The Point Live: Coalition still to land a blow on Albanese-less Labor, surprise surge in inflation. As it happened.

Federal politicians have demanded an immediate review of the Bureau of Meteorology’s revamped website after residents reported feeling unprepared during recent storms.

The bureau launched its controversial website on October 22, prompting Nationals Leader David Littleproud to criticise it as difficult to navigate and missing key tools relied on by farmers and rural communities.

The $4.1 million site redesign sparked complaints it was hard to use and did not indicate storm severity after wild weather wreaked havoc across Queensland and Victoria at the weekend.

“I am hearing from many locals that the new platform no longer allows them to enter GPS coordinates for their specific property locations, restricting searches to towns or postcodes,” Mr Littleproud said.

“As a result, families, businesses and farmers are unable to access vital, localised data such as river heights and rainfall information.”

The bureau’s acting chief executive Peter Stone defended the revamped site last week, saying it makes daily weather information and warnings easier to access. 

“We designed the new website in consultation with the community to make sure it delivers the benefits people want and need,” Dr Stone said.

The new website features design and functionality improvements to the most used pages, including forecasts, observations and weather warnings. 

Queensland farmer Paul White says the new website was “hopeless”.

“My main problem is that I have 6500 acres that go under flood waters and we have a gauging station that is 10 kilometres upstream from us,” Mr White said.

“When we have heavy rain I monitor that 24/7 because I have livestock and machinery. But now, I don’t see any meter heights anymore.”

Federal environment minister Murray Watt has since met with the bureau, saying the site was not meeting many users’ expectations.

He confirmed the bureau was considering the feedback and what adjustments could be made. 

“Australians deserve to have confidence in these important services,” Mr Watt said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The BOM website is a critical tool to ensure public safety, particularly during the High Risk Weather Season and it must deliver the quality information our hardworking BOM staff are known for.”

Hundreds of Queenslanders were still without power on Wednesday morning after wild weather hit at the start of the official storm season, which spans October to April.

About 11,000 claims have been received to date from Queenslanders, the Insurance Council of Australia said, with the weekend storms set to be escalated to an “Insurance Catastrophe” if numbers increase.

Taking you back to the Revenue Summit, where Professor Janine Dixon ,Director of the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University has made her address. 

The context of her speech is around the Productivity Commission reviving the idea that a company tax cut would boost prosperity, despite a study the PC commissioned showing Australians could end up worse off. 

“To make it simple: if you want more revenue, tax cuts are not the way,” Professor Dixon said.

Professor Dixon argues that GDP growth does not mean higher prosperity and estimates Australians could be $300 worse off per person. 

Basically, she said, the benefits of a company tax cut would flow to foreign investors who would receive windfall gains on past investments because the tax rate dropped. That would lead to overseas shareholders pocketing the benefits, while Australians see a decline in services, like welfare.

And it’s not like we have never done that before (ahem, gas exports)

Australian Greens Leader Larissa Waters has addressed the Revenue Summit, and says many Australians are struggling to pay for day-to-day costs: housing, food, climate, education, healthcare. 

“Corporate profits and bank balances of billionaires soar… it feels unfair because it is,” Senator Waters said. 

“Inequality is the driving force and the gap just keeps getting bigger.” 

Senator Waters pointed to the recent backdown from Labor on the superannuation changes as an example of government backing down to big business.  

She also said that capital gains discounts are needed to help address housing inequality.

“Neither major party is prepared to do anything to address housing inequality… it is unfair but it is by design,” she said.

Senator Waters has also highlighted unfair fossil fuel subsidies, and the flawed petroleum reosruces rent tax. She said that is money that could better be used to address inequality. 

Senator Waters said Since 2001, every single resources minister bar one has left parliament and gone to work for the resources industry. 

(What a coincidence.)

But Senator Waters said that change is possible. 

“We are not powerless here, there is hope,” she said. 

“These politicians have forgotten who they work for and we must remind them who they work for”. 

OK, inflation. What is the landscape looking like? Most economists are expecting a jump in the trimmed mean (the average once all the volatile bits are taken out) and are hoping it comes in at 0.8% or lower for the quarter.

If inflation comes in at 0.9% or higher, it will mean that inflation is coming in a lot higher than the RBA was anticipating (it had forecast it at 0.6% for this point in the cycle) and so if it is 0.9% or higher, then a rate cut next week is off the table, (and the conversation about will it raise rates, begins anew).

The unemployment rate is rising, which is something the RBA wanted, because it is stuck in the thinking that it is “too tight” to manage inflation, even though inflation dropped while unemployment was low. That does not fit the models, so the RBA and all those very employed, highly paid people making decisions on this, get quite uncomfortable when unemployment is lower than they think is correct.

It is very rare that they remember that they are talking about people. People who are made to subsist on below-poverty line welfare payments, because we punish them for taking one for the country and making it easier for RBA board members to sleep at night. (Yes this bothers me and it should bother you too, so no, I will not be ‘objective’ about people’s suffering because it makes the models look better)

Let’s go to the 2025 Revenue Summit. 

In his opening remarks, Australia Institute co-CEO Dr Richard Denniss pointed out Australia has one of the most ineffective tax systems in the world, despite being one of the richest counties in the world. 

“Santos has not paid company tax for 10 years in a row,” Dr Denniss said. 

“Property developers… pay no tax, and the artists pay tax on prizes they earn.

“These are choices we make as a society”. 

Dr Denniss said what Australia chooses to tax and subsidies pays a huge role in how we shape society, and society can’t be reshaped unless the tax system is. 

The Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit brings together economists and leading experts to discuss revenue options to meet Australia’s spending needs.

This year’s summit will contextualise debt, explore potential new means of revenue, challenge paradigms and reassess public spending priorities.

Speakers incldue: 

Hon Steven Miles MP, Former Premier of Queensland (2023-2024), Queensland State Opposition Leader

• Senator Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator for Queensland
• Senator David Pocock, Independent Senator for the Australian Capital Territory
• Dr Sophie Scamps MP, Federal Independent Member for Mackellar
• Leanne Minshull, co-Chief Executive Officer, The Australia Institute
• Dr Richard Denniss, co-Chief Executive Officer, The Australia Institute

On Friday, RBA Governor Michele Bullock repeated her predecessor, Phil Lowe’s complaints from 2020 that stamp duty tax was a handbrake on housing and productivity. (Stamp duty is what jurisdictions charge for doing the paperwork of transactions – and because of how the constitution limited how states could raise taxes, it is one of the main state budget revenue streams, which is why it goes up, rather than down. It’s now about $15,000 or so on the purchase of a house in NSW)

Everyone always complains about stamp duty, but no one actually knows how to get rid of it, given the revenue raising constraints previously mentioned.

Asked about Bullock’s re-raising of the issue Clare O’Neil said:

I’ve been really clear and on the record about this. Stamp duty does bring with it a host of things that aren’t great for Australians. It makes it much more difficult for families to move; it makes it harder for people to downsize and in that sense it’s not the ideal tax.

But having said those things, it is absolutely not a Commonwealth issue, and this is something that State Governments are very reliant on and it’s very difficult for them to change.

What’s really important to me with housing is that we don’t lose sight of the main game. We’ve got housing challenges in our country because for 40 years we haven’t been building enough homes, and our big focus is making sure that we address that problem. That’s why our Government’s got this huge $43 billion agenda that we are rolling out to build more homes, help renters get a better deal and make sure that more Australians get into homeownership.

…Some of the States have made attempts to move away from stamp duty and I’ve been really supportive about those, but this is a really big challenge that State Governments face and I would never, you know, get too into commentary about how they should deal with those things. These are State issues. Our role as a Federal Government is to do everything that we can to confront a housing crisis that’s been cooking in our country for 40 years, and you’re seeing our Government do that. Taking the Commonwealth from really not having anything to do with housing, the former Government for most of their period didn’t even have a Housing Minister, they were so checked out. This is a central focus of our Government, we’re building more homes, we’re getting renters a better deal and getting more Australians into homeownership.

So does Bridget McKenzie think it should be scraped?

Absolutely. If it’s, you know, if you’re going to actually be spending 65 grand to downsize your average home once the kids leave and free that home up for a new family, that’s a huge cost impost. And what the Reserve Bank Governor’s trying to do is actually encourage the Federal Government to take a leadership role, because housing and rent are skyrocketing. People are being, young people are being locked out of the housing market. And Clare, the reality is your housing fund has been referred to the Auditor‑General because it’s not building the houses that are actually needed. So I think the Federal Government has a lot of levers available to it to encourage States to get on board with reducing the barriers at their level, whilst also incentivising through their own mechanisms.

So Clare can talk all the talking points she likes on housing, the fact is their migration program combined with the lack of supply is meaning housing prices is going up and none of their solutions are working. In fact their own housing fund has been referred to the Auditor‑General for investigation for not getting any houses built.

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie does not appear to be on-board Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s t-shirt attack. (Every time I think I have written the most stupid sentence possible about Auspol, I realise it is possible to go even stupider. The limit does not exist)

Labor minister Clare O’Neil was asked about it on the Seven network this morning and said:

We’ve got a Jewish community in our country at the moment that’s going through some really, really difficult challenges, and I am much more concerned about the fact that I’ve got Jewish kids in my electorate who are too scared to wear their school uniform, than I am about the PM’s choice of t-shirt.

I actually think this kind of ridiculous commentary trivialises and politicises the serious antisemitism that communities around our country are facing, and I just want the Coalition to get with the program here. Get on the side of the Australian people and focus and talk about the issues that matter to them, not try to make some fake news things out of a t-shirt that the Prime Minister is wearing when he gets off a plane. This is just ridiculous.

McKenzie, her debate partner for the segment, agreed. Because she like Joy Division.

Listening to Clare you’d think that this Government was taking tough action on home grown antisemitism here. They’ve got the report from their own antisemitism envoy sitting on their desk and they are yet to act on the recommendations, and they were given it in April.

Just on the t-shirt issue, look, there’s a lot to legitimately criticise the Prime Minister about; trillion-dollar debt, skyrocketing house prices, and job losses in our heavy industrial sector. Wearing a t-shirt isn’t one of them. I’m part of the troubled and forgotten X generation that came of age listening and dancing to Joy Division and New Order.

So yeah, get on with acting on antisemitism, Clare, instead of using this as a shield against your own inaction.

Not sure Labor is using this as a ‘shield’ given it was Ley who brought it up, but the spirit of ‘this is so stupid’ was at least there. And that really says it all right there doesn’t it? This is so stupid not even Bridget McKenzie wants in on it.

In case you were wondering if the Liberals had abandoned their own obsessions with culture wars, it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that Liberal senator Sarah Henderson is hosting Sall Grover in the parliament today. If you don’t know who Grover is, congratulations, I again envy you. Grover has made binary beliefs her entire identity and she has been supported in the political space by others who see no issue with marginalising one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups of people among us, who want for nothing more than to live their lives.

One of the federal government’s signature housing policies is being audited amid concerns the $10 billion scheme may not be producing value for money.

The Housing Australia Future Fund was set up in 2023 to help tackle a national shortage of dwellings, and aimed to build 40,000 social and affordable homes by 2028.

But slow progress on the construction of new properties, along with reports that the average cost of a home under the scheme was more than $750,000, prompted the Opposition’s housing spokesman Andrew Bragg to request an investigation from the Australian National Audit Office.

“This is going to be a massive overpayment of taxpayer funds, which I think is a disgrace,” he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

In a letter responding to Senator Bragg, Auditor-General Caralee McLiesh said a probe was already underway, and would be tabled in Parliament in June 2026.

“The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) will examine if Treasury effectively designed the HAFF and if it established effective delivery arrangements,” she wrote.

Senator Bragg claimed the National Anti Corruption Commission may also need to investigate whether big super funds had an unfair say in the design of the scheme.

A spokesman for Housing Minister Clare O’Neil sought to play down the audit, saying it was not uncommon for the office to investigate big projects.

“The ANAO commenced this audit more than a month ago,” the spokesman said.

“We look forward to its findings and see it as an opportunity to potentially improve on the HAFF.”

The housing fund was initally seeded with $10 billion in funding.

That money was invested in a similar way to other government funds, with the returns being used to build new social and affordable homes.

But the program has come under criticism after it was revealed the first few hundred homes under the scheme were existing dwellings which the government had bought, not built from scratch.