires are issuing breathless warnings about productivity.

Sounds like Jim Chalmers might be onto something with this CGT change.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had a chat with Mick Molloy and his army of co-hosts on Triple M Melbourne this morning.

Now, it’s important to remember that for everyone who listens to political interviews on RN or, indeed, follow political blogs, there are others who listen to FM music stations and could name about three politicians.

It’s also important to remember that those listeners’ votes are worth exactly the same as the votes of rusted-on ABC listeners.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is not to simply write off FM interviews as the political ignorant prompting dumbed-down answers from more relaxed politicians.

Host:

It’s quite a brave budget when you consider normally it’s maintaining the status quo. You’ve taken advantage of a weak Opposition and those nut bags over at One Nation cannibalising each other to death. So, you’ve had a window. What normally happens is about a month out we start hearing whispers, and then on the day you shit yourself. It basically, it goes from widespread reform to kind of, well, ‘we’ll water it down’ to the point where we get to see what you’re trying to do. Can you go further in this department of redistribution of generational wealth?

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese:

We have bitten the bullet. It is a big reform Budget. And for years and years, editorials have been written saying we need tax reform and we need to treat income that’s earned from working, which is what most people have, a bit similar to income earned from assets, rather than the way that it was entrenched as well. The existing system simply wasn’t working for working people. So, levelling that up a little bit, making it fairer, is important reform. And I’m really proud of this Budget, that we have been prepared to take a risk.

Anara Watson

Despite making up 4% of the population, less than 0.2% of Australia’s surface water entitlements is owned and controlled by First Nations Peoples. The National First Nations’ Water Roundtable noted that “the lack of recognition and access to water entitlements is widening the gap of First Nations disadvantage, leading to poor environmental outcomes”. 

This Budget, $6.8 million has been committed to “continue arrangements for First Nations people to own, access and manage water in Australia”. That accompanies some previous funding for First Nations’ water rights in the Murray-Darling Basin. 

This is much-needed funding. But as argued by Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN), who have advocated for improved recognition of First Nations water rights since 1998, “While Federal DCCEEW (Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water) is currently providing a small envelope of funding to Nations via a Cultural Flows for Cultural Economies grants program to advance successful applicants cultural flows planning, more investment is urgently needed to support this work and to implement the findings that stem from this significant work ahead of amendments to the Water Act in 2027.”

South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas has announced his government will overturn the state’s fracking ban. This follows his Labor colleague Chris Minns lowering gas exploration licences to $1,000 (from $50,000).

As The Advertiser reports:

A ban on gas fracking in the state’s South-East will be axed by Premier Peter Malinauskas, who says the Iran war has shown Australia has “to take energy security and sovereignty seriously”.A controversial ban on gas fracking in the state’s South East is set to be axed as Premier Peter Malinauskas moves to avert a future energy crisis.

Branding the 10-year ban “a folly”, Mr Malinauskas argued the Iran fuel crisis showed the risks of failing “to take our energy security and sovereignty seriously”.

His Labor government next week will introduce legislation to remove the moratorium on hydraulic fracture stimulation, which is permitted everywhere in South Australia, other than the South East.

The parliament is about to sit for the final day of the budget sitting week.

The coffee lines are longer than usual today. That’s how you know people are feeling it.

This story won’t get as much attention as it should (via AAP)

A teenager has died in a rundown prison while one state explores the possibility of new ones to reckon with an exploding inmate population.

A 19-year-old man died at the Long Bay Correctional Complex in southern Sydney on Sunday, a spokeswoman for Corrective Services NSW said on Thursday morning.

“Staff commenced a medical response, but he was pronounced deceased by paramedics on Sunday,” the spokeswoman said.

Corrective Services and police are investigating and the death will be referred to the coroner.

More than 14,000 people were imprisoned in NSW as of March, the highest figure ever recorded, according to the state’s Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR).

The surge has been driven by a record high number of people being held on remand, which is those charged but not convicted who are often awaiting trial, rather than an increase in crime rates.

This has not been caused by a change in crime rates, but by police laying more charges – particularly over domestic violence offences.

The uptick reflected similar charging patterns in the aftermath of the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege, where a man on bail held 18 people hostage in the Sydney CBD.

“The Lindt Cafe siege had particular issues around that offender and questions about his release on bail,” NSW BOCSAR executive director Jackie Fitzgerald told AAP.

“That was a bit of a wake-up call and a shake-up for the judiciary, and we did see a sharp change in bail decisions after that at a similar magnitude.”

But unlike aftermath of the hostage situation, bail refusal rates have not changed and instead there has been an influx of people entering the criminal justice system.

Between November 2025 and March 2026, the number of inmates in NSW rose by 8.2 per cent, meaning the population has increased more over four months than in the previous four years.

Almost half of all people in custody are on remand, with 41 per cent of this increase attributed to those charged with domestic and family violence.

The figures reflect NSW Police’s increased focus on domestic violence, which Ms Fitzgerald said was a welcome development.

But she said more effort must be invested in approaches outside the justice system.

“We have to look at strategies to keep victims safe and prevent these offences from occurring … so we don’t have a situation where the expensive justice system is our go-to strategy for responding to domestic violence,” Ms Fitzgerald said.

While she acknowledged prisons could help incapacitate offenders and keep victims safe, this may not be viable in the long term.

“That could mean bringing forward the building of a new prison and that’s a very costly exercise,” Ms Fitzgerald said.

However, just maintaining the current facilities is proving challenging with the state inspector of prisons calling for the Metropolitan Special Programs Centre, where the 19-year-old died on Sunday, to be permanently closed.

Cells at the were found to have ligature points, mouldy walls and evidence of vermin in a review conducted by the inspector in 2023 and 2024.

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Can’t say I disagree with Tim here. And of course the push back against the claims that ending the CGT discount and negative gearing is not going to make entering the housing market as a younger person harder is right at the end.

 Over on ABC News Breakfast, Clare O’Neil was asked about aged care and why there is such long waits for home care packages.

O’Neil said:

You probably remember that we inherited an aged care system that was falling apart under the previous government. 

There was a Royal Commission report into aged care in our country that was simply titled neglect. Older people in our nation were being treated with utter disrespect and frankly, inhumanity. We have made record investments in trying to rebuild that system, but I think these numbers show that there’s still work to do and we acknowledge that. 

You can’t turn around a huge system like aged care in four years, but we’ve made an enormous amount of progress and we’ll continue working away. 

Q: Minister, many people are asking why release this pretty damning data on Budget Day? Are we hoping that this would be buried? 

O’Neil:

Well, actually, just to remind you, the only reason that Australians have this information, which is not something they’ve had access to before, is because we’re committed to transparency about government programmes. 

We want to make sure that our aged care system works functionally and appropriately and we want to make sure that there’s accountability. So that’s why Australians have this data and as I said we’ve made huge strides. Remember a nurse in every nursing home, more care for the older people who need it But we’ve still got a ways to go here and we acknowledge that. 

Over on ABC radio RN Breakfast, Housing minister Clare O’Neil has been asked about what is in the budget to ensure housing security for older women:

O’Neil:

Let me make two really quick points. I think there’s people in this debate trying to present the budget as some type of generational conflict about housing and I very fundamentally dispute that characterisation. I am just as likely to get stopped on the street by a parent or grandparent who is worried about the young person in their life and their housing opportunities as I am by someone in their 20s and 30s. 

This is a national challenge that is affecting our whole country and this budget is is about making housing fairer for everyone. 

Now let me come to the specific issue. We do have a very significant housing challenge in this country that confronts older people, that this not just something about the young. So one of the most important things we can do for older women who are at increasing risk of homelessness in this country is rebuild our stock of social and affordable housing. 

…I very rarely get asked about this. We are building 55,000 social and affordable homes. You asked about this budget. We are about halfway through implementing the Housing Australia Future Fund. This is a generational investment in social and affordable housing, the likes of which we have not seen since the post-war period. 

Q: How many housing targets have you met in your time as Minister? 

O’Neil:

Well, I think you need to be a little bit more specific if you don’t mind me saying about housing targets. We’ve got a number. To build new houses. We’ve got a commitment to build 55,000 social and affordable homes on track. We’ve got a commitment to build 100,000 homes for first-time buyers with states and territories on track. We have a national aspiration that is not a federal government commitment. It is a whole of nation commitment to work to build 1.2 million homes for the country. Now, that is an aspiration that we are improving upon, but that is a big challenge for the country and it’s one that’s the big focus of my work. 

Q: So you’ve talked about being on track with targets. Have you met any of the targets in your time as minister? 

O’Neil:

Well, we haven’t reached the end point of any of those targets. We are on track to meet the targets that just talked about. 

There is always a lot of focus on supply – as if building new homes will solve the housing crisis. Which is a nice little talking point from the housing and construction lobbies which has just been accepted as fact. Distribution of Australia’s housing rarely comes into it – but there is a reason why the government has been forced to change the tax incentives. Because that will enable a better distribution of housing, which will mean more owner occupiers are able to buy a house. Yet, our entire conversation – media and political class especially – is about supply.

Do we think that maybe there might have been some vested interests in pushing that narrative as the main driver of the housing affordability crisis? Just like do we think that maybe real estate aligned businesses, like Real Estate dot com and Domain might have a lot of skin in this game when they claim that ending ‘rent vesting’ will make it harder for younger people to save up for a home?

Here is AAP on the bits of Angus Taylor’s speech his office has dropped out:

Australia’s migrant intake would be tied to the number of new homes built each year if the coalition wins government, under a plan to reduce pressure on the nation’s housing sector and challenge Pauline Hanson’s ascendant One Nation.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor will use his first budget reply speech to outline more details of his promised crackdown on migration, unveiling a dramatic cut to the number of foreigners allowed into the country and reheating parts of Peter Dutton’s 2025 election platform.

“Australia should only bring in as many people as it can house,” Mr Taylor will tell parliament on Thursday night.

“Under Labor, migration has run miles ahead of housing and that puts pressure on rents, house prices and on every young Australian trying to get ahead,” he will say.

Under Mr Taylor’s plan, a limit would be placed on net overseas migration, equivalent to the number of homes built in the previous year.

Net overseas migration is the difference between the number of people arriving in Australia and the number of departures, and also includes temporary migrants like foreign students.

Tuesday’s budget forecasts the figure at 295,000 for this financial year, dropping to 225,000 by 2027/28.

That’s well below the post-pandemic high of more than 550,000, when a flood of migrants re-entered the country as borders reopened, but still higher than pre-COVID levels.

Last financial year, around 175,000 new homes were built. If Mr Taylor’s policy were implemented, that would mean a cut to net migration of about 40 per cent for this financial year.

The opposition leader will also seek to challenge Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on migration after its win over the Liberals in the Farrer by-election, leaning into populist right-wing rhetoric around “mass migration”.

“This is about mass migration running ahead of the homes, roads, hospitals, schools and services Australia can provide,” Mr Taylor will say.

His budget reply speech sets up a fight with Labor over housing policy, after the federal government revealed plans to scrap tax concessions for property investors in a bid to help more young people buy a home.

The coalition has promised to repeal the changes if it wins the next election.

Mr Taylor has also revived former opposition leader Peter Dutton’s promise from the 2025 election campaign to create a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund, which would help provide water, sewage, utilities and access roads to new housing developments.

The change will unlock up to 400,000 new homes, he will say, while also promising to scrap Labor’s flagship housing funds, including the Housing Australia Future Fund, the Help to Buy and Build to Rent schemes and the New Homes Bonus.

The Australian spent most of yesterday looking for young people who say they will take even longer for them to save up for a house. Including this young man who is described as:

The 20-year-old, who has built a $50,000 share portfolio to help fund his first home, said the overhaul of capital gains tax and negative gearing blindsided those trying to enter the property market. “It will significantly hinder my ability to create wealth as it will ultimately delay the process (to save for a deposit) significantly,” Mr Kolmac said. “I will have to save even more money to be able to afford what I would have once been able to ­afford a lot earlier.”

Ahh yes, I remember my $50,000 share portfolio I had at 20, fondly. I named it Harold.

Matt Grudnoff

While politicians and commentators argue over whether the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes will really slow house prices, today the share market has reacted to the budget.

Their verdict?

Bank shares are down with the Commonwealth Bank falling 9%, one of its biggest single day losses. Why the drop?

Banks are the biggest winners from rapidly rising house prices. More expensive houses mean bigger mortgages that take longer to pay off and that means people paying more interest on those loans.

Clearly investors think that these changes spell the end to rapidly rising house prices and they are marking down the banks because of it.

Hello and welcome to the final sitting of budget week – it is budget reply day for those who celebrate, where Angus Taylor will deliver his first (and maybe only?) budget in reply speech. His discriminatory migration policy will be the main focus, and his team have dropped out to friendly media outlets that one of his plans will be to remove migrants from welfare.

Here is what the ABS has to say about that. On the whole it is less than the non-migrant Australian population. There are also wait times for migrants to be able to access any benefits. But yes, the Coalition are going to try and do this again – after all, it’s only been about 10 years since we did the last scare campaign on this, which at one point included the false claim Australia spent $100m a year on refugees. None of this is new.

We’ll cover that, as well as whatever else pops up as the day drags on. You have Amy Remeikis with you, and a team of very smart people who can answer many of your questions. We are also lucky enough to have the use of Mike Bower’s photos from The New Daily.

Coffee number three is on. Ready?