The Point Live: Budget Day - as it happened

OK, I have lots of thoughts, but nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. And I hate winners and losers, so you won’t find that here. I know it is always one of the most read parts of a budget – but I think that is mostly because people want an understandable rundown of the budget – and that is one of the only things that is presented as simple.

But there aren’t really winners and losers. Just choices taken and not taken.

And the breathless coverage has already started – I have already seen ‘class war’ floated as one of the takes and I just need to go and stare at a wall for a moment to get over that absolute hubris.

We’ll be back early tomorrow morning for the start of the major responses – the circus will still be rolling on tomorrow with all the networks setting up on the lawn for the morning breakfast shows – we’ll bring you the best of that, as well as the things not being discussed – which should be.

So until then – thank you – I can not believe how many of you stuck around with us today – and get some sleep.

We’ll be back tomorrow. Until then – take care of you.

In the six hours or so I was in the Budget lock up my overriding thought was almost disbelief that they have killed off the capital gains tax 50% discount.

That horror show of Howardism is now (in a tiny sense) gone, and with it the real incentive to also negative gear. 

For so long we at the Australia Institute have fought against it (literally since before it was introduced) 

It won’t undo 26 years of damage but it is a start – a necessary start. 

And coupled with that was my disbelief at just how truly shitty the PRRT revenue was. 

Imagine having a war in Iran. The Strait of Hormuz shut, Qatar LNG facilities bombed… and the best the PRRT can give us is less than $2bn and by the end of the decade PRRT will be just $1.25bn. 

Pathetic. 

The government had the nerve to take on property investors, but not the gas industry. 

A massive lost moment, but one which might come to bite the gas industry. 

By the next election a 25% tax might feel too small to make up for lost revenue.

Even still the gas industry are tonight the biggest winners. Roughly $15.5bn a year better off than if a gas export tax had been brought in.

These emotions however feel cold compared to the anger many will tonight be feeling looking at the $16bn a year cut in the NDIS from 2029-30 onwards. That is a massive cut, and it is yet again a case of the government forcing vulnerable people to carry the blame of shonks and spivs who used the system to make themselves rich. Much like job providers getting wealthy while those on Jobseeker live below the poverty line. 

Yes the budget was ambitious, but as Shakespeare suggested with some irony, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 

The fight against gas companies and for those struggling on low incomes forgotten and ignored and often blamed continues. 

Angela Cartwright, the CEO of Better Renting also has some thoughts:

• The Treasurer has listened to the community and taken decisive action to abolish the Howawrd-era capital gains tax discount, a fundamental reform that will help reset the rental system and increase stability, affordability, and quality for renters. 
• While the Budget commitment to limit negative gearing to newly built homes is another historic reform, protecting current investment homes will dilute the benefits for renters. 
• Realising the full benefits of the historic reform for renters will require urgent funding in new public housing, and we will be closely scrutinising the impacts of the weaker negative gearing changes for rental stability, quality, and affordability.  
• Looking ahead, Jim Chalmers has the opportunity to cement himself as the Renters’ Treasurer through stronger action on negative gearing and the funding needed to meet public housing demand and urgently upgrade existing social housing. These changes will realise the full benefits for renters who can’t afford to be in private rental and improve affordability for those remaining in private rental.
•  For a quarter of a century, the unfair capital gains tax discount has fuelled short term, speculative investment in providing homes. This tax break has encouraged people wealthy enough to afford bonus homes to chase capital gains and spend as little as possible to maintain their investment. This has left renters paying too much to live in low quality homes, with the constant fear of having to move again when another landlord decides to sell their home.

Meanwhile, if you had seen any of the ABS data over the last couple of months, you would know that a lot of the ‘business investment’ which is one of the drivers of increased inflation, has been in data centres.

You’ll still be paying the price for that:

If you want to see what those social cuts look like in the budget line:

Here is their release:

CEO of peak body SNAICC – National Voice for our Children Catherine Liddle said she was disappointed to see initiatives designed by the Aboriginal community-controlled sector to support to families and children be ignored in this Budget. 

“At a time when our children, families and services are facing increasing and often unwarranted scrutiny, it’s disheartening to see the Federal Government failing to back programs we know will huge difference in our communities,” Ms Liddle said. 

“SNAICC’s Budget submission outlined evidence-based and costed initiatives that would ensure our children and families thrive, close the gap in life outcomes and build a foundation for the future. 

“There is little support in this Budget for these important measures. 

“We are disappointed there is no funding commitment to secure the ongoing future of the critical Early Years Support program, despite strong evidence of the benefits the EYS is delivering to early education and care services. 

“SNAICC is concerned about the future of the Inclusion Support programs, with no funding clear beyond the end of the year and a lack of clarity on how Thriving Kids will pick up the slack. 

“We do welcome the announcement of dedicated funding in the Thriving Kids program to support development and training for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce. 

“The Thriving Kids program is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform support for our children. We were hoping to see dedicated funding for ACCO services, as recommended in the Advisory Group report, but this does not seem to have happened.” 

Ms Liddle welcomed the DSS investment in the families and children program of $171.7m over five years, with the majority for direct service delivery.  

“We hope the majority of this funding, around $52m a year, will be set aside for ACCOs so we should see important growth in sector capacity. 

“SNAICC strongly supports the Government’s $218.3 million investment to support the first actions under Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices, Australia’s first dedicated national plan to end family, domestic and sexual violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children. 

“This investment recognises what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have always known, that lasting change comes when solutions are led by our people, grounded in culture, and designed with children, families and communities at the centre. 

“While there is the odd bright spot, given the government has said this was the budget to address generational fairness it’s missed the mark to address many issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander families and the organisations that support them.”

Prince Harry has only just left Australia – and the government has cut funding to Invictus Australia, the Veterans’ charity he helped establish and supports.

It has released a statement:

Invictus Australia has expressed profound disappointment following the 2026–27 Federal Budget, which confirms the complete withdrawal of Federal Government funding for the organisation’s national veteran sport and rehabilitation programs.

The decision will have immediate and far-reaching consequences, cutting off access to proven, community-based support relied upon by thousands of Australian veterans and their families for recovery, wellbeing and transition to civilian life.

At a time when Australia continues to grapple with the findings of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, and amid global instability underscoring the ongoing demands placed on Defence personnel, the removal of this funding represents a serious step backwards in the nation’s commitment to veteran wellbeing.

Invictus Australia’s role within the veteran support system has been publicly recognised at the highest levels of Government. Speaking at the Invictus Australia Reception in April, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel, the Hon Matt Keogh MP, said:

“In my role as Minister I get regular feedback about the difference Invictus is making in building those foundations for so many veterans.”

“Invictus is part of the broader veteran support system we’re actively strengthening to better support veterans and families of veterans — especially through transition.”

The Government’s recognition has also extended internationally. Last year, the Minister travelled to the United Kingdom to meet with the Invictus Games Foundation, which oversees the global Invictus Movement, to better understand Invictus Australia’s leading role and its impact in driving outcomes beyond the Games. Australia’s approach has since been acknowledged as helping set a benchmark for sustained, community-based veteran support long after competition ends.

That recognition makes the decision to withdraw all Federal Government funding difficult to reconcile.

“To date, Invictus Australia has supported close to 30,000 veterans and families across the country,” said Michael Hartung, CEO of Invictus Australia.

“To have this support removed in full, with no transition or alternative funding pathway, is a devastating blow, not only to our organisation, but to the veterans and families who depend on these programs to stay connected, well and alive.”

“For many veterans, Invictus Australia is not a recreational outlet. It is a lifeline, supporting people to manage PTSD, anxiety and depression, rebuild purpose and routine, and reconnect with their communities. Removing this funding removes access to a proven pathway for recovery.”

The impact will be felt across veterans and families, local communities and sporting clubs, and Invictus Australia itself, including staff employment, many of whom are veterans or family members.

It also places at risk opportunities for Team Australia, following the strongest ever response from wounded, injured and ill veterans applying to represent Australia at the Invictus Games Birmingham 2027.

Minister Keogh has previously highlighted the evidence behind Invictus Australia’s work, stating:

“We know sport, particularly at the grassroots level, can have a powerful impact on the wellbeing of so many of our veterans.”

He has also praised Invictus Australia’s evidenceled approach, including its partnerships with UNSW, noting:

“That evidence-led, grassroots approach is part of the reason why Invictus has now impacted the lives of almost 30,000 veterans and families in this country.”

The withdrawal of funding directly contradicts the Royal Commission’s call for stronger early intervention, social connection and holistic support systems. Invictus Australia has identified that sport-based, community-led initiatives can contribute to addressing at least 34 of the Royal Commission’s 122 recommendations.

The need is urgent. Fifty two per cent of Australian veteran families have experienced mental health challenges – including anxiety, depression or PTSD – in the past 12 months. Research cited by Invictus Australia shows that veterans who remain physically active have a 40 per cent higher likelihood of overcoming mental health challenges than those who are sedentary. Economic modelling further demonstrates that a 10 per cent increase in physically active veterans could reduce mental health system costs by up to $230 million.

“With unmet need already at critical levels, this decision risks pushing vulnerable veterans further into isolation,” Mr Hartung said.

“We cannot say veteran wellbeing is a priority while removing support from one of the few national, evidence-backed models proven to deliver impact at scale.”

The gas industry, which is more shameless than Donald Trump, has put out a media release boasting that “The Budget revised forecast PRRT receipts upwards by $1.6 billion over the five years from 2025-26 to 2029-30, driven by higher-than-expected oil prices and higher production volumes”.

There’s a couple problems.

First the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outllok only went up to 2028-29, so there was no revises upwards forecast for that year.

But yes, the PRRT was revised up from the MYEFO.

But a bit like the Coles and Woolies sale prices that were only higher for a little while to deliver magical savings, here the opposite has happened.

So yes the PRRT has been revised up from the MYEFO, but it has been revised DOWN from last year’s budget

The gas companies are the biggest winners tonight. Rather than paying $17bn a year, they are going to only pay $1.25bn in 2029-30.

They should enjoy tonight, because the fight is far from over.

As the National Tertiary Education Union points out:

National President Dr Alison Barnes said failing to replace the Morrison government’s Jobs Ready Graduates scheme would hurt universities.

“Jobs Ready Graduates has been a policy dumpster fire that this government didn’t start but it has failed to extinguish,” Dr Barnes said.

“This is a fundamentally unfair, ineffective and corrosive model that is widely seen as an abject failure. It punishes students and cuts funding.

“Failing to fix Job Ready Graduates with a government now in its second term is beyond disappointing. That’s exactly why the NTEU members will ramp up our campaign for fairer course fees and a funding model that delivers the universities we need.

Dave Richardson 

This budget introduces a special tax on discretionary trusts that will now pay a minimum of 30% same as the company tax rate on large companies with turnovers in excess of $50 million. There will be exemptions for trusts for super funds, and a few other categories. 

By 2029-30 the tax will raise $4.5 billion, not a trivial amount. 

The Australia Institute has been arguing for a long time that Australia should address tax avoidance and evasion through the abuse of trusts. Finally the government has announced such a move. However, the budget papers concede “there are legitimate reasons to use trusts, such as succession planning and asset protection” yet then in the next breath they say, “these arrangements provide opportunities to pay a lower rate of tax that are not available to most workers”.

We are left wondering why anyone would need concessional tax to undertake succession planning. And why is asset protection worthwhile when it is often a mechanism to hide assets during a divorce or to evade creditors.

Dave Richardson

A lot of the commentary on the budget will focus on the size of the deficit. Last year the deficit was expected to be $42.1 billion or 1.5% of GDP in 2025-26 and was expected to gradually decline to 1.1% by 2028-29. The MYEFO update reduced the 2025-26 figure to 1.3% of GDP. Despite that the financial press continued to rail against the deficit and debt.

Now we have the new budget figures showing the deficit will be just $31.5 billion and 1.0% of GDP.  

How do we compare with the rest of the world? 

The Economist shows some examples of government deficits in other major countries of the world as well as the Euro area (the European countries using the Euro currency). Those are shown in the table: 

These figures speak for themselves. With more revenue governments might do more on the spending side, but we hardly have a deficit problem.  

Dave Richardson 

This budget can be an occasion to think about the bullet we dodged when the Senate sank the Coalition Government’s plans to phase in company tax cuts from 30% to 25%. 

From 2015 onwards, the Australia Institute consistently published and promoted research pointing out the flawed economic case for the proposal. While other organisations were important in the opposition to the company tax cut—notably the Australian Council of Trade Unions—the Financial Review described the Institute as “a key opponent of the Coalition’s scuttled company tax cut plans.” 

Had the Coalition’s plans been introduced they would have been fully phased in by now and we can work out what the cost to revenue would have been. We estimate that in 2026-27 the Coalition’s plan would have cost $22.4 billion and, over the four years to 2029-30 to cost would have been $87.8 billion. Imagine the cuts to health and education the Coalition would have had to make to finance that cut in revenue. 

Bill Browne

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is responsible for upholding privacy rights and reviewing the freedom of information decisions of ministers and agencies.

Over the years, the Australia Institute has asked the OAIC to review many unsatisfactory, delayed and incomplete FOI decisions. Sometimes, we have been vindicated – with the OAIC saying that agencies were wrong to delay a decision or that they should have handed over more information than they did.

But getting an FOI decision reviewed is painful. The OAIC backlog is so large that reviews have taken years – I waited five years for a decision relating to Scott Morrison’s negative globalism speech. By that time, Morrison was not prime minister, his successor was most of the way through his first term and no one was talking about “negative globalism” any more.

Even now, over 800 FOI reviews have taken more than a year – up from just 81 in June 2018. For many FOI requests, delay is as good as denial.

Given the backlog, a big funding increase would be due. Instead, the OAIC’s total resourcing is set to fall from $43 million this year to $40 million in the next. (Most of this would be for privacy functions, not FOI reviews.)

Ideally, the OAIC wouldn’t need to conduct many FOI reviews, because agencies and ministers would hand over information promptly, or even disclose it proactively. The reason the FOI system has gotten so much more expensive than it was 20 years ago is because resources are spent fighting FOI requests tooth and nail.

But as long as agencies prefer secrecy to transparency, a well-funded OAIC is needed to call them out and give the people what they are entitled to.

Taking a look at the budget – people in poverty have not only been cut out of every single ‘positive’ budget measures, they are also going to be funding the government’s ‘savings’ – so many people in poverty who are on the NDIS are not going to have the resources to fill the gaps in their support.

And the cruel irony of that is disabled people living in poverty are already likely to be missing out on the NDIS as it is.

Meanwhile, behind all those headline items – cashless welfare cards continue (which is broken promise if we are keeping track) and there is no movement on the use of penalties for people who are on Jobseeker, but the tiny amount the government has put aside to keep its unlawfully operating system going, will still fall short of fixing all the identified issues which have made it unlawful.

Treasury also could not quantify how much money it owed welfare recipients in compensation for the unlawful application of penalties.

(Don’t forget the unemployment rate is going to go up by design – the RBA has specifically raised interest rates to ensure that happens).

The government’s response to homelessness is the $6000 top-up payment to some people on Youth Allowance and the Indigenous ABSTUDY payment, which aims to make them ‘a more appealing tenant for community housing providers’.

But that doesn’t build more houses. So what they have done is create more ‘desirable’ tenants if they qualify under the scheme, while also doing nothing for anyone who is not considered ‘desirable’. And this means you’ll still see the same amount of people fighting for a chance at the existing dwellings.

Everyone who lives in Australia pays tax (thanks to the GST and other measures) and it is the people who are most economically vulnerable on the lowest of incomes, who will not receive assistance.

So no. This is not ‘fair’.

Bill Browne

There’s little in the Budget for Australia’s under-resourced integrity agencies, who by the government’s own assessment are not meeting their targets.

The Australian National Audit Office reports to the Parliament about whether the Government is spending public money “economically, efficiently, effectively and ethically”.

This year, they revealed that Services Australia issued $5 billion in incorrect aged pension payments between 2022 and 2024. Their review into the Australian National University, yet to be published, reportedly finds “that the ANU council did not fully comprehend the risks associated with a massive $250 million cost-cutting program known as Renew ANU”. The Australia Institute’s Allan Behm hopes it will turn its eye to the dubious AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.

But according to the Budget papers, several of the Audit Office’s targets are not on track. The Audit Office is not expected to meet its target of 38 to 42 audit reports for the year.

Even 42 audits is well short of what the Audit Office used to deliver.

Under the Gillard Labor Government in 2011–12, the Audit Office was expected to conduct 55 audits per year. Even under the Morrison Liberal Government, there was a plan to get the Audit Office up to 48 audits a year.

Over a three-year electoral term, that’s the difference between dozens of government programs getting carefully assessed, and those same programs escaping scrutiny.

Scaling back tax breaks for property investors is the first policy change in a generation which will make housing more affordable, according to economists, following Tuesday’s Federal Budget.

“This is probably the single best thing in the budget,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.

“It will have a lasting positive effect for so many people.”

The government will scrap negative gearing for new investors buying existing properties from July 2027. It will continue to be available to those buying new homes.

It will also scrap the 50% capital gains tax discount, introduced by the Howard government a generation ago.

CGT will be applied to the full profit on the sale of an investment property – above inflation, with a 30% minimum rate.

From July 2028, a minimum 30% tax rate will also be applied to discretionary trusts.

“This is a great reform. Discretionary trusts have been increasingly used as a way for the rich to hide assets and avoid paying their fair share of tax.”

These changes will help to fund a $250 tax offset for workers, from July 2028.

The Working Australians Tax Offset will only be applied to wages and the business incomes of sole traders, not income from assets like investment properties.

If first home buyers are the big winners from the budget, the big losers are National Disability Insurance Scheme participants.

The government will slash more than $36 billion from the scheme, cutting out around 160,000 participants.

It will continue to raise more revenue from beer drinkers than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, the tax which was designed to make multinational companies pay for the Australian resources they extract and sell.

Despite widespread calls for a 25% gas export tax, which polling shows is supported by voters across the political spectrum, the government has continued to allow the gas industry’s free ride.

“This would have raised more than $17 billion a year and made the savage cuts to disability support unnecessary,” said Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute.

Meanwhile, PRRT revenue will fall from $1.9 billion next year to $1.3 billion by the end of the decade.

“The gas industry keeps telling us to wait, insisting PRRT revenue will go up. But the budget papers show it falling by a third by 2029-30.”

“Big gas continues to take the piss, and this government continues to do nothing about it.”

Similarly, taxpayers will continue to subsidise much of the fuel used by rich mining companies, with the budget papers showing the fuel tax credit scheme to cost the nation $12.8 billion by the end of the decade.

“At a time when we need to be weening ourselves off fossil fuels, the budget is assuming that our consumption is going to increase.”

Anara Watson

In this Budget, $3 million has been allocated to “community legal centres in New South Wales and Queensland, in areas that were affected by the 2019–20 bushfires and the 2022 floods.”

Apparently “This funding will help meet the increase in demand for legal assistance services to individuals, small businesses, and primary producers following these unprecedented natural disasters.”

“Unprecedented”, and yet not unexpected – they are explicitly linked to climate change. 

The CSIRO has also commented that “The 2019-2020 fires and 2022 floods in Australia highlight that regional vulnerabilities remain large.” 

And earlier today, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson spoke about the potential upcoming Super El Niño event this year:

“If this eventuates, it will make, very likely, 2027, again, the hottest year on record.

With climate change, […] we will see more severe flooding, more intense heatwaves, and more extreme weather events. 

This means higher insurance rates, higher food prices, higher healthcare costs, higher power bills, more illnesses and death – not to mention more mass coral bleaching on our precious coral reefs.” 

As Australia Institute research has shown, Australia’s current taxation system fails to raise significant revenue from the fossil fuel industry while also failing to make the industry pay compensation for the damage it has caused through accelerating climate change. 

A climate disaster levy could help cover increasing costs, raising up to $100 billion every year.

As The Parenthood says:

While welcoming measures to ease broader cost-of-living pressure and the government’s commitment to begin work toward a national Early Education and Care Commission, The Parenthood says the Budget falls short for families managing rising out-of-pocket early education and care costs.

For the families of 1.4 million children who rely on early learning every week, early childhood education and care is often the second largest household expense after housing. The Parenthood says families urgently need greater affordability, certainty and access to high-quality care that makes it possible to sustainably combine work and family life.

Anyone hoping for major reform is going to be disappointed.

Here are the basics.

You still get to negatively gear if your investment is a new build or if you already own the investment property.

There are no changes to the capital gains tax discount until 1 July 2027.

That’s not going to do a lot to change up housing prices for anyone hoping to get in and it is also not going to do anything to shake things up for baby boomers and others who were able to take advantage of those former tax settings. It’s a start, but it’s not much more than that.

Matt Saunders

A quick dive into the Budget papers, and some preliminary analysis, shows that Australian taxpayers are set to miss out on $16 billion in gas export tax revenue over the next 12 months.

While the Budget includes a $100 million upward revision in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax(PRRT) revenue for 2026-27, on the back of $63.9 billion in gas exports, it is microscopic compared to the $16 billion that could be raised with a 25% tax on gas exports.

Safe to say, the upward revision in PRRT revenue is difficult to spot compared to the scale of gas exports, and the significant revenue a gas export tax could generate.

What is not hard to see is that an extra $14 billion in government revenue could have done a lot to ease the cost-of-living crisis, lower household energy bills, reduce inflation, and ensure Australians receive a fair return for their natural gas resources.

Skye Predavec

With everything else going on in this budget, it’d be easy to miss the sole budget measure aimed at supporting Australia’s struggling arts and culture sector.

Three “National Collecting Institutions” will get a combined $23 million over the next three years: $10 million each to repair the National Maritime Museum’s wharves and help the National Film and Sound Archive store old film stock, and $3 million to get Old Parliament House ready for its 100th anniversary.

Overall, arts and culture spending is expected to remain “broadly stable” over the next few years.

For a sector which still hasn’t recovered from the dual shocks of COVID and the cost of living crisis, they were probably hoping for a little more than keeping the status quo.

Here is the long term independent:

It’s heartening to see that a Federal Government is finally having a crack at difficult reform. For too long, Canberra has been deadlocked by policy timidity and a political culture hellbent on stymieing change. The standout reform is of course the changes to the tax treatment of investment properties. But buried in the Budget papers are numerous smaller reforms that promise to make life better for many people, for instance funding to prevent financial abuse and weaponisation of child support payments. Another example is funding to improve social housing accessibility for people aged 16-24, a cohort often ignored by policy makers.

That of course is not to say that all’s well with the Budget. The $37.8 billion forecast saving for the NDIS looks unrealistic, and the prospect of the State Government significantly increasing the delivery of disability services for Tasmanians is fanciful. No wonder many members of my community are worried, even frightened, by the prospect of change. And sure, we all live in uncertain times and defence spending needs to be set at a sensible level. But the proposed Defence budget is enormous and promises to create shortages in other vital government programs. Nor does the community have confidence that the Defence budget will be spent wisely given the shocking waste of recent decades. And yet again, there is bugger-all for anyone on income support.

The boost to liquid fuel security is particularly interesting. Bringing stockholdings closer to the International Energy Agency’s requirement is important, but again at what cost? Surely the current oil shock should be a wakeup call to turbocharge the electrification of Australia, but instead the Government is budgeting to cut about $1.3 billion over the decade from solar, battery and hydrogen programs.

There are some bright spots for Tasmania. Very important for Clark is the commitment of a $387.4 million boost to funding for the CSIRO, although that is tempered by the plan to shed about 200 jobs nationally. The $57.5 million for Nyrstar’s smelters, including in Hobart, is also confirmed in the budget papers. The Tasmanian health system will also be boosted by a one-off $80 million payment to help with the additional costs of delivering health care in smaller jurisdictions, and Hobart specifically will benefit from $6 million for maternity services and $1.8m for the Jack Jumper Ants Allergy Program. And curiously, there is a reference to financial support to “defray the increased costs borne by Tasmanian consumers due to Project Marinus.” This clearly demands scrutiny.

The independents are ready this evening!

On CGT / Housing Reform:

“For too many young Australians, the dream of owning a home has become a pipe dream. This long-overdue housing tax reform is a critical step toward tackling intergenerational inequality and giving the next generation a fair shot at housing and greater hope for the future.”

“This change has come after years of work from the Community Independents calling for reform at a time when it was politically taboo to do so. We took this conversation to our communities, and people overwhelmingly told us the status quo could not continue if we wanted our kids and grandkids to have the same opportunities as their parents.”

On no gas export tax: 

“Australians have been dudded once again when it comes to benefitting from the export of our gas.”

“Australians around the country tonight will be rightly angry that multinational gas companies will continue to make extraordinary profits from our resources while families here are struggling with cost-of-living pressures. Yet again, big multinational corporations have been put ahead of everyday Aussies.”

“Other countries make sure their people get a fair return from their natural resources, and Australia must too. This must change.”

On small business:

“I’ve been calling for and strongly welcome the commonsense measures in this Budget that will genuinely make a difference to small business. Making the instant asset write-off permanent, encouraging innovation with new measures to offset losses, reducing red tape and addressing skills shortages through changes to migration policies is exactly the kind of practical support small businesses need.”

“At a time when small businesses are doing it tough across the country, and productivity is flagging, these practical steps are an important start, but there is still much more to do. We need to keep reducing the bureaucratic burden on small business owners and I’ll continue to push for a $20,000 tax-free threshold which would give these businesses greater capacity to invest and grow.”

On nature and climate:

“Nature and climate were not mentioned once in the Treasurers Budget speech tonight and there is very little in dollar terms going towards environmental protections or climate action. At a time when Australia is facing a biodiversity and extinction crisis and climate change is at a tipping point, this is profoundly disappointing and short sighted.”

“Despite more than 70% of Australia’s unique species being found nowhere else on Earth, funding for nature is yet again left on the cutting floor of the Treasurer’s office.”

On the EV Fringe Benefit Tax exemption:

“Whilst it makes sense for the Fringe Benefit Tax exemption to be removed from luxury electric vehicles, it’s disappointing that this was not reinvested into making the transition to electric vehicles affordable and reliable for all Australians.”

“In this time of increasing international volatility, the future stability of our nation depends upon continuing to decouple ourselves from dependence on overseas liquid fossil fuels. We need to insulate Australian households and businesses from fuel price shocks caused by international events outside of our control.”

On lack of investment in preventive health:

“This budget there is an extra $25 billion for hospitals but fails once again to take a long-term lens to health spending by investing very little in prevention. Every year we spend significantly more on hospitals, urgent care clinics and treating chronic disease at the end stage, but nominal amounts only are invested in preventing people from getting sick in the first place.”

“With an ageing population and growing rates of chronic illness, it makes no sense to keep ignoring preventive health.”

“If we are serious about keeping Australians healthier and making our health system sustainable into the future, prevention must become a much bigger priority. I won’t stop knocking on the Minster door about this.”

Here is what the independent senator had to say:

“This budget is such a mixed bag – on the one hand some big reforms on housing that took real political courage, on the other a tragic missed opportunity to set us up for a more prosperous and secure future,” Senator Pocock said.

Senator Pocock expressed deep concerns at some big savings measures and reprioritisations in key portfolios including a $201 million cut from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources in “savings”, the bulk in year four (Budget Paper 1, p34), and cutting an additional $1.9 billion out to 2042-43 by “redirecting uncommitted grant funding”.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is losing $255.2 million in “savings” over the forward estimates to 2029-30, while the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is losing $283 million in “savings” as part of a bigger $2.2 billion “reprioritisation” over 14 years.

The budget reveals significant underspends on key housing programs. For example, of the $8 billion set aside by Treasury for the 100,000 new homes for first home buyer zero interest loans, only $57.2 million has been advanced to states and territories as at 30 June 2026.

Senator Pocock welcomed sensible reforms to negative gearing and the Capital Gains Tax concession that both protect existing investors but also send a strong signal that we need to start treating housing as a human right, consistent with options he and Senator Lambie had modelled by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

The Housing Australia Future Fund has been making returns at double its target rate and grown to $11.5 billion, however calls to increase the size of the fund and its annual disbursements to boost the number of social and affordable homes have gone unanswered. The Government is claiming that an additional $2 billion in enabling infrastructure, hard fought for by the independent Member for Indi Dr Helen Haines, will help build around 65,000 new homes over the next decade.

After huge advocacy from Senator Pocock alongside the Home Time Campaign and Homelessness Australia, the Government has also announced a supplement to stop young people on the Away from Home rate of Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY missing out on social and community housing. 

The Government will provide $59.4 million over four years from 2026–27 to provide states and territories with funding for community housing providers to supplement rental income for social housing for over 4,000 eligible young people, aged 16‑24, who are in receipt of these payments and who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness.

“There’s so much more to do to support growing cohorts of people experiencing homelessness or at risk of it, especially older women, but this is an important step forward,” Senator Pocock said.

While working Australians will benefit from a new $250 Working Australians Tax Offset (WATO), we are leaving behind the most vulnerable in our community including the one million Australian children being left in poverty with no increases to the base rates of social security payments or Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

In some good news, a strong campaign from the crossbench, led by the independent Member for Kooyong Dr Monique Ryan, which Senator Pocock supported including through estimates questioning, has resulted in a $508.5 million increase in disbursements from the Medical Research Future Fund which will grow year on year to reach $1 billion by 2030–31.

This is a short-sighted and tragic budget for nature with an absolutely paltry $110.8 million over two years for the Saving Native Species fund. No programs that protect and manage our incredible biodiversity were extended by more than a year or two. The government is not backing up their commitment to no new extinctions with the funding required to deliver that. 

It was a light touch budget for the Nation’s capital with the ACT missing out on additional funding for GP Bulk Billing that has been allocated to the Hunter, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and Central Coast. 

“We’re getting $50 million in federal funding for a five-year project that will knock about 15 minutes off the 4-hour plus rail trip from Sydney to Canberra. In the context of almost $9 billion in new infrastructure investment nationally this feels pretty paltry and like Canberra is again missing out on our fair share,” Senator Pocock said.

The Budget also allocates $4.2 million to continue the development of Ngurra, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Precinct, and $9.9 million over three years from 2026–27 in additional funding to expand the National Film and Sound Archive and $3.0 million in 2026–27 for the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Senator Pocock welcomed the EV changes as a sensible compromise but said a failure to reform Job Ready Graduates or expand Paid Placements left the government’s rhetoric on intergenerational equity sounding somewhat hollow.  

Senator Pocock said it was a positive budget for productivity and small business, welcoming the decision to make the instant asset write off permanent, as something he had pushed for strongly, along with an increase to the amount. Incentives for start-ups were also welcome, especially given the ACT is the start-up capital of the country. 

Here is what the independent MP had to say:

The federal budget has sought to balance cost-of-living relief with spending restraint and structural reform, as Australians continue to grapple with rising living costs and global instability. On the defining challenge of our time, however, this budget is a failure.

The Albanese government has fallen badly short on one of the key themes of its budget: resilience. Its continued failure to invest meaningfully in climate adaptation and disaster preparedness will leave Australia dangerously exposed and far worse off in the long term.

The government continues to take a narrow and outdated view of national security, pouring billions into defence while leaving climate resilience severely underfunded. It is troubling that just $117 million has been allocated to climate adaptation and disaster resilience, compared with $863.8 million over four years for the nuclear-powered submarine program.

This budget exposes a clear and deliberate choice by the Albanese government: protect multinational fossil fuel interests or secure a fair return for Australians. It chose the former. The refusal to remove fossil fuel subsidies or introduce a 25% gas export tax is a major failure of leadership and a lost opportunity to deliver fairness in the national interest.

The government will spend just $3.4 million over four years on measures aimed at putting downward pressure on property insurance premiums. This tokenistic funding is inadequate in the face of escalating climate risk and rising insurance costs. The government is failing to invest meaningfully in climate adaptation and resilience, while doing little to ensure people can actually keep their homes insurable.

I welcome an overhaul of property tax concessions, which may assist more Australians into the housing market. I also welcome targeted cost-of-living and tax relief measures that will provide some short-term relief to struggling households.

However, the government’s claim of strong budget management is undermined by poorly targeted measures such as halving the fuel excise for all motorists, and a universal $250 tax cut, which risk adding to inflationary pressures at a time when restraint is needed.

I have fought hard to secure several important measures in this budget, including almost $183 million to address financial abuse and non-compliance in the Child Support Scheme, and more than $500 million in disbursements for medical research. I also strongly welcome the permanent instant asset write-off for small businesses investing in new equipment.

The productivity measures in this budget are a step forward in reducing red tape and encouraging investment, and I support stronger incentives for research and development to keep Australia competitive. However, more ambition is needed to ensure Australia’s 2.6 million small businesses can not only survive, but thrive.

It is also deeply concerning that there is no increase to JobSeeker or other welfare payments. At a time of persistent cost-of-living pressure, this is a significant omission.

Finally, the budget contains little meaningful funding for anti-racism initiatives, at a time when such investment is urgently needed to address rising social division fuelled by One Nation.

Bill Browne

Australia’s foreign aid contributions (called “official development assistance”) are set to fall with cuts of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. While the final figures are not public yet, it presumably marks another historic low for Australia’s contribution as a share of GDP.

Australia gives just 0.2% of Gross Domestic Product, far short of Labor’s policy of 0.5% or the international expectation of 0.7%.

By making our fellow humans better off, foreign aid makes the world – and by extension Australia – safer and more prosperous. It’s also the right thing to do. As one of the world’s wealthiest countries, at the wealthiest time in human history, Australia could make a real difference.

And as my colleague Skye Predavec wrote in The Point last week, foreign aid does not come at the expense of domestic spending. On the contrary, countries that spend more on foreign aid also tend to spend more helping their own people.  

$1,000 deduction makes life simpler

Bill Browne

It’s by no means the most important or substantial announcement in the Budget, but I admire the $1,000 instant tax deduction for its simplicity. In short, it means you can claim $1,000 in work-related expenses without receipts – worth perhaps two or three hundred dollars depending on your marginal tax rate.

This saves people from keeping receipts they will almost never need; and the simpler doing your taxes becomes the more attractive it is to do it yourself instead of paying a professional. And taxes will feel much onerous if they are less of a headache to deal with.

There’s a lot of debate about small government versus big government, but a neglected aspect is how complicated government is – how heavily it weighs on your life. Simple policy is accessible and manageable, whether it increases or decreases government spending. People would think more kindly about government, whatever its size, if it was a joy to interact with.

Tax is the price we pay for a civilised society, but it doesn’t have to be a hassle settling the bill.

So that’s it for that interview and then the treasurer will head into Sky, before going into Nine and then the radios and all the other sit downs he did.

Q: We’realso sitting on Australia’s weakest productivity growth in 60 years. I think two terms, five budgets. That’s on you, isn’t it?

Chalmers:

The weakest decade for productivity growth in the last 60 years was the Coalition decade. In the last year, we’ve seen things turn around in welcome ways, in the market sector, one and a half overall, 1% that’s higher than the 20 year average. But it’s not enough to deliver the higher living standards that we want to see for more of our people and lift the speed limit our economy. So there’s a very broad and ambitious productivity package in this budget to grow the economy and lift living standards and wages over time.

Q: I just want to loop back to the idea of promises and integrity. Do you accept that, even if these changes are very well received amongst young voters, no one will believe a promise from this government ever again?

Chalmers:
I’m not sure about that. I mean, I think that the most important thing, genuinely is if we come to a different view, we explain why. And the most important thing beyond that…

Q: It would help if you acknowledge that these were broken promises, it’s such a simple formulation that you keep avoiding.

Chalmers:

Well, I don’t think I have. I mean, I’ve taken responsibility for the fact that the government has a different view now than it had 12 months ago. I’ve taken, I do take responsibility for that, and that’s because I’ve come to a different view on these policy changes. I’m explaining why. But more important than any of that, let’s not lose sight of the actual issue that we are addressing here. Now the easiest thing in the world would have been for me to sit here and rationalize to you why we hadn’t made any of these changes.

That would have been so much easier than explaining why we have but it wouldn’t have been the right outcome for 75,000 Australians who would stay locked out of the housing market. It wouldn’t have been the right outcome for workers who continue to be treated in an inferior way to people who make their income in other ways, legitimately in our economy.

And so I’d rather make the difficult decision and explain why, than take the easy decision and escape some of these questions.

Q: Just on the issue of budget repair, your promised, committed budget repair in these papers, of course, depends to a very large degree on the extremely difficult task of fixing the NDIS. Will you be tough enough to hold the line when it becomes clear how many needy people are being excluded from a scheme that had promised to support them.

Chalmers:

Yeah, and the reason why I’m confident about that is because we believe in the NDIS, and we’re trying to save it from itself. We could not have a sustainable scheme that was growing as fast as it was. And so as big believers in the scheme, big supporters of providing a level of care that people need and deserve in our local communities.

Q: Should you be essentially putting an asterisk on those Budget papers? It’s a very ambitious change. Your budget repair depends on it. There’s a lot of people who think that it’s unrealistic that you’ll reach those figures.

Chalmers:

Well, it is an ambitious change, and it’s an ambitious budget, and this is an ambitious government, and we couldn’t sit by and let the NDIS costs blow out to the extent that they were spending, will still grow, but much more slowly. I pay tribute to Mark Butler and Jenny McAllister and the other colleagues for the work that has gone into this. This is a really important part of the savings package. But more than that, it’s a key economic reform. The way this budget has been interpreted is that tax reform is a big part of it. It is productivity package big reform, it is. But also in the NDIS and in budget sustainability, there’s a number of important reforms there too.

Q: So how do you explain a net migration number that will be higher than expected for two years, given that that will put pressure on housing?

Chalmers:

Well, first of all on the specifics of the net overseas migration numbers. They’ve come down by 45% from their peak, so we have very substantially managed down net overseas migration. The two smallish revisions to net overseas migration are about fewer departures rather than a spike in arrivals. And even after that, they are still down very, very substantially from the surge that we inherited.

Q: It is still putting pressure on the housing market.

Chalmers:

Today, we’re taking pressure off the housing market by taking a serious approach to housing. Our predecessors didn’t do that. Now you’ve asked me about social cohesion. One of the things that worries me most about our society is this idea that too many people have that we can’t let take hold in our society, which is that a fair society is a feature of our past, but not a feature of our future. One of the things that keeps me awake at night, one of the defining motivations in this budget is we have to make the fair go the defining characteristic of our country in future generations, not just in past years.

Q: Do you also at the same time, have to level with young people to whom you are making this grand offer that we will never go back to the kind of ratios we saw between housing prices and wages in the past. Do you need to tell them that at the same time?

Chalmers:

Well, it remains to be seen, but the efforts that we’re making in the budget, the difficult, contentious decisions, that ratio has gone up nine times. So we’re not going back. If you look at house price growth since the Howard change in 1999 house prices have gone up around 400% income has gone up by about half of that. The Howard Costello changes decoupled house prices from incomes, and that’s a problem*.

And no treasurer has sat here on budget night and done more to address that particular challenge for a quarter of a century than this treasurer,

*There is a book I could recommend on that….

Q: There’s a new tax offset that people will get in 2028 is that delayed in order to avoid stoking inflation, as the Reserve Bank Governor has repeatedly warned against.

Jim Chalmers:

Look partly, but that’s not the main reason. The main reason is to align it to when we’re raising some of this revenue through some of these other changes that we are talking about, we provide tax relief in all kinds of different ways, five different ways to cut income taxes, but we have to do that in a responsible and affordable way, and in this instance, it’s by aligning it with the other revenue measures in the tax reform package. And what that means is we’re actually returning the revenue from those difficult tax changes to workers and to businesses over the forward estimates. And that means that where we’re seeing all this budget repair, it’s not being done by the tax reform package over the forward estimates. It’s being done by our responsible approach.

Q: About that, because your tax package appears to improve the budget’s bottom line by $77 billion over 10 years is that how much extra tax you are taking?

Chalmers:

That’s the 10 year period over the forward estimates. It is broadly neutral, and over the 10 year period, what we’ve put in that medium term projection assumes that there’s there’s no more returning of bracket creep, there will be more tax relief. But the $77 billion figure that you cite is accurate. It is creating more room for us to return more bracket creep over time. But the main driver of that very significant and very substantial improvement in the medium term budget position is actually from our savings. By the end of that 10 year period, the contribution of savings is three times the contribution of our tax reform. So once again, the heavy lifting on budget repair is being done by spending restraint and savings in the budget in important areas like the NDIS. If this budget is framed in some to some degree, around social cohesion, the need to change the housing arrangements, particularly for young Australians, because of the contribution that is making and will make towards social cohesion.

Q: Let’s talk about the grandfathering. That is how you are dealing with those people who are currently negative doing, doing negatively gearing their properties, forgive me, essentially, this creates two tiers of property investors, those who are lucky enough to keep their negative gearing tax advantages and those who are not. You comfortable with a two tier investment system like that?

Chalmers:

Well, a lot of the transitional arrangements are about recognising and respecting decisions that people have already taken and so overwhelmingly, the tax policy is prospective, rather than retrospective.

People who want to still invest in homes and negatively gear those homes can do that if they make a contribution to housing supply and do that with new homes, so that will continue to be available to people who want to make new investments.

Q: Just on the question of that grandfathering event, the budget shows, that you’ll be able to build 75,000 households over 10 years, or 75 sorry, 75,000 households will be able to buy their first homes under these policies. Would that number have been higher if you had taken even tougher decisions on grandfathering?

Chalmers:

Well, obviously the numbers in the modeling would be different if we made different decisions. But don’t forget. Don’t forget as well. Sarah, when it comes to the grandparenting arrangements, the transitional arrangements is that houses and properties which are negatively geared are often not negatively geared forever, typically between five or 10 years later they become positively geared.

So that as an element of transition built into the system already, and that will continue to be the case. But if you’re a new investor, you can invest in new supply. But what we’re doing here is making a meaningful difference to the number of people who can get into the housing market for the first time. That’s our objective.

Q: Let’s talk about some of those most vulnerable people in that category. That is renters. Will these changes mean fewer rentals and higher rental prices?

Chalmers:

Once again, you’ve got to look at the housing package in its entirety. We have presented some modeling around rent and we have presented some modeling around housing supply, but that’s only for the tax changes, and we’re not only changing the tax system when it comes to housing, so the net effect of the extra homes will put downward pressure on rents, even as the tax changes make a modest, modest difference in the other direction.

Q: Will there be fewer homes built because of these policies? As the Prime Minister said before the election, when ruling out these policy changes?

Jim Chalmers:

We have to look at our housing package in its entirety. So our housing package is not just these tax changes. As important as they are, there’s another $2 billion to invest in more supply, and so the net effect of our housing policy across the budget is to increase supply. And that’s really important, because supply is still the main game. So those 35,000 fewer houses are more than made up for almost double as many when it comes to the additional investments we’re making in supply.

Q: In your in the speech you gave just now, you you identify the huge increase in property prices over the last 25 years as an essentially as a great Australian wrong. Will prices now fall?

Chalmers:

Prices will grow more slowly. In the Treasury modeling that we’ve released alongside the budget, prices will continue to grow, but about 2% slower on a median house.

That’s about $19,000 but what we’re doing here is we’re not targeting a particular price. What we’re trying to do is to make sure that there are more affordable options for people to buy, particularly people who are buying their first home. We’re trying to make sure that these tax arrangements, where they are concessional, encourage people to build new houses and new units. That’s another thing that the package does. But most of all, what we’re trying to do in this tax reform package is to deal with this issue where the big distortion that was introduced in 1999 is rectified at the same time as we try and better align the way that we tax people who work in relation to how we tax people who make their income in other legitimate ways. We’re trying to rebalance the tax system.

Q: Now you are presenting this as a major change quite quite reasonably, rebalancing the system, the whole system, in favor of workers, and in particular, young people. But how do you justify not doing that before the election, where the conditions were not materially different to where they are now?

Jim Chalmers:

Well, the commitments we made at the election, as I said, were overwhelmingly about investing more than $40 billion in housing the Prime Minister ruling out these changes that reflected our focus at the time, which was almost exclusively on supply, plus the 5% deposits, and they were the positions that we held at the time. It’s become increasingly clear to us that if we continue to kick the can down the road on some of these difficult policy changes which have been ignored in our tax system and our housing market for too long, then that would make life harder and lock more Australians out of the system.

And so we had a choice. I mean, fundamentally, this budget was a choice. Did we use what’s happening in the Middle East as a reason to do less, to just focus on fuel security and some of the near term issues measures, or do we understand that all of this global volatility and uncertainty is a reason to accelerate reform, to act with more decisiveness and more urgency.

And we decided on the latter path, and I’m proud that we did. And I know that there will be, of course, there will be people who want to focus on the commitments we made at the election. I understand that.

Q: But you it’s not just that you accept it, that it’s reasonable, as I said before, the conditions that existed before the election are not materially different now in terms of the difficulty of obtaining housing. Why did it take a war in the Middle East to make you it’s another you set your policies so drastically?

Chalmers:

Well, it’s another year of too many people getting locked out of the market, and some of these challenges you accept financial change in terms of the locking out of the market between now and 12 months ago, at the time, we became increasingly of the view that some of these other challenges which go beyond supply, they go to the composition of the market, they go to the fact that tax policy settings have had, I think, a negative impact on the housing market.

When these policies were changed in 1999 it fundamentally distorted the way that investment happens in this country. Encouraged people to pile into existing housing push prices up, locked people out of the housing market, particularly younger people, and so we had another year of that, and these challenges will become more and more serious if we neglect them for longer.

And that’s why we came to a different view and changed our policy. In the end, is the calculation also that hundreds of 1000s of young voters will care more about getting access to housing than they will do about the notion of trust in politics. Is that the calculation also, well, I think that people care more about the substantive issue and the substantive change.

That’s my personal view, and it remains to be seen there will be people very focused on the politics of the last election campaign. I understand that.

Q: It is also a question about integrity. It’s not just politics with a small p, it’s integrity and policy.

Chalmers:

I think, I think people will be most focused on the positive change that we’re making in the tax system and in the housing market. It has obviously involved a level of political risk, because we come to a different view, and I’ve said in recent days, and I really mean it, one of the reasons I’m here, taking these characteristically difficult questions from you, Sarah, is because I do understand when you come to a different view, you have to front up and explain why, and that’s why I’m doing

Q: You just said recent weeks, the decision to make these major changes to negative gearing trusts and capital gains was made in recent weeks. Is that what you’re saying?

Jim Chalmers:

Yes, it is what I’m saying there. The expenditure review committee finalises the budget in the usual way towards the end of April, sometimes the beginning of May? Obviously, this has involved a fair amount of work, but the decision was taken in recent weeks to make this policy change, and more than deciding this policy change and the substantive difference that we hope to make, encouraging another 75,000 Australians into the housing market over the next decade, rebalancing the playing field when it comes to housing and tax obviously, we know that that invites an element of political risk. Obviously, these changes have been contentious for some time, and so you asked me before, would I acknowledge that we’ve come to this different view (Ferguson says she didn’t say that, she asked about a broken promise) Well, we’ve come to this different view for very good reasons.

The first question is on broken promises.

Does Jim Chalmers acknowledge the broken promises?

Yes, I acknowledge that the government’s come to a different view about some really important policy areas. The comments and commitments we made at the election reflected the government’s almost singular focus on housing supply. We’re maintaining that focus on supply, but the challenge begins there. It doesn’t end there with supply. We also need to take these decisive steps, these contentious steps, to rebalance the tax system, because the interaction of the housing market and the tax system is locking too many Australians, particularly young Australians, out.

Q: No acknowledgement of broken promises, despite the fact that they are blindingly obvious to everybody watching Breaking ironclad election promises so blatantly, You must have spent a long time calculating the consequences. When did you decide that the rewards outweighed the risks?

Chalmers:

Well, I think it’s important to see these changes for the substance of the changes, not the politics of the changes. This decision was taken in recent weeks. It was taken relatively late in the budget process, and it was taken because we became increasingly of the view that the focus on supply, which is still the main game when it comes to the housing market, was not enough to deal with some of these intergenerational issues, in particular when it comes to housing.

Now, obviously we are aware that people who want to defend the current tax arrangements, or they think that the current housing market is working just fine, they will want to focus want to focus on this element of it the political element of it I understand that. Obviously that doesn’t come as a massive surprise to me but we’re focused on the substantive issue, the substantive change. We’ve come to a different view on these policy areas, we’re explaining to the Australian people why.

So now it is time for the end of the parliament – a bunch of bills get tabled and then there will be some last statements.

Off to the studio.

Jim Chalmers has finished his speech and gets the standing ovation from the Labor side of the house.

Then he gets lots of hugs and back slaps and will run to the ABC studio for the traditional post budget interview.

AAP

* Budget deficit of $31.5 billion in 2026/27, $2.8 billion lower than projected in December’s mid-year update

* Commonwealth net debt to rise to $616.6 billion (19.9 per cent) in 2026/27, down from $646.9 billion forecast in December

* Economic growth to fall to 1.75 per cent in 2026/27, down from 2.25 per cent forecast in December

* Unemployment rate to rise to 4.5 per cent in 2026/27, same as forecast in December

* Headline inflation to fall to 2.5 per cent by June 2027, after hitting five per cent mid this year

* Wages to rise by 3.5 per cent in 2026/27

KEY MEASURES

* Removing the 50 per cent discount on the capital gains tax and replacing it with indexation to inflation

* Negative gearing will be abolished for investment properties bought after budget night, except for new builds

* Discretionary trusts will be hit with a minimum 30 per cent tax rate to discourage income splitting

* Wage and salary earners will receive a permanent tax cut of $250 per year via the “Working Australians Tax Offset”

* The $20,000 instant asset write-off will be made permanent to give small businesses extra certainty

* Businesses will get a tax refund via a permanent two-year loss carry back, expected to cost $2.3 billion over five years

* Temporarily halving the fuel excise and cutting the heavy vehicle road user charge

* Shoring up Australia’s fuel and fertiliser supplies to the tune of $10.7 billion 

* Cutting the cost of the NDIS by $37.8 billion over five years

* Implementing a 20 per cent domestic gas reservation for Australia’s east coast

* An extra $2 billion for sewers, roads and other local infrastructure to enable 65,000 new homes to be built

* Providing $5.9 billion more for medicines listed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme

* Giving an extra $25 billion over five years for states and territories to run their hospitals

* Cutting red tape to slash the regulatory burden by $10.2 billion each year and boost productivity

I was wondering if the PRRT would be revised up due to the oil prices. And it was – but only compared to the MYEFO figures. 

It’s actually worse than a year ago. 

And get this – the gap between beer excise and the PRRT IS GETTING BIGGER

So I hope the government is ready for even more anger from voters calling for them to tax the gas.

We know Beer excise is greater than PRRT, but the bank levy is also bigger than the PRRT.

Little wonder the head of the Commonwealth Bank has twigged that gas companies are taking the piss

We haven’t heard from the Coalition as yet, but we will bring you that as well.

Here is what the Greens have to say about it all:

In their first budget of the term, Labor has chosen corporate profits over people, by delivering real cuts to services while allowing corporate profits to grow unchecked.

Labor’s fifth budget fails to include a tax on gas exports, which would have been worth at least $17b in revenue to the bottom line. Instead, Labor has chosen to gut critical services including the NDIS, climate, clean energy manufacturing, and to keep people on poverty level income support.

The changes to tax breaks for wealthy property investors tinker at the margins, when the housing crisis is compounding in urgency and requires significant reform. The Labor government has quarantined all of the tax handouts for existing property investments. This is a capitulation to the 1% and a missed opportunity that is unlikely to ease the housing crisis.

Labor’s self-proclaimed biggest cost of living relief measure in this budget, the Working Australians Tax Offset, equates to $4.81 a week and won’t hit people’s pockets until 2028.

While people are bearing the cost of inflation they didn’t cause, big corporations push up the cost of living and get special treatment from Labor.

People will be set back by Labor’s budget by:

• The “biggest cost of living relief measure in this budget”, the $250 WATO, equates to $4.81 a week and people won’t see a cent of this until 2028
• $37.8 billion in cuts to the NDIS, which will see at least 160,000 people lose critical disability supports
• Nothing for renters or people experiencing homelessness
• No new money to actually build housing, except for $110m for defence housing for US and UK troops under AUKUS
• $4 billion in deep cuts to climate transition – the biggest rollback since the Morrison government, including:
  • $1.7b from electric vehicles
  • $2.2b of cuts to climate and the environment:
    • $255m cut from ARENA
    • Cuts to the domestic manufacturing of solar, batteries and hydrogen
• No increase to any income support payments – Jobseeker, Youth Allowance, Age Pension or any other payment
• No funding for the National Anti Racism Framework

Whereas Labor has backed big corporations and the 1% by:

• Refusing to tax the exports of gas corporations, forgoing at least $17 billion in revenue
• Over the last decade, corporate profits in Australia have grown at almost double the rate of wages
• Leaving intact tens of billions in existing tax handouts for wealthy property investors through grandfathering, and including tax minimisation loopholes for property investment going forward
• $53 billion in additional defence spending, a significant amount of which will go to AUKUS
• $46 billion over the forwards for fossil fuel subsidies and $5 million this year to support new gas projects
• Almost $1b on offshore processing last year, nearly $400m than previously budgeted, and a further $600m budgeted for the coming year, all to brutalise around 100 people 

Here are a bunch of taxes that collect more revenue than the PRRT.

And yes, that includes beer excise.

Some taxes grow and some fade away. Here are a bunch of the smaller taxes by how much they are expected to grow over the next 4 years.

Remember, we’re in the middle of a gas price boom and still the PRRT is expected to fall by a third.

Jim Chalmers is still speaking, but that’s the main bits of the speech and he’ll go from the chamber to the ABC studio for the post budget interview with Sarah Ferguson.

So let’s get into the nitty gritty shall we?

(Grogs in bold)

Conclusion 

Speaker – 

Against a backdrop of global uncertainty, this Budget invests in Australia’s resilience, economic sovereignty and national security. 

At a time when Australians are under pressure, this Budget delivers more help with the cost-of-living and new tax cuts for workers. 

And in an era where people feel like the system no longer works for them, this Budget doesn’t just acknowledge that – it acts on it. 

By levelling the playing field for first home buyers, backing the aspiration and innovation of small business – 

And renewing the fundamental bargain between generations, to help bring the dream of home ownership within reach of more young Australians. 

No other budget in the 2000s has set out this much responsible Budget repair and this much economic reform. 

These are difficult decisions to ensure a stronger bottom line every year, to give us greater insurance in uncertain times. 

At the same time as we build a more resilient, productive and competitive economy. 

This is a strategy which helps shield people from the harshest consequences of a global oil crisis – 

Stabilises our economy and our Budget at a time of extreme uncertainty and volatility in the world – 

And strengthens Australia for the next shock. 

Faced with a choice between resilience or reform, this Budget demonstrates our Government and our country are capable of both. 

Tonight, we choose the hard road of reform, not the path of least resistance. 

By responding to the pressures Australians confront today. 

And fulfilling our obligations and responsibilities to the generations to come. 

I commend this Bill and this Budget to the House.

[I too commend the Bill.. but not all of it and we have a lot of work still to do]

(Grogs in bold)

Making room for our priorities 

Speaker – 

We’ve made progress getting the Budget in much better shape at the same time as we’ve found room to fund the services and security Australians rely on. 

This Budget includes record investments in healthcare, defence, and economic resilience. 

Reforming and strengthening care 

There’s $3 billion to deliver more beds, more packages and better aged care for older Australians – 

$2 billion for the Thriving Kids program and a $3 billion provision for other foundational supports outside the NDIS – 

And $2.2 billion to strengthen Services Australia and ensure Australians continue to receive safe, secure and reliable services quickly and easily. 

[This is about trying to suggest those about to be kicked off the NDIS are not being kicked into the gutter. But these dollars are a hell of a lot less than the cuts to the NDIS]

Broadening opportunity 

Speaker – 

We’re building an economy that is stronger, fairer, and gives more Australians a stake in our success. 

We’re investing an extra $1.2 billion to close the gap. 

Doubling the number of jobs created as part of the Remote Jobs and Economic Development program. 

Improving housing quality and expanding our support for grocery stores in remote First Nations communities. 

Supporting gender equality 

Speaker – 

The gender pay gap has never been narrower and women’s workforce participation hit record highs last year. 

We are proud to have backed $21 billion in wage rises for women working in sectors like aged care and childcare which have been undervalued for too long. 

[no free child care though]

Since 2022, we’ve also invested more than $4.4 billion to deliver the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. 

This Budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for front-line services and to make our child support system safer, so children get the financial support they need and women are protected from abuse. 

Resilience and national security 

Speaker – 

Economic security, economic resilience, and national security are now one and the same. 

We’re investing an additional $53 billion over the next decade in our defence force to keep Australians and our region safe. 

[“Over the next decade” is the key bit. It ids becoming more and more clear that the government knows AUKUS us dead, so all new/extra spending is off in the never never. They ain’t about to hand over $384bn just yet, and probably never will because we are never getting any submarines out of AUKUS. Hopefully a government will soon admit to this and dump it officially]

And there’s almost $800 million for veterans as part of our response to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. 

We’re also taking action to strengthen our national security and national unity since the devastating antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach. 

We’re adopting every recommendation from the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion’s Interim Report and fast-tracking tougher gun laws through the National Cabinet. 

There is $600 million for a new Counter-Terrorism Online Centre, grants to support affected communities and money for our law enforcement agencies to crack down on the hate speech, violent extremism and terrorism which has no place in Australia. 

[Weird how the is always more money to be found to fight terror. I will just note that since 2001 the amount of funding for counter-terrorism, ASIO, ASIS, the AFP etc etc etc has been increasing and ongoing with new and extra powers of draconian observation. And yet the Bondi massacre occurred. Good thing security agencies never have to meet any performance standards to justify thee budgets. Good thing no one ever says their spending is “out of control” ]

(Grogs in bold)

This is about better aligning the taxes paid on these types of income with the taxes paid on wages. 

These changes will level the playing field for workers and first home buyers, and support investment in productive assets, including new housing supply. 

And they will fund our new round of tax relief for more than 13 million Australian workers. 

Speaker – 

We’re building a better tax system for businesses, with over $3.5 billion in new measures that lower taxes, to encourage investment and innovation. 

[This is about start ups and designed to counter claims getting rids of the discount will hurt entrepreneurs]

We’ll permanently introduce two-year loss carry-back for all companies up to $1 billion in turnover – bolstering resilience and risk taking. 

[To be honest, not that I like this policy, I am glad it is permanent. It was always brought in each year. Time to end the farce and make it permanent]

And we’ll introduce loss refundability for start-ups, to help new businesses invest and grow in their first two years. 

We’ll also expand tax incentives for venture capital and better target the Research and Development Tax Incentive to support more high-impact innovation. 

The third part of our tax reform package is to make the tax system simpler and more sustainable. 

Simpler for workers with a $1,000 instant deduction, and simpler for small businesses with a permanent instant asset write off and more dynamic tax instalments. 

[Again this had been announced and it a pretty cool idea]

And we’ll put in place more sustainable long-term settings to support the take up of electric vehicles. 

Speaker – 

Our tax reforms will help workers, create a fairer housing market, and drive more productive investment across our economy. 

They build on the significant reforms we’ve already delivered, and they complement our other efforts to increase housing supply, boost productivity and reduce compliance costs. 

The new revenue raised will be returned to workers and businesses over the next four years – 

So more Australians can earn more and keep more of what they earn. 

Savings and budget sustainability 

Speaker – 

This means the heavy lifting on Budget repair is being done by savings and spending restraint, not tax increases. 

This Budget delivers the largest savings package on record. 

There are $63.8 billion in savings. 

[Ok, time to get cruel]

Our decisions improve the Budget in net terms by $26.1 billion once you take our responsible provisions into account. 

A big part of our savings package will restore the NDIS to its original intent and secure its future, so it grows in a sustainable way in line with programs like Medicare. 

This difficult but necessary reform will save $37.8 billion over the forward estimates. 

[What is worse about this is that $37.bn is over 4 years, but $16.3bn of it comes in one year in 2029-30. By my calculation that will be about a 10% cut in real terms (ie as a % of GDP). That is not a trim. That is going to leave people off the system. The good news is there is time to prepare and hopefully come up with ways to adjust, but bloody hell this is cruel. 

Yes you can say the NDIS was “out of control” But that’s what happens when you listen to the Productivity Commission and unleash the private sector to deliver public services. Profit becomes the motive and the shonks take over. 

Sigh.]

On top of savings there’s also very substantial spending restraint. 

Real spending growth averages just 1.5 per cent for the eight years to June 2030. 

This is the lowest average growth rate in any eight-year period for almost three and a half decades and less than half the 30-year average. 

As a result: 

We’ve returned every single dollar of revenue upgrades to the bottom line for the second consecutive update; and 

Payments as a share of the economy are forecast to go down from 26.8 per cent next year to 26.2 per cent by the middle of 2030. 

This responsible economic management means that: 

The budget deficit next financial year is $2.8 billion lower at $31.5 billion; 

The bottom line is better in every year over the forward estimates and medium term; 

The budget position has improved by $44.9 billion and this makes it more than a quarter of a trillion dollars better than when we came to office; 

Gross debt will be $982 billion at the end of this financial year, and it peaks lower, peaks earlier and is lower in every year for the next 11 years; and 

This means, in share of economy terms, gross and net debt remain well below what we inherited in every year going forward. 

[What he’s really saying here is “NO RBA, this is not inflationary so bugger off trying to blame me”] 

Debt is lower and the budget position is stronger in every year of the medium term because of our savings. 

The medium-term budget position is much stronger and more sustainable as a consequence, creating more room for future tax relief. 

(Grogs in bold)

We’re also modernising our energy system with a domestic gas reservation, and getting more solar and batteries into homes, which could save $7 billion in systems costs by 2050. 

We’re seizing the vast opportunities from AI with grants to commercialise AI innovations and making government more efficient. 

[AI will deliver IMO zero efficiencies, but hey it’s a buzz word, so through it in. Probably back in 1995 they were talking about the information superhighway. The difference there, was that actually did deliver productivity benefits. AI delivers slop and bias that requires checking. Apparently though it is good for coding. So much for telling journlists they shod learn to code, I guess]

We’re investing billions more in science and innovation, through the Medical Research Future Fund, and in the CSIRO and the Square Kilometre Array. 

And billions in the infrastructure we need to get people to work and to improve our regions, towns and cities. 

We’re also strengthening the performance test, so our $4.5 trillion super sector isn’t being discouraged from investing productive capital in areas like energy and housing. 

Tax reform for workers, businesses and future generations 

Speaker – 

The productivity package is ambitious and so are our tax reforms. 

This Budget includes the most significant tax reform package in more than a quarter of a century. 

This is about tax relief and tax reform to make our economy work for more Australians, businesses and future generations. 

We’re delivering a fairer tax system for workers, first home buyers and future generations. 

This will help rebalance a system which is more generous to assets than it is to labour. 

And help rebalance a system where house prices have decoupled from incomes. 

[This is the big part of the budget. What follows might have been taken verbatim from our many, many, many ope-eds, research papers, speeches etc on the topic over the past 25 years]

Since 1999, house prices have risen over 400 percent, more than twice as fast as average incomes. 

Our tax changes will help about 75,000 Australians achieve the dream of home ownership. 

We’ll limit negative gearing for residential property to new builds from July next year. 

And we’re replacing the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount with inflation-adjusted indexation, to restore the taxation of real gains. 

These changes will be prospective, and new builds will retain the option to use the 50 per cent discount. 

We’ll also introduce a minimum 30 per cent tax rate on capital gains from July next year, and on discretionary trusts from July the year after. 

[Brilliant changes. Keeping the discount and negative gearing for housing construction kills off anyone saying investment is hurt, and the 30% minimum is brilliant, and unexpected. Think on it – currently the 50% discount meant you could cut the 47% tax rate to 23.5%. Not no more! Love it. 

A year ago, I would have said there was no chance of this being done. This is a significant change that stops housing being treated as a casino where housing investors always win. It won’t fix everything, but after 26 years we are tearing down one of John Howard’s prized policies. Celebrate.]

(Grogs in bold)

Speaker – 

These housing reforms go to the core of our Budget strategy. 

Dealing with the very real pressures on people right now – 

While taking responsibility for the challenges facing the next generations. 

The shocks from around the world are coming at us faster and more frequently. 

That global uncertainty is not a reason to delay reform, it’s why we must move with urgency and ambition. 

The challenges coming at us, the opportunities ahead of us and the better future that Australians deserve, will not wait for a time when all is quiet in the world. 

That’s why this Budget invests in resilience and reform, to grow our economy the right way and lift living standards over time. 

We will do that through three ambitious policy packages. 

A productivity and investment package. 

A tax reform package. 

And a savings package. 

[As he toured around the press gallery, Chalmers’ big line was that the Iran War could have been an excuse to do nothing, but he was using it as a reason to do something]

Making our economy more productive 

Speaker – 

To lift wages and living standards we have to lift productivity. 

In the market sector, productivity has now grown for 5 consecutive quarters, and 1.5 per cent last year. 

This Budget is about going further and moving faster. 

This productivity package will help us attract and absorb more investment, make it easier and quicker to build, and slash compliance costs. 

The reforms we are announcing tonight will cut regulatory costs by $10.2 billion every year. 

Our efforts in National Competition Policy alone could boost GDP by $13 billion. 

This is the broadest productivity push in a budget since the 1990s. 

Boosting productivity 

Speaker – 

Our productivity plan starts with incentivising investment and innovation through the tax system for businesses, start-ups and venture capital. 

We’re cutting the unnecessary red tape holding us back, including $780 million every year in the financial sector alone. 

We’re also making tax time simpler for small businesses which will save them 376,000 hours a year. 

We’re getting rid of almost 600 more tariffs to reduce trade barriers, as well as expanding our Trusted Trader program and streamlining biosecurity for fertiliser imports. 

We’re also building a Single National Market through our National Competition Policy reforms, so Australia works as one economy not eight, with new work to make mandatory standards free for workers and businesses. 

And we’re making government simpler to deal with, through a “tell us once” approach so Australians don’t have to keep submitting the same information, and expanding the Digital ID. 

We will speed up approvals so businesses can quickly move from an investment decision to shovels in the ground. 

That’s the motivation behind our environmental law reforms, the Investor Front Door and a second round of foreign investment changes. 

We’ll also simplify building regulations for when those projects start construction. 

And we’re doing more on skills recognition and education so tradies can get their qualifications recognised more easily and businesses can find the skilled workers they need. 

We’re progressing the most significant reforms to the National Electricity Market since the 1990s as the world moves to net zero – including changes to help attract more investment in renewable energy and increase competition. 

[To be honest maybe this is all good. It’s pretty much impossible to measure if it will do anything. Cutting red tape can sound good, but worker safety laws ae “red tape” so you know, watch for the details]

(Grogs in bold)

Cheaper medicines and better healthcare 

The $6.4 billion tax offset is the biggest cost-of-living measure in this budget – 

But it’s not all we’re doing to support families under pressure. 

As a Labor government, we will always invest in Medicare, cheaper medicines and public health so Australians get the care they need, when they need it. 

This Budget includes another $25 billion for public hospitals. 

[Always good to fund public health]

We’re also investing $5.9 billion to list more medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, so Australians continue to access life changing medicines at cheaper prices. 

For example, cutting the cost of treatment for cystic fibrosis will save some Australians around $250,000 a year. 

[Not said, but implicit is “No Donald we are not going to dump the PBS, so f*ck you and your threats of tariffs”]

Medicare Urgent Care Clinics reduce out of pocket costs, because more bulk billing means less pressure on household budgets and emergency departments. 

By July, four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of one of the 137 clinics around the country. 

We’re permanently funding every one of them with $1.8 billion over the next four years and about half a billion dollars every year after that. 

More homes and a fair go for first home buyers 

Speaker – 

Australia’s longstanding housing shortage is making homes unaffordable. 

This challenge hits young workers and families hard and we’re addressing it from every responsible angle. 

The reforms in this Budget will lift our total investment in housing to a record $47 billion. 

We’re levelling the playing field for first home buyers with 5 per cent deposits and tax reform to help more young Australians into their own home. 

[This as you know is great, but also increasing demand so, not so great.]

We’ll invest another $2 billion in the power, roads and drains needed for new housing developments, which will help build around 65,000 new homes over the next decade. 

We’re working with states to cut red tape and planning delays which could unlock tens of thousands more. 

[This is a little bit “Abundance” stuff, and Dutton also had a bit of a policy to fund local infrastructure. Chalmers has stolen it. But importantly, unlike Dutton that is not where he stopped]

We’re extending our ban on foreign investors buying existing homes to take pressure off the market. 

And helping to fix the youth housing penalty, to secure homes for 4,000 young people at risk of homelessness. 

[The interesting bit is Chalmers does not mention the Capital Gains Tax discount changes here]

(Grogs in bold)

Speaker – 

Immediate relief from the fuel crisis is coupled with lasting and responsible cost-of-living measures. 

This Government cut taxes two years ago, we’re cutting them again this year, and next year too. 

Tonight, we are proud to be delivering another round of ongoing tax cuts for Australian workers. 

We will put more money into the pockets of 13.3 million workers with a new $250 Working Australians Tax Offset. 

It will begin from the second half of 2027 and be paid each year, ongoing and automatically in your tax return just like the instant deduction we’re rolling out as well. 

This offset is targeted to workers and represents the most meaningful, permanent increase to the effective tax-free threshold since Labor last increased it more than a decade ago. 

Altogether our five different tax cuts will benefit the average worker by up to $2,816 in 2028. 

Averaged out over the year, our three tax cuts, instant deduction and the new offset are the equivalent of up to $54 back in the average earner’s pocket each week.

[Every budget needs a good acronym, and now we have the WATO. It will work a bit like the old low-middle income tax offset, and you’ll only get it in July 2028 (it starts in July 2027, but you get it after the end of the financial year). Good thing about that is it is not a cash splash that will have the RBA thinking it needs to increase interest rates (you know because it believes govt spending is causing inflation even though it isn’t). 

It also means it does not hit the budget balance in 2026-27 and 2027-28. 

It’s also a clever tax cut because it is only for wages/salaries. You don’t get it if you get your income through investments. So it is about giving workers tax cuts and not investors etc.] 

(Grogs in bold)

Speaker – 

We understand this crisis is adding to the cost-of-living pressures facing Australians. 

That’s why we are taking some of the sting out of global price rises, by: 

• More than halving the fuel excise; 
• Reducing the heavy vehicle road user charge to zero; 
• Putting petrol companies on notice by doubling the consumer watchdog’s maximum penalties and ramping up enforcement and monitoring; 
• Giving businesses a bit more leeway at tax time if they’re facing fuel supply problems; and 
• Continuing to make it easier and quicker for small businesses to get access to credit if they need it. 

[nothing new here yet, but you can bet Jim would really not want oil to go to US$200bbl, because that halving of the petrol excise would be insignificant, whereas right now it is giving Austrlaians cheaper unleaded than they were paying before the Iran War]

(Grogs in bold)

We know there’s more work to do because the immediate costs and consequences of this war are already serious and could be severe. 

At the same time, our economy is being reshaped by structural shifts across energy, industry, technology, demography and geopolitics. 

And we have longstanding challenges when it comes to our productivity performance, our housing market and tax system. 

This Budget is about getting us through the global oil shock and taking pressure off Australians – 

While building a stronger economy, better tax system, more sustainable budget and lifting living standards for our people. 

[Ok, that’s the prelude, let’s get into it]

Responding to the global oil shock 

Speaker – 

We are responding to the biggest oil shock in history with a comprehensive $14.8 billion plan to secure more fuel, strengthen our supply chains, build resilience, and take the sting out of prices. 

The Strengthening Australia’s Fuel Resilience package will deliver more fuel for drivers and industry, more fertiliser for farmers and more fuel security for our economy. 

Its centrepiece is a $10 billion investment in immediate fuel supplies and a permanent Australian Fuel Security Reserve to get the fuels and fertiliser we need. 

We’re helping businesses and manufacturers bolster supply chains, with $1 billion in interest free loans through the National Reconstruction Fund and incentives to get more freight moving on trains and ships. 

Targeted support for electric vehicles, building more charging stations, and heavy vehicle reform are all investments in our long-term fuel resilience. 

We’ll produce more fuel through our $1.1 billion Cleaner Fuels Program, backed with reforms to our low carbon liquid fuels market to support demand. 

We’re reserving 20 per cent of gas exports for Australian users so there’s more supply at lower prices. 

And we’re making more progress on our Future Made in Australia agenda, supporting mining and processing through our Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve, and investments in domestic smelting and manufacturing. 

[This has all been announced already. At this point it is worth reminding everyone that the gas reservation policy will raise not one dollar of revenue. Gas companies still hate it because gas companies hate selling gas to Australians – they want to end as much as they can overseas as LNG rather than keep it here as natural gas. Not only are their better profits overseas, it is easier to avoid tax when you introduce the LNG aspect]

(Grogs is in bold)

We were already dealing with price pressures in our economy, but Treasury’s now forecasting inflation to peak around 5 per cent in the middle of the year because of the conflict. 

For the same reasons, it’s expecting growth to come in ½ a percentage point lower next financial year, to be 1 ¾ per cent overall. 

Treasury also presents a more severe scenario where the oil price peaks at $200 and takes three years to fall back down. 

[Yep, the worst case scenario is US$200bbl – so a doubling!. Would you like unleaded petrol to rise by $1 a litre?] 

We would still avoid a recession, but unemployment would spike to pre-pandemic levels and inflation would peak above 7 per cent. 

[Chalmers in his press conference was very much not promising we would not go into a recession should the worst-case scenario occur. It was “just a forecast”. One would hope should the worst case occur the RBA might help out… but perhaps Jim is thinking the RBA would only help to make sure of a recession…]

As Australians, we confront these serious challenges together from a position of strength. 

We are much better placed and better prepared than most countries to deal with this global crisis. 

Growth here is still higher than our peers, real incomes have been growing strongly, unemployment is historically low, and we have one of the strongest budgets in the world. 

Before the war, GDP growth was strengthening and broadening. 

The outlook for business investment remains robust, with a solid pipeline of data centre and renewable energy projects. 

Employment is still growing, and even if unemployment ticks up as expected it will stay around the mid 4s. 

[4s is a bit different from 4.0%. The RBA is ok with it rising to 4.7%, the budget figures only have it going up to 4.5%]

Nominal wages growth is expected to remain above 3 per cent and annual real wage growth will return from next year, after growing for eight of the last nine quarters. 

[Real wages according to RBA will be pretty meagre for the next couple year. The budget is a bit more optimistic, but we remain a long way from getting back to the value of wages we had before the pandemic] 

Greg Jericho (in bold)

Speaker – 

We’re dealing with a fifth economic shock in less than 20 years. 

[GFC, Pandemic, Ukraine, Iran War… errr minimg boom is a shock I guess?]

The conflict in the Middle East and closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the global economy and the global outlook. 

Oil production fell by 8 million barrels a day in the first month of the war – almost eight times more than any of the oil shocks since the 1970s. 

The global oil price started the year around $60 and has now been above $100 for the bulk of the past two months. 

A third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser has been stuck, putting pressure on food production, food security and supermarket prices. 

All of this has made the outlook much more uncertain. 

Treasury’s central forecast assumes oil stays around $100 per barrel until the end of next month and glides to $80 by the end of June next year. 

On that assumption, it would still be above its pre-conflict price in 12 months’ time. 

[And so at this point I would like to say to the President of the Untied States, f*ck you.. Oh wait, sorry that was me, not Jim Chalmers]

This means Treasury now expects global growth to slow from 3.5 per cent last year to just 3 per cent this year. 

Inflation is spiking all around the world – and Australia is not immune from these global price rises. 

Australians have been paying a hefty price for this war, at the bowser and beyond. 

[Those global price rises also affect LNG prices. But guess what? Revenue from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax is set to fall – from a “high”  – lulz – of $1.9bn in 2026-27 to just $1.25bn in 2029-30. This is despite gas companies telling senator at last month’s gas tax inquiry that the PRRT boom would hit “at the end of this decade”.

In this current financial year PRRT is set to be $1.3bn LESS than beer excise. By 2029-30 it will be $1.85bn less. Yeah. Gas companies are taking the piss and the calls to tax the gas will only get louder after tonight] 

Greg Jericho has annotated this speech for you:

Resilience and reform 

Speaker – 

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people here, and the Yagara and Yugambeh back home in Logan. 

Speaker – 

This is the most important and ambitious Budget in decades. 

[It actually is. This might be damning with faint praise, given how pathetic previous budgets have been. But this budget is taking down one of the worst tax changes done by John Howard. So ring the bell and cheer]

Important because the world is throwing a lot at us – and this Budget is about helping Australia deal with these challenges. 

And ambitious because we have so much going for us – and this Budget is about Australia seizing those opportunities. 

War in the Middle East has been pushing up prices, pushing down growth, and punishing Australians. 

[Thanks Donald]

It has exposed weaknesses in the global economy and intensified longstanding challenges here at home. 

We didn’t decide when this war began and have no control over when it will properly end. 

[Don’t worry Trump doesn’t know either]

But how we respond is up to us. 

How we help each other through. 

And how we come out of this a stronger, fairer, more productive and more resilient nation. 

This Budget is ambitious in the face of adversity. 

[Chalmers has a real emphasis on ambition but also stability, And while it does veer a little bit into Veep territory, what he is trying to do is massively change housing, but do it in a way that doesn’t scare people by making them think things are changing too fast]

Jim Chalmers:

This is the most important and ambitious budget in decades. Important because the world is throwing a lot of us, and this budget is about helping Australia deal with those challenges.

The show can’t officially start until Jim Chalmers is on his feet. His family is here, along with some other special supporters.

Things have become so ridiculous in recent years, that Chalmers’ wife, journalist and editor Laura Chalmers, has had her outfits costed and made into a story – which is insane.

Milton Dick calls everyone to order and then he calls up the treasurer.

The chamber is filling, the MPs are buzzing and Jim Chalmers is about to hand down his latest budget.

Ready?

Grab your night treats and let’s do this.

The government also responded to the ‘State of Diabetes Mellitus in Australia’ report after what Dr Monique Ryan said was 678 days.

She is also not impressed.

“Australia’s diabetes epidemic is a public health crisis. Nearly 1.5 million Australians are living with diagnosed diabetes and, in the past decade, diagnoses have increased by 44 per cent in people aged 21 to 39. Children as young as nine are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, an unknown phenomenon a generation ago. 

“Tabling the Government’s response on Budget Day is no coincidence. This is a bitterly disappointing reaction to the inquiry’s thoughtful, evidence-based report. The government has deferred action on every measure identified for arresting this epidemic, particularly a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages, and expanded subsidised access to continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and insulin pumps for insulin-dependent diabetics.” 

More than 130 jurisdictions around the world have implemented levies on sugar-sweetened beverages, and seen consumption reduced,  industry reformulation, and revenue invested in prevention. The Australian Medical Association has projected a levy of 50 cents per 100 grams of sugar would reduce annual sugar consumption by around two kilograms per person and raise $3.6 billion over four years, while Grattan Institute predicted sustained reductions in Type 2 diabetes, dental disease, and premature deaths. The RACP, AMA, Diabetes Australia, and the Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance have all called for a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages. 

Dr Ryan: “The experts are unanimous, but the government is not listening.  A government that ignores the most cost-effective prevention measure is more focused on avoiding industry pressure than on protecting Australians from diabetes. It has kicked the can down the road — and that can contains 10 teaspoons of sugar. 

“As a paediatric neurologist, I’ve seen first-hand what inadequate access to diabetes technology means for children and families. I am also concerned that the government’s response does not commit to expanded subsidised access to insulin pumps for people with Type 1 diabetes, or to equitable access to GLP-1 receptor agonists for high-risk patients in remote and disadvantaged communities — both of which were strongly supported by the committee, RACP and Diabetes Australia.” 

Implementing the ‘State of Diabetes Mellitus in Australia’ report in full would deliver: 

• A graduated levy on sugar-sweetened beverages modelled on international best practice, with revenue directed to prevention; 

• Expanded subsidised CGM access for all insulin-dependent diabetics; 

• Removal of age limitations on subsidised insulin pump access for people with Type 1 diabetes; 

• Mandatory food labelling to clearly identify added sugar content; 

• Comprehensive restrictions on advertising of junk food and sugary drinks to children; and 

• Equitable access to GLP-1 agonists and bariatric surgery for high-risk patients who cannot afford out-of-pocket costs.

Dr Ryan: “The diabetes epidemic won’t wait for another review. The Government should commit to implementing these recommendations in full. I’ll be pushing, in parliament and in the community, to make sure it does.” 

David Pocock has also responded:

“If the Government was proud of this response, it wouldn’t be trying to bury it on Budget day,” Senator Pocock said.

“This is a cowardly attempt to avoid scrutiny of a deeply inadequate response to one of the most significant public health inquiries this Parliament has seen that produced a report that had the unanimous backing of the entire parliament.”

The Government appears to be partially implementing just three of the Murphy Review’s 31 recommendations: a partial gambling advertising restriction, a national public education campaign and increased enforcement against illegal offshore gambling services.

“Even the Government’s own regulator has previously warned that partial advertising bans don’t work and can lead to more gambling advertising, yet the Government is still refusing to implement the phased, comprehensive ban recommended by the Murphy Review.”

“Meanwhile, critical recommendations have simply gone unanswered, including a ban on gambling inducements, increased funding for gambling research, nationally consistent data collection on gambling harm and suicide, and the establishment of a national gambling regulator – apparently none of these warranted a response by the Albanese Government.”

“At a time when reports suggest hundreds of BetStop breaches were unable to be penalised because investigations took too long, it’s outrageous that the Government has failed to establish a strong national regulator for this multi-billion dollar industry.”

“Instead, the Government appears content to leave the Northern Territory Racing Commission as the de facto regulator for online gambling, despite longstanding concerns about its effectiveness and independence.”

“When even recommendations like appointing a dedicated Minister for gambling harm are deemed too difficult, Australians are right to question whether this Government is serious about reducing harm.”

“These were not radical recommendations. They were basic measures aimed at improving coordination, accountability and public awareness. Rather than treating gambling as the public health issue that it is and implementing evidence-based policy, the Albanese government has yet again put vested interests ahead of Australians”

Here is what Andrew Wilkie had to say about the delayed response to the gambling ad regulations report the government responded to just after question time….after 1049 days of sitting on it.

Well it took the Federal Government more than a thousand days to respond to the Murphy gambling report, and all we’ll get from the 31 recommendations is three partially implemented reforms, two of which were already underway before the Murphy inquiry.

The Murphy report was cross-party and unanimous. It provided the best researched and considered blueprint for gambling reform ever achieved by the Federal Parliament. No competent and caring government could do anything but embrace all the recommendations and commit to implement them as soon as humanly possible.

But instead the Government has opted to abandon the public interest, deciding instead to put first the commercial interests of the gambling and media companies, as well as the AFL and the NRL. This is shameful behaviour. Even if implementing all 31 recommendations was too much for the Government, there is no conceivable excuse for not implementing at least the gambling advertising ban and establishing an effective national regulator.

No wonder big swathes of the community are recoiling from the ALP and Coalition parties, not that I hold any hope that the ascendant One Nation party would be any better on gambling reform. A pox on all of them.

Hello! Welcome back. The anticipation is….well, I can’t lie. It’s not buzzing, but the Labor MPs seem pretty happy with themselves, so they think this will be a good budget.

Jim Chalmers will take to his feet in about 10 minutes and then it will be GO for the budget coverage.

Don’t worry – we aren’t going far – just preparing for the budget hand down which starts in about 3.5 hours time.

The government is getting excited though – it has released this social media video in anticipation. Which, if you don’t want to click through features Anthony Albanese, Katy Gallagher and Jim Chalmers saying:

“Buying your first home shouldn’t feel impossible.

“But right now, too many young people feel locked out of the housing market.

“Tonight we’re changing Australia’s tax system to level the playing field for them. and boosting housing supply to level the playing field.

“This is about doing the right thing to help more young Australians buy a home of their own.

“We’re already helping first home buyers with 5% deposits.

“And we’re building 100,000 homes reserved just for them.

“Tonight we’ll also announce new ways to boost supply even further.

“Because when you work hard and save, you should have a fair go at owning your own home.”

Hmmm, let’s wait and see shall we?

And the response to the Peta Murphy gambling ad reform report, which was handed down more than three years ago – is now online.

It’s seven pages long, which doesn’t seem like something it would take more than 1000 pages to come up with, but here is the official response brief:

The Government notes the 31 recommendations made by the Committee. The Government announced a package of gambling reforms on 2 April 2026, to better protect Australians from the harms of online gambling. These reforms were informed by the work of the Committee and a number of these measures also build on what was proposed in the Online Gambling Inquiry report, in response to new and emerging challenges.

A number of recommendations made by the committee relate to policy within the responsibility of States and Territories. The Australian Government calls on States and Territories to examine the recommendations of the committee and respond accordingly.

The Government’s package includes:

• restricting wagering advertising

• boosting enforcement action against illegal online gambling services

• strengthening the operation of BetStop – the National Self-Exclusion Register (BetStop)

• addressing harmful and emerging online lottery products

• doubling financial counselling support for gambling, and

• increasing public awareness of online gambling harms targeted to those most at risk.

The Government will also make match-fixing criminal offences consistent across Australia, improving the integrity of Australian sport and lessening its appeal as a target for criminal infiltration.

The Government will develop legislation to implement these measures where required, with the reforms to begin from 1 January 2027. Further details will be refined through the legislative drafting process, which will include consultation with relevant stakeholders.

These reforms build on the significant measures already delivered to reduce online gambling harms, including: introducing new evidence-based taglines in March 2023; launching BetStop in August 2023; banning the use of credit cards and other credit-related products for online wagering in June 2024, and introducing mandatory minimum classifications for gambling-like content, including loot boxes and simulated gambling in computer games in September 2024.

Tonight’s Budget should also be judged by what it does outside the health portfolio. 

Housing, homelessness and education are, in fact, health policies. 

A person without secure housing is more likely to experience stress, mental ill-health, chronic disease and avoidable hospital use. A child who falls behind at school is more likely to carry disadvantage into adulthood, with consequences for income, employment and health. 

If the Budget invests in hospitals and aged care – but does too little on the upstream determinants of health – it’s still funding the consequences of disadvantage rather than tackling its causes.

That includes prevention, of course. The biggest health gains don’t come from more clinics or hospital beds, but from the conditions that allow people to live healthy lives: a stable home, enough income, good schools, safe communities, affordable healthy food and environments that make healthy choices easier. 

Plumbing, for example, has arguably contributed more to health than health care. That’s down to sanitation. Clean water and sewage disposal were voted by British Medical Journal readers as the greatest medical advance – ahead of antibiotics, vaccines and anaesthesia.

The wonderful thing about prevention is that it not only reduces reliance on expensive health services, it also promotes economic productivity and prosperity. Eliminating obesity, for example, would increase Australia’s GDP by 2.5%.

Everyone benefits, not just the individual – exactly the result of Australia’s world-leading tobacco reforms.

Tonight’s Budget measures should be read in terms of how they promote better health … not just how they fund treating disease. 

Tonight’s federal budget will tell us about where the Albanese government thinks the pressure points are in Australia’s care economy – particularly health, aged care and disability.

On health care, the government is locking in Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, with $1.8 billion over five years to make them permanent. These clinics are designed to take pressure off emergency departments by giving people a free, walk-in alternative for problems that are urgent but not life-threatening.

Public hospitals are set to receive a funding boost under the new five-year health funding agreement with the states and territories. But the real question is whether extra money will translate into shorter waits, safer care and better access — or simply help hospitals run faster to stand still?

For aged care, there’s a $3 billion package, including more residential aged care beds and changes to make personal care – such as showering, dressing and continence support – free under Support at Home. This matters because too many older Australians are ‘stranded’ in hospital not because they need hospital care, but because there is nowhere appropriate for them to go.

The private health insurance rebate for over-65s will be reduced to the same level as younger cohorts. This is expected to save about $3 billion over four years, with the money redirected to aged care.

The government wants to slow NDIS growth sharply. It will tighten eligibility, move away from diagnosis-based access, reduce average plan spending, and shift some supports back into the community. The risk, of course, is moving people out of the NDIS before alternative services exist, “reform” becomes cost-shifting to NDIS recipients, states, territories and other agencies.

Also, it mustn’t escape our attention that the NDIS isn’t the only expenditure item exhibiting sharp growth. Fossil fuel subsidies are, in fact, growing faster. Will we see a cut to those?

Also, a tax on gas exports could raise up to $17 billion a year – enough to fund several initiatives that would help vulnerable Australians.

And straight after QT, Tony Burke tables a buttload of papers, including:

Referral made May 2021 (5th report of 2021)—Government response, April 2026.

Social Policy and Legal Affairs—Standing Committee—You win some, you lose more: Online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm—Government response, May 2026.

We’ll let you know when that is online.

The last question is a dixer on the government’s gambling advertising ‘reform’. Albanese says:

At the National Press Club in April, I announce it will build on the reforms we have already delivered to combat gambling hub, working to one minimize children’s exposure to wagering. Advertising. Two, break the connection between wagering and sport. And three, Reduce the Saturation and targeted nature of wagering. Advertising.

This package forms our response to the social policy and legal affairs committee inquiry into this issue, which will be tabled later today. These reforms get the balance right so children don’t grow up thinking sport and gambling are inextricably linked, but letting adults have a pun if they want to, our changes will empower all Australians to opt out of all gambling advertising on all streaming services and digital platforms, they will ban all gambling ads during live sports broadcast between 6am and 8:30pm and ban all gambling ads on radio during school pick up and drop off time, celebrities and sports players will not be able to appear in gambling ads. And will you ban the use of odd style ads that target sporting fans, gambling ads in sports venues and on players. Jumpers and uniforms will be banned, and we’re cracking down on online lotteries products and banning online Kino pocket pokies.

We will make match fixing a criminal offense across Australia and boost enforcement against illegal offshore gambling providers. We will strengthen vet stock, further expand financial cancer counseling support and increase public awareness of online gambling harms. These build on our previous reforms.

They will make a meaningful difference. I encourage all members of the parliament to support them, and on that note, Mr. Speaker asks that further questions be placed on the notice paper

Mary Aldred is back with take two on Anika Wells, but the communications minister is prepared and after a question about whether any notes were taken at the meeting she mentioned, Wells says:

I thank the member for her question. This has been the subject of a full audit of independent parliamentary expenses authority. I voluntarily referred myself to IPEA to review all of my travel across 2022 to 2025 IP reviewed nearly 2000 line items and 243 different trips during that time. During this trip, IPEA has deemed this trip to be the dominant purpose for parliamentary purposes. It encompassed four different matters across two days, an announcement of supporting schools funding, and three other appointments across the two days. IPEA has judged this to be entirely within the rules. And if you are, if you have further questions, I can refer you to the report, which is publicly available and 256 pages long.

Barnaby Joyce wants to know what are the most expensive line items for the inland rail, which was his baby while in the Nationals, and a total white elephant of a project from the beginning. He is very sad faced that his vanity project is now being called what it is.

Joyce:

The minister has claimed that there is a $31 billion blowout in the cost of the construction of the Inland Rail.
To give confidence to the validity of these numbers, as it seems rather incredible, can the minister nominate the five largest cost items, and the amount that is associated with them that is part of the $31 billion amount. And if you can’t nominate one of the five largest ones, can you nominate one and the cost item that is associated with it?

Catherine King was thrilled with this one:

Well, I can nominate who’s responsible for this debacle of a project, and that might be the person who asked me this question, and some of his National Party colleagues, the Inland Rail, frankly, is a absolute and utter perfect example of why the National Party and their one nation colleagues should never, ever, ever again, be allowed near the Treasury coffers.

This is the worst project in the country in the way in which it was developed.

And I’m going to talk you through this. In 2013 we provisioned a billion dollars to do the planning work for Inland Rail, the planning work, it was never done. The government went and went out and announced a $9 billion program for Inland Rail, funded by debt, not funded off cash balance, but funded off debt to build Inland Rail without any planning, without any idea about how it was going to get into the Port of Melbourne or into the port of Brisbane. No idea about that at all. Instead, they announced $9.3 billion to fund the whole thing. To fund the whole thing. I’m giving you a history lesson…

Joyce has issues with relevance and King is told to stick to the question. She continues.

And by 2020 the cost estimate would then risen to $16.4 billion again funded from debt, of course, when we came to office in 2022 we inherited this project.

And the first thing that I was told by the Australian rail track Corporation, who all of the figures come from the ARTC, we were told that the project would need substantially more funding to finish it. But the ARTC could not tell us how much they did not know.

They did not know how much it would cost. So we commissioned an independent expert to review the project, and Dr Schott, when she released her review and the figures were based on those from the ARTC itself, she said it looked like it was going to cost an additional $31.4 billion but she couldn’t be sure.

So what we did is we then got ARTC and then Inland Rail, having accepted all of those recommendations, to have a look at it again, and they then said to us very clearly that it is now a $45 billion project, a $45 billion project now the summary of the asil Allen work, if you care to go and have a look, is on my department’s website, and it will show to you that all of those, all of the ARTC estimates say that it is now a $45 billion project. Now, frankly, every single one of the people who’ve been involved in this project should hang their heads in shame.

It is a project that, frankly, we will now get to parks, which will see us begin to get a return Finally, on our investment, we will never get the money back for Inland Rail. And frankly, as I’d say in Victoria, you’ve got more front than Myers to ask that question

Josh Burns then asks Michelle Rowland:

My question is to the Attorney General, can the Attorney General please update the House on the work of the Royal Commission into anti semitism and social cohesion, including its recently published interim report?

Rowland:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the member for his question. I acknowledge this issue is one that is deeply personal to him and to others in this place. We will never forget that on the 14th of December last year, the deadliest terrorist attack on Australian soil occurred, taking the lives of 15 innocent people and wounding dozens more.

This must never happen again.

It was an attack not only on Jewish Australians, but on all Australians. And people in this country should not feel unsafe simply because of their identity.

Mr. Speaker, in the aftermath of this horrific attack, the government acted to address abhorrent incidents of hatred and ensure that our laws are effective against evolving threats. And on the eighth of January, the government also established the Royal Commission on anti semitism and social cohesion, led by former High Court Justice the honorable Virginia Bell.

This Royal Commission, Mr. Speaker, is an important opportunity for Australians, particularly Jewish Australians, to have their voices heard. Mr. Speaker, I’ve been moved by the evidence given by individuals since the hearings commenced on the fourth of May, and I’m heartened to hear of the safe and respectful environment the commission has enabled for its witnesses appearing before a Royal Commission and sharing these deeply personal, often confronting experiences is significant, and we should acknowledge that as a parliament, and I’m sure I speak for all members in this place, when I thank those who have shown such bravery in appearing before the commission, and note that more than 10,000 submissions have been made so far, I continue to encourage members of the public with experience or knowledge relevant to the Royal Commission to make a submission and to follow the proceedings.

On the 30th of April, the Royal Commission delivered its interim report, which has been widely welcomed by peak Jewish groups, including the New South Wales Jewish board of deputies and the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.
While Commissioner Bell found no gaps in existing legal or regulatory frameworks impeded the ability of law enforcement and security agencies to prevent or respond to the Bondi attack, the Commission did make 14 recommendations, including with respect to enhancing our National CounterTerrorism arrangements and capabilities.

The government will adopt and implement all recommendations of the interim report* as they relate to the Commonwealth. I thank Commissioner Bell and the Royal Commission for its work to date, and note that a final report will be delivered by the 14th of December, as the Prime Minister has said, this royal commission is not the start or the end of what Australia must do to eradicate anti semitism.

We’ll continue to support the work of our special envoy for combating anti semitism, Jillian Segel, and work with states and territories to implement Australia’s counter terrorism and violent extremism strategy. We’ve taken action against hate crimes and we’re delivering tougher gun laws. This Royal Commission strengthens our collective actions to help keep all Australians safe and ensure this tragedy never happens again.

*The security aspects of this report were redacted, and the security agencies gave evidence behind closed doors, so we don’t know what they were asked or how the commission has come to some of these conclusions.

Liberal MP Mary Aldred then asks Anika Wells:

My question is to the Minister for Communications, does the minister stand by her declaration to the independent inquiry into her travel that on the evening of Saturday, the seventh of June last year, she held an official ministerial meeting with South Australian Labor Minister Chris Picton at Mrs. Picton’s 40th birthday party, which was held at a live music venue?

Wells:

Thank you very much for the question, yes, I stand by everything that I have said to the independent parliamentary expenses authority. They have reviewed all the documents that I have contributed on that matter. I also note Minister Picton has confirmed that series of events, in a series [statements to] of media outlets.

Health minister Mark Butler then takes a dixer on Australian passengers who were onboard a cruise ship where a passenger tested positive for the Hantavirus:

Hantavirus is a very, very rare virus for humans, and even rarer still is the transmission from human to human. But where it does happen, we know it can be a very serious, even deadly, disease. There has, as I think, all members of the House understand, been an outbreak of this virus on a cruise ship, Hondius, in the Northern Hemisphere.

There have been five Australians, four Australian citizens and one permanent resident, as well as a New Zealander, impacted by that outbreak as passengers on the cruise ship. Yesterday, I reported there have been eight reported cases of this from cruise ship passengers and three deaths, very sadly, overnight, that number has increased, and there has been a report of a French national being hospitalized after returning to France and is currently in a critical condition.

Mr. Speaker, now those five Australians and that New Zealander are in the process of being repatriated to Australia overnight.

They were flown from Tenerife to the Netherlands. They are in good health. They are being kept informed about the arrangements that we are putting in place, and foreign affairs is in the process of finalizing a flight to repatriate them to Australia.

Now our government, Mr. Speaker, has a very clear view that quarantine arrangements for people arriving in Australia are a national responsibility, not something to be left, potentially to different state governments putting in place different arrangements across state borders, so these travelers will be subject to arrangements that have been determined by our government.

Mr. Speaker, now hand of virus over the last 24 hours has been listed as a human disease under the Biosecurity Act, which means it can be now be subject to quarantine orders that will be made. These passengers will be flown into RAF base Pierce north east of Perth, and they will be immediately transferred to the National resilience center, or quarantine Center at bullsbrook, which is effectively next door, and will be staffed by staff from the NCC, trc deployed from Darwin.

Mr. Speaker, they will be quarantined there for three weeks, which is the strongest quarantine arrangement by any government that is receiving repatriated passengers from this cruise ship, and after those three weeks, we’ll be taking further advice from public health officials.

Labor MP Marion Scrymgour asks Albanese:

Prime Minister, following the tragic death of Kumanjayi Little Baby in my community of Mparntwe in Alice Springs, how is the parliament and the government standing in solidarity with the family and our community at this sad time, during sorry business?

Albanese:

I thank the member for Lingari for her question and for her leadership, along with the Minister for Indigenous Australians on what is an extraordinarily difficult period, on behalf of the government and the parliament, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Kumanjayi Little Baby, they are trying to bear what must be unbearable amid their devastation, they have asked for the space to allow sorry business to occur so the memory of their beautiful child can be cherished and honored.

Kumanjayi Little Baby was just five years old, a bright, young soul who loved the world in the joyful, curious, uncomplicated way that five year olds do.
She loved puppies and bluey and the color pink. She loved going to kindy, and she loved her family because they so profoundly and deeply loved her.
Our hearts go out to the community in Alice Springs over days, hundreds of people, volunteers from all walks of life joined law enforcement in their search for Kumanjayi Little Baby. In a spirit of unity, they now come together in their grief. Mr. Speaker, this tragedy has shattered a family and shaken a community. We know that amidst the pain, there is also anger, and that is understandable. The simple truth is that all governments of all persuasions over generations, have not done enough to deal with what are generational challenges, because every Australian child has the right to grow up safe and loved with the security of a roof over their head, with the opportunity of a great education to be empowered to make the most of their potential and their life. Kumanjayi Little Baby deserved all of that for all those around the nation devastated by her loss, we look to the words of her mum, who has asked all Australians too, and I quote her, look up to the night sky and find the brightest star where Kumanjayi Little Baby, is now in heaven. Together. Let us reflect on that wish as we mourn the loss of a bright young life in an extraordinarily sad tragedy.

Andrew Hastie tries the broken promises line – this has been the Coalition’s line on this, which has been enthusiastically picked up by a lot of the media, because these things tend to play out in a paint by numbers way.

Matt Canavan, who had only last month said the Coalition couldn’t just microwave Milton Friedman’s ideas, had suggested Labor needed to go to an election straight away, which is hilarious because the Coalition would lose even more seats if an election were to be held right now, only hastening their irrelevancy. They would lose to One Nation, which, according to Barnaby Joyce, wants Australia to be more like Singapore, which has an authoritarian government, but good “management” according to Joyce.

So you know, it’s all over the place and ‘broken promises’ is all they have. Hastie himself said no one was going to win a medal for being the last defenders of neoliberalism and that the Liberal party couldn’t be the last line of defence for corporate Australia.

So outside of parliament, it’s all ‘reform, reform, reform’ from these agitators, but that doesn’t seem to pop up in much of the reporting on ‘broken promises’.

Darren Chester is up now and he asks…before the last election, the prime minister promised Australians he would not impose any new taxes on farmers and small businesses. The Prime Minister has said, and I quote, I’m a Prime Minister who, when I make a commitment, and when I say, I’ll do something, I do it. And I think the Australian people understand that Prime Minister – why should Australians ever trust another commitment this Labor government makes?

(Side note, the Liberal MP for Flinders, Zoe McKenzie has spent the break levelling up her reactions to her colleagues questions. She is LOCKED IN to responding. She is absolutely ResponseMaxxing here and that needs to be acknowledged. Obviously she missed out on a great career being part of a musical theatre chorus)

Albanese:

Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I’m asked about tax policy and about whether changes should be made to tax policy, and indeed, the not sure of all their titles, whatever the title is, of the member of the national party opposite the member for Gibson is that Keith’s party was a part of having the review That was called for and voted for and conducted by the Senate, along with their partners in the in the sometimes partners in the Liberal Party and also the Greens political party, indeed one of the senators opposite as well….

He is interrupted and then decides he has completed his answer.

There is a back and forth again over the ‘broken promise’ which in this case is a government (partly) addressing an obvious inequity in our society, which has been obvious for years, but is now showing up in every single focus and research group and is fuelling so much discontent, the government is worried about where the anger will end up – and Anthony Albanese responds by pointing out all the Coalition MPs who have spoken on the need for some sort of housing tax reform.

This makes the Coalition sad faced and then they try to derail it with a point of order debate, which – no one cares about. Also no one is watching. This is just for an audience of one.

Why we sit through some pointless back and forth over a point of order that is not a point of order (honestly – these people need to get out more) could I recommend you have a read (and maybe think of supporting) one of our blog readers and Point community members, Phonakins who has written on the real impacts of the budget talk on those who feel it the most – particularly about the lack of talk on welfare (which now sits at about $291 below the poverty line)

So, it’s Federal Budget Day, and while the government tried to ease us into their cutting of the NDIS and there being little offered directly to the poorest to help their situation, there’s a few little interesting nuggets that tell you a lot about the government of the day.

One is the news that the Feds will give payments of about $6000 to community housing providers for each person on Youth Allowance or youth rates of DSP they house. This isn’t a nice little bonus to encourage them to rent to younger people, but a payment to stop them overtly discriminating in who they give tenancies to. You see, because they can only take 30% of your payment as rent, they don’t get as much from those on youth rates so they’re more likely to give a house to an older person on DSP or Aged Pensions. Obviously since there’s such a massive waitlist (in NSW the priority waitlist has increased from 5800 households in June 2021 to 12478 now) they’re not leaving places empty.

Of course, the government could look to lessen how far behind youth are starting when trying to get rentals by increasing the payments for all adults to the same rates by payments (Youth rates go to you turn 22)… I mean the Fair Work Commission has started making changes to youth pay rates for some awards this year. I don’t see much out there being cheaper if you’re 18-21 than if you’re 22….

The first dixer is on what is the government doing about fuel and the inflation crisis Israel and the US’s illegal attack on Iran has caused (the question obviously doesn’t say that, but that context is important in all of these discussions) and Anthony Albanese says:

Indeed, from the outset of February 28 we said that the longer that the war goes on, the more serious the economic impact will be.

We’ve continued to call for a de escalation. We want to see peace in the region. We want to see the Strait of Hormuz opened up to normal traffic.

We can see, though, that there is having an impact here at home, even though this is a war in which Australia is not a protagonist, but we are shielding Australians from the worst, and so far, we have made a positive difference.

The fuel excise cut is easing pressure, and the release of some fuel reserves has helped distribution, especially in the regions, we’re constantly engaging with our trading partners in the region, I traveled to Malaysia, to Brunei and Singapore. Minister Wong has traveled to Japan, Korea and China. I’ve hosted the Prime Minister of Japan and spoke with Premier Li of China.

This is all making a difference, something that was actually criticized by those opposite through export finance Australia, extra cargoes of shiploads of fuel and fertilizer, hundreds of millions of liters of diesel are coming to Australia, and that shows why our reputation internationally as a stable, reliable partner, is really important for us, and tonight’s budget will focus on making Australia’s economy even more resilient as we go forward.

Central to that will be our $10 billion Australian fuel security and resilience package, a government owned fuel Reserve of 1 billion liters, the first since World War Two, lifting our national fuel reserves to 50 days, establishing a fuel and fertilizer security facility, increasing supply and storage, getting Australia through this crisis, but doing it in a way, Mr. Speaker, so that we’re stronger on the other side of it. That is our aim.

Now, we do live in very turbulent times. There is a great deal of uncertainty about when this conflict will end, about what the impact will be.
All we can do is to put in place every measure at our disposal to protect Australia’s national interest. That’s what I’ve been doing.

That’s what the Minister for energy has been doing. That’s what the Minister for Trade, who has responsibility for EFA, has been doing as well, and it is making a positive difference. The fact that there is more fuel in Australia today than there was on February 28 says that we have got these measures right, but of course, we’re not through what is a global crisis going forward.

The condolence motions have moved to the federation chamber, so now it is into the questions.

The treasurer is absent – he is wandering around the lock up and will hold a press conference in there.

And we get to the questions.

The first one is on…broken promises (again – can’t get Ballad of a Thin Man out of my head)

Angus Taylor:

The prime minister has said, quote, My word is my bond. I’ve always been a man of my word. And I believe that when you go to an election and you make commitments, you should stick to them. Yet reports in all major newspapers confirm that government, the government, is about to impose new taxes on housings, housing savings, small businesses and farmers. Why should Australians ever trust another commitment this Labor government makes

Albanese treats it as a dixer – listing off what Labor sees as successes – tax cuts, medicare, urgent care and endo care clinics, improvements to aged care and economic management.

There is now a condolence motion for former Labor Shortland MP and Hawke government minister, the Honourable Peter Frederick Morris OAM.

Anthony Albanese is delivering a speech now.

But before it gets to the questions, Richard Marles is delivering a statement honouring Special Air Service Regiment soldier Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Muddle.

Lachlan Muddle joined the Australian Army in 1994. He was a member of the Special Air Service regiment the SAS, and he qualified for the SAS in 2007. He was deployed on five separate occasions, including to Afghanistan. He was an expert sniper. He was a seriously experienced Special Forces soldier. He’s remembered for his sense of humor and for his commitment to service as a result of last night’s accident, a series of investigations will now take place, both within the defense force and beyond. It’s really important that they are as thorough as possible, so that every necessary lesson is learned here.

But let me say that the Defense Force trains as it fights, and necessarily there is risk in Defense Force training, and so Lachlan muddles sacrifice is every bit as meaningful and significant as those we have lost on the battlefield.

This afternoon, our thoughts are very much with Lachlan Muddle’s family and with his defense family, the SAS, who I know will be feeling his loss acutely.

Angus Taylor then adds a statement of his own.

Anthony Albanese has released a statement on the death of Special Air Service Regiment soldier Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Muddle. This follows a press conference with Richard Marles who said an investigation has been launched:

We grieve with the family and friends of Special Air Service Regiment soldier Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Muddle, who died yesterday in a training accident at Jervis Bay.

Our hearts also go out to his Army family and the broader Defence community.

Another soldier sustained minor injuries and we wish him a swift and full recovery.

This tragic accident is a stark reminder that there are no easy days for those who defend our nation.

We are in the debt of every Australian who serves and puts themselves on the line for all of us.

May Warrant Officer Class Two Muddle live on in every heart he touched.

A majority of Australians now think Donald Trump is a bigger threat to world peace than either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.

On the 100th episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss new Australia Institute polling on Australians’ views of Trump, the deadlock between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, and what it might take for the Australian government to exit the AUKUS submarine deal.

A little earlier today, MOAD opened its press gallery exhibit, which takes people through what the press gallery looked like in the times it was at Old Parliament House.

Michelle Grattan and Laurie Oakes were inducted into what is like the press gallery journalist hall of fame with a life time achievement award. Grattan couldn’t attend to accept as she was busy working for the budget – but Oakes gave a speech.

Most of the gallery is about to lose their internet and phones, so enjoy the peace and quiet!

We will take you through QT and then go and prepare for the budget release at 7.30pm

The ABC’s Ian Verrender has written a very good piece on the subject of momentum – and how the government is catching up

There’s a point where the momentum takes over.

After being rejected twice by an electorate that didn’t want to give up lucrative tax arrangements for property, the Albanese government has sniffed the breeze and decided the time is ripe for change.

When the federal budget is released tonight, negative gearing will be curbed and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount will be overhauled.

There will be plenty of attacks pointing out that the prime minister specifically ruled out the changes at the last election and has therefore broken an election promise.

But the mounting pressure over housing and the burden it has placed on younger Australians has reached a point where many believe it is no longer acceptable to simply turn a blind eye.

What is that line in the Bob Dylan song? There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr Jones?

Mr Jones in Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man was a journalist. He was writing about people asking questions because they didn’t understand what was happening. You’re going to see a bit of that in the press gallery as this budget starts setting the government on more of a reform platform than it has been on (not saying it is fixing everything, but it is pointing in a different direction for maybe the first time since it was elected.)

Defence have released an updated statement on the death of Special Air Service Regiment soldier Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Muddle during a training accident this morning:

It is with great sadness Defence can confirm the death of Special Air Service Regiment soldier Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Muddle during a parachute training accident on the evening of 11 May 2026. The death of one of our soldiers is a tragedy and deeply felt by the Army family and across the broader Defence community.

One Australian Army soldier received minor injuries in the accident and did not require hospitalisation.

Our highest priority is to support Warrant Officer Class Two Muddle’s family and all members involved in this tragic accident. Our thoughts are with them, their friends and the Regiment as they grieve his loss. We request that the privacy of Defence members and families is respected during this difficult time.

Defence is committed to ensuring the safety of its personnel during all training activities. The Australian Defence Force has temporarily paused all parachuting training.

My suspicion is The Australian and Daily Telegraph will have lined up a few “battlers” who are also landlords who negatively gear properties to tell everyone how cruel Jim Chalmers has been going after them. 

Just remember, overwhelmingly the benefits of negative gearing go to the richest and how much you negatively gear is strongly linked with how much you earn:

The real interesting aspect however will be what the opposition does. 

Tim Wilson will get all whiny. He is already talking about how “Every time this government gets caught in a political bind, their only solution is to divide Australians, and that’s clearly what we’re seeing in the budget today”.

Yeah, dividing between landlords and those who hope to one day be able to afford a home…

Wilson probably thinks this will be his political time to win. But let’s be honest. Anthony Albanese would not have allowed the end of the capital gains discount or any changes to negative gearing unless he had been very strongly persuaded just how in favour voters are of such a policy. 

That in the last sitting period the opposition did not ask one question about it despite the rumours flying around about it suggests that even the Libs know that people think the housing market is crook. 

I wonder if the LNP will bitch and then fold, much as they did with the changes to Stage 3.

Do they really want to go to an election promising a tax cut to landlords?

Every Australian has a right to access government information. Requests for access are increasingly delayed, but journalists and members of the public are still using freedom of information law to keep the government on its toes.

Here are eight things we learned thanks to state, territory and federal freedom of information laws, since the last live blog on The Point: 

1. “The big four accounting firms Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC operate in a regulatory grey area with gaps in how the partnerships are policed, and the current oversight of audit quality is inadequate”, the Financial Review reports. 
2. The University of Technology Sydney spent $1.5 million on an “executive leadership coach” while simultaneously proposing to axe courses and cut jobs to save money, revealed in documents obtained under FOI by Four Corners. In 2025, 95% of more than 1,500 UTS staff passed a motion of no confidence in the vice-chancellor’s leadership. 
3. Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries decided “not to probe the thirst deaths of more than 100 AACo cattle”. Governments may not be the only ones holding information back. According to the article: “Internal government documents indicate the first bureaucrats heard about the deaths was on Tuesday March 4, 2025. That was the same day the ABC asked AACo about the January tragedies.”
4. Premier Peter Malinauskas had been warned by Adelaide Festival executive director Julian Hobba that cancelling Randa Abdel-Fatta’s appearance at Adelaide Writers’ Week could spark a boycott.
5. Public servants across several South Australian departments were told to remove “harmful” and “disaster” from algal bloom messaging, according to FOI documents obtained by the South Australian Liberal Party. 
6. The Metropolitan Fire Service in South Australia is “underfunded”, “under-resourced”, and “not fit for purpose” according to a report released under the state’s FOI laws. “[Were] it not for the desire of the regional staff to make their communities safe … regional operations would be completely dysfunctional”. 
7. FOI documents provided to the ABC “provided a snapshot of the Commonwealth’s process in vetting controversial Northern Territory Administrator David Connolly, completed months before a scandal erupted over his social media history.” In January, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had commented that he was “worried about whether [Mr Connolly] is able to properly represent the Northern Territory in a way which is appropriate”, and yet the documents show that the federal government had deemed him “appropriately qualified” for the role. 
8. Following an 18-month long FOI battle, Rex Patrick had finally gained access to the report that saw Mike Pezzullo – former Secretary of Home Affairs – sacked for misconduct in public service. Across the four-part story, Patrick revealed Pezzullo’s conflicts of interest, confidentiality breaches, and love for gossip and critique. 

These news stories show that FOI plays an important role in Australian democracy, but governments too often drag their feet on releasing information that the public is entitled to. The ABC reported this month that requests for documents from Victoria Police are now slower than at any point in its history, with those seeking access now facing a nine-month wait.

Freedom of information laws work. That may be one reason why governments do not seem to like them very much.

The parliament sitting has begun and there have been a bunch of bills assented to by the governor-general in the break, which is business as usual.

And there is this announcement:

Message No. 115, 1 April 2026, from the Senate was reported informing the House that Senators O’Neill, Paterson, Sharma and Whiteaker had been appointed members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence.

David Richardson

The Canberra Times today carries a story on public sector employment levels. The story begins saying “Tuesday’s federal budget will show a slight increase in the size of the Australian Public Service despite widespread redundancies…”

It further reports that Katy Gallagher, Minister for Finance and Minister for Public Service, said some agencies will show relatively minor reductions in staffing, they would be offset by significant increases in the Department of Defence with the overall result a slight increase in staffing across the Australian Public Service as a whole. 

We should be able to confirm this once we see the budget documentation.  

If confirmed it is also likely to be part of a general trend squeezing other priorities in to create room for more military spending. From a low of 1.55% of GDP in 2021-22 we are now being pressured by America to increase military spending to 3.5% of GDP. 

Australia is missing out on around $17 billion a year because we fail to properly tax gas exports. 

That sounds abstract. Until you ask what $17 billion could actually pay for.

Start with medicines. In 2023–24, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme saved Australians $17.7 billion by subsidising the cost of 930 medicines. In other words, a modest 25% tax on gas exports could almost fund the entire PBS subsidy bill. 

Or take Medicare. Eliminating out-of-pocket costs for GP visits has been estimated to cost about $4 billion a year — less than one-quarter of the revenue a fair gas export tax could raise. Aged care currently costs the Commonwealth about $35 billion annually, meaning $17 billion could make an enormous difference to staffing, quality and access. 

More than 2 million Australians skip going to the dentist each year due to the cost. A well-designed universal dental scheme would require about $8 billion a year – less than half of the projected gas tax revenue.

That revenue could also go some way soften the proposal to cut 160,000 participants from the NDIS.

The same is true in schools. The Commonwealth is aiming to lift schools funding to $33 billion a year, while 98% of government schools remain underfunded. An extra $17 billion could help hire teachers, reduce class sizes, fund specialist staff and support schools in disadvantaged communities.

Gas companies say stronger taxation would deter investment. But remote export terminals do not treat sick Australians, fix broken teeth, fill teacher vacancies, or keep medicines affordable. The PBS, Medicare and public schools do.

Australia is giving away its gas mostly for free. Why do governments keep pretending we cannot afford the things we need?

Parliament will sit in about half an hour or so – and then the budget lock up will get underway just after 1pm.

The way that works is that journalists go into their bureaus where the internet has been cut off, intranets have been set up, and phones are taken by Treasury officials and then sign agreements to say they won’t go early with any information.

Then they get the books and write up all the stories, which then go live the moment the Treasurer steps up to the despatch box at 7.30ish.

Parliament continues around all of that as usual – including question time.

You may have noticed that the private banks are one group that never complains about the Reserve Bank raising official interest rates.

The latest increase in official interest rates was just a week ago and people will start experiencing it fairly soon. At least 80% of home loans are variable mortgages so we estimate that each 0.25% increase in interest rates will be passed on and take about $3.2 billion a year away from owner-occupiers with a mortgage. The 3 interest rate hikes this year will take about $9.6 billion from those home buyers. 

Generally, when the Reserve Bank lifts interest rates, rates on home loans increase as do bank profits on home lending. It is easy to see why. ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac are quick to increase interest rates on home loans and they pass on the full increase in the official interest rate. But as we all know, for most accounts, interest rates on money on deposit with the banks stays at a big fat zero! 

Last week the Australia Institute published an analysis of bank profits in Australia. The analysis made some important points; 

• Australian banks are very profitable by world standards. In their latest reporting year, the big four banks made aggregate pre-tax profits of $43.0 billion. 
• Between them, the big four banks extracted profit of approximately $16.9 billion from households with owner-occupier home loans in 2025. 
• That means the profit on owner-occupied housing loans is 39.3% of the big four’s total profit while those loans are just 22.7% of their business. 
• Australia Institute research shows the big four banks take profit of approximately $11,110 in the first year from households with an average owner-occupier home loan. This is $926 each month, or $214 per week, from homeowners. 
• Over the life of an average 30-year loan, that will amount to $228,900. 

The Reserve Bank and the private banks contribute towards putting home ownership out of reach for many Australians. 

Rachel Withers has written a piece for Crikey about one of the silver linings about the Farrer byelection – Tim Wilson will never be treasurer (or in any position of power that matters)

The episode demonstrates just how flummoxed Liberals like Wilson are by One Nation’s surge, and the accompanying death spiral in which they find themselves. Wilson, the only sitting Liberal MP to have won back his seat from a “teal” independent at the last election, has never (ever, ever) been particularly wedded to his supposedly “moderate” convictions. But they seem extra flexible at a time like this, as he tries to figure out if or how his party can ever return to power. 

It’s not just about whether the Liberals can or should work with One Nation. Wilson is unfit for the current moment because he refuses to properly recognise the economic grievance that is fueling people’s disaffection — to do so would contradict his neoliberal worldview. His lame responses regarding what the Liberal Party needed to do to win back aggrieved voters (be “bigger, better, bolder” was about as specific as it got) reveal a dearth of ideas, a man unable to grasp what is enraging voters about a system that has left them far, far behind.

Bill Browne

Governments have an appalling sense of timing. They often make announcements late on Friday, when people have gone home for the weekend, or around the holidays, when journalists are already on leave and people read the papers less. Crikey speculates that the Albanese Government may release its tepid response to the Murphy review into gambling reform at a time when public attention and media are focused on the budget.

If so, that would continue an alarming pattern of the Albanese Government delaying until Budget week to publish its response to parliamentary inquiries.

Governments employ hundreds of media advisers and spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, only to communicate with Australians when they’re most distracted.

Have none of those expensive media advisers explained that, on this week of all weeks, Australians are paying attention to fiscal policy, not the trade in elephant ivory or the labelling of seafood products?

Well, of course, the timing is no accident.

The strategy of publishing embarrassing or unwelcome information when no one is paying attention is called “taking out the trash”, and it is employed by politicians around the world.

Daanyal Saeed gives several examples, including the Morrison Government dropping “two bombshell reports late on consecutive Fridays”: on its $60 billion JobKeeper “accounting bungle” and its $721 million repayments to welfare recipients. 

As Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek announced three new coal mines in the week before Christmas 2024. She has form; the year before Minister Plibersek approved four new coal mines on the day of the Budget Reply.

That it is commonplace makes it no less cynical. The tactic is designed to deny voters information.

Journalists, researchers and members of the public can push back by keeping their eyes out for other stories and explaining the motivation behind their suspicious timing. And in Victoria, the Greens put a stop to “dump day” (tabling hundreds of annual reports all at once) by working with the Liberal–National Opposition in the upper house. 

Peta Murphy brought a multi-party coalition of MPs together to propose a genuinely ambitious and evidence-based end to gambling advertising. Their work is not trash, and it deserves the public’s full attention.   

Jack Thrower

University is far too expensive. Student debts are rising, and so is the time taken to repay them. Some debts will take many decades to repay under the current system, if they’re repaid at all. The Morrison Government’s Job-ready Graduates supercharged a faulty system, substantially increasing fees for many subjects, particularly humanities and social sciences. The policy also reallocates funding to make degrees such as agriculture, education and nursing much cheaper.

The Albanese-led Labor Party has signalled concern about the Job-ready Graduates Package both while in opposition and since taking government. But they have not taken any steps to reverse this policy. The explanation for this delay is usually put down to the Government’s reluctance to either increase fees for cheaper degrees or increase spending on universities.

The delay has come at a considerable cost; Australian undergraduate students studying in popular fields such as arts, law and commerce are paying higher fees, in the case of arts (society and culture) students, much higher.

Compared to grandfathered rates, law and commerce students now pay fees that are about $3,500 higher per year of study, while arts students’ fees are about $9,000 higher per year. Collectively, this policy has cost these students at least $2.1 billion since the package was introduced in 2021, likely far more. Of this $2.1 billion, about $1.7 billion has been incurred since the Albanese Government was first elected in May 2022. If trends continue, Job-ready Graduates will cost students at least $600 million for each further year of delay.

While the Albanese Government’s 20% student-debt cancellation in 2025 would have assisted some of these students, it would not have neutralised the impact of Job-ready Graduates for many. Without reversing the package and generally lowering student fees, students will simply reaccumulate huge debts.

Hopefully, the budget includes reversing Job-ready Graduates and lowering fees for targeted students. However, given substantial delays and no change in Government messaging on this issue, it seems doubtful.

Here is part of the treasurer’s interview with Mel Clarke on ABC radio AM when it comes to generational tax settings:

Clarke:

Is improving the fairness in the tax system. Is that about trying to get a fairer outcome between younger and older Australians now, or is it giving younger generations the same chances older generations had? How do you approach the principle of making the tax system fairer?

Chalmers:

Well, the first principle is we recognise and respect the really big contribution that older Australians have made and continue to make to our country and to our economy. But we also need to recognise that there are a lot of Australians, and particularly younger Australians, who are finding it too hard to get into the housing market, and this problem will get worse if we leave it unattended.

Clarke:

We hear from some young Australians, though, they’re worried that as much as they’re facing some difficulties now, they’re also worried that if tax concessions are changed for future investors, that they’ll miss out on the tax breaks that older generations got to benefit from. They’re worried about the ladder being pulled up behind them. Have you considered that when designing the changes in this Budget?

Chalmers:

Of course, we have, and I don’t want to preempt the decisions and announcements that we’ll make at 7:30 tonight, but of course, in a Budget which is very focused on these intergenerational issues, we’ve been considering all of these sorts of matters. But overwhelmingly, the tax system and the housing market is not working, particularly for younger Australians. There is an urgency now to fixing this. Too many people are locked out of housing, and we don’t have enough homes. And so the Budget does have a very significant focus on housing and a very significant emphasis on young people in particular.

Clarke:

And with the focus on intergenerational inequity, there’s also the question of inequality within aged groups, the big gap between people who have parents who can help them financially and those that don’t. Will the reform package address that inequality too?

Chalmers:

Well, the package that we announced tonight is all about ensuring that more Australians can get a toehold in the housing market without having to necessarily rely on others, including parents, to buy their first home. You know, our primary focus in housing is housing supply. We’re maintaining that focus. The problem begins there, but it doesn’t end with supply. There are other issues too. There are issues of youth homelessness and we’re making investments there. There are issues in the composition of the housing market. Over a long period of time, since the capital gains tax arrangements were changed around the turn of the century, it’s become harder and harder for younger people to become owner‑occupiers in the housing market. And so obviously that’s of concern to us. Obviously, that’s one of the pressures that we’ll be responding to tonight.

Tom Wark, AAP

A soldier has died and another injured after a parachuting training accident at an Australian Defence Force airfield.

The Department of Defence confirmed the Australian army member died during a training course at the Jervis Bay Airfield, 200km east of Canberra, on Monday evening.

Another soldier was injured in the incident but did not require hospitalisation.

The identities or ages of the soldiers involved have not been released.

“We request that the privacy of Defence members and families is respected at this time,” the department said in a statement on Tuesday.

The death is the first in a parachuting accident since Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, the son of former federal minister Joel Fitzgibbon, died in March 2024 during a training incident at RAAF Base Richmond, northwest of Sydney.

Cpl Fitzgibbon’s death led to an investigation by the Department of Defence and a two-month halt to parachute training activities.

The last active service member to die in any incident was in October 2025 when a M113 armoured personnel carrier rolled during a training exercise west of Townsville.

Two other service members were hospitalised with relatively minor injuries after the incident but were released.

Two soldiers were also killed in a truck rollover south of Townsville in August 2021.

The department was charged in September 2023 with breaching federal work health and safety laws over the incident.

Have you noticed it? There’s something weird about this year’s budget hype. Something different. 

It took a while for me to realise what it was, and now I can’t unsee it.

This year’s budget is about raising revenue, not just cutting spending.

For weeks we’ve had headlines about ruling in/ruling out of a gas tax. Now if you do a news search for “budget 2026”, every story on the first page is either about capital gains tax and negative gearing (AFR here and here) or includes it as a focus. 

Even a Nine news scare piece running the views of a property investor describes negative gearing as a “generous tax break that allows an investor to…pay less at tax time.”

I can’t recall another budget that has had so much emphasis on what revenue can be raised, rather than on what “needs” to be cut. And what’s more, it’s revenue raising in equitable ways, unlike increasing the GST.

This is a really significant shift. If budgets are now about how we can pay for the services we want, rather than what has to be cut to “live within our means”, this opens up a really different public debate in Australia.

If you don’t know what this is, let me summarize: Boondoggle.

It was a program hatched by Barnaby Joyce back in the day to provide freight rail from the Melbourne to Brisbane ports that would go “inland” ie not along the coast. It would be this wonderful freight service that would bring so much productivity and jobs and coincidentally go though Barnaby Joyce’s seat of New England. 

From the start it was a crock. 

Quickly it became the rail to nowhere because it was neither going to start in Melbourne nor end in Brisbane… which was kind of the entire point of the whole thing. 

Back in 2017 when the project was begun, the estimated cost was $9.3bn. 

Three years later in 2020 this was now $16.4bn and it was all set to finish in 2026-27, which is errr quite soon.

Then in 2023 there was another review of the project and the cost was up to $31.4bn and the completion date was to be 2030-31.

The most recent estimate? $45bn. So a mere 383% increase in cost. 

What about those jobs and boost to the economy? Well, it was forecast to create only an average of 700 direct jobs a year over 50 years, and in that same period will add just $16bn to our GDP (which is now about $2.9tn).

A rail to nowhere that didn’t even do what it was supposed to do at a cost of $45bn? Axing seems a pretty sensible idea. 

The problem of course is this means Australia remains pretty dependent on freight trucks – powered by diesel. 

The solution though really should not be throwing more dollars at a project that is not fit for purpose.

Morgan Harrington

Labor is apparently going to release its response to the Murphy Review into online gambling later today…while the Canberra press gallery is in lock up for the budget. 

It’s been almost three years since the review was released, so it appears that Labor is hoping no one will notice what it will say. 

Every year, Australians lose a collective $31.5 billion to gambling.

The Murphy Review called for an end to the gambling ads that saturate Australian TV, computer, and phone screens. Polling just released by The Australia Institute shows that three in four Australians (77%) would support a ban on gambling advertisements. This includes the majority of voters across the political spectrum, as follows:

• 81% of Labor voters
• 78% of Coalition voters
• 88% of Greens voters
• 66% of One Nation voters
• 85% of independent voters
• 79% of other voters
• 72% of undecided voters

With this level of popular support, you’d assume that introducing a ban would be a no brainer, but Labor does not seem convinced. The day before the Easter Long Weekend, as most Australians switched off from the news, Albanese announced a cap on the number of gambling ads on TV to three per hour. But that is not a ban.

Anthony Albanese has done some of the softer media this morning – including Nova radio Adelaide.

Here is how that conversation went down (after the standard budget chat):

PRIME MINISTER: But it’s a flat white. I’m pretty simple. But it depends on the – so it begins with a flat white, but as it sort of goes on, it then ends up being a piccolo.

HAYESY: Oh, okay. See, that’s a very Melbourne thing, too, by the way. That’s an eastern thing, the piccolo. We’re still getting our heads around here in Adelaide. It’s like a half latte. 

PRIME MINISTER: Well, you know, it’s an Italian heritage thing, as well. Of course, you just have to have – if you’re in Italy and you don’t order anything other than an espresso after 9 o’clock, like that will just – they’ll regard it as a cultural insult.

ODDY: Speaking of your Jodes. Six months you’ve been married. Roundabout to the day. So, are we still very much into each other? Cause we’ve been talking about flirting this morning. So, is there still some flirtation between you and your wife?

PRIME MINISTER: Oh, absolutely. No, it’s – never goes away. I hope that keeps going for a long, long time. 

ODDY: No, it does. 

PRIME MINISTER: No, it’s – well, I think the other thing about our relationship, of course, is that quite often we’re in different places. So, it’s nice when you see each other for consecutive days. It’s fantastic. But I’m on the road so much, it makes it a bit difficult, but it just means the time we spend together, we plan to make more special. 

ODDY: Keeps it spicy. 

HAYESY: Keeps it spicy. 

PRIME MINISTER: It is hard for us to go out without, you know, causing difficulty because we have to have security and all of that.

HAYESY: Oh, yeah.

ODDY: Oh, that’s a romance killer. 

HAYESY: That just gets in the way, the security.

PRIME MINISTER: Nothing better than going to the footy with your wife. 

ODDY: Six-foot Barry in the corner. 

PRIME MINISTER: But we did go to see Mumford and Sons together a couple of weeks ago and that was good. That was fantastic because we were in the dark so no one could see us, and no one hassled us. No one knew we were there.

HAYESY: That’s the thing.

PRIME MINISTER: Fantastic gig.

HAYESY: I would have thought that a Mumford and Sons crowd is very, you know, I wouldn’t say hipster, but it’s pretty alternative. Great music. I would have thought there’s a bunch of people that would have gone home and be like, I tell you what, I saw one bloke, he was a dead ringer for the Prime Minister.

PRIME MINISTER: That’s quite possibly the case. They do have that sometimes. You look like Albo. Well, I hope so.

For those asking, here are the sanctions Australia announced in regards to Israeli figures in June 2025:

Today, the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom have announced sanctions and other measures targeting Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Settler violence is incited by extremist rhetoric which calls for Palestinians to be driven from their homes, encourages violence and human rights abuses and fundamentally rejects the two-state solution. Settler violence has led to the deaths of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of whole communities.

We are steadfastly committed to the two-state solution which is the only way to guarantee security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians and ensure long term stability in the region, but it is imperilled by extremist settler violence and settlement expansion.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous. These actions are not acceptable. We have engaged the Israeli Government on this issue extensively, yet violent perpetrators continue to act with encouragement and impunity. This is why we have taken this action now – to hold those responsible to account. The Israeli Government must uphold its obligations under international law and we call on it to take meaningful action to end extremist, violent and expansionist rhetoric.

The measures announced today do not deviate from our unwavering support for Israel’s security and we continue to condemn the horrific terror attacks of 7 October by Hamas.  Today’s measures are targeted towards individuals who in our view undermine Israel’s own security and its standing in the world. We continue to want a strong friendship with the people of Israel based on our shared ties, values and commitment to their security and future.

Today’s measures focus on the West Bank, but of course this cannot be seen in isolation from the catastrophe in Gaza. We continue to be appalled by the immense suffering of civilians, including the denial of essential aid. There must be no unlawful transfer of Palestinians from Gaza or within the West Bank, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip. We will continue to work with the Israeli Government and a range of partners. We will strive to ensure an immediate ceasefire, the release now of the remaining hostages and for the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid including food. We want to see a reconstructed Gaza no longer run by Hamas and a political pathway to a two-state solution.

One thing that has made this an easier Budget to see for Jim Chalmers is petrol prices. Six weeks ago unleaded petrol was costing on average 258c/l – a long way up from the 190c/l that it was costing when Trump and Netanyahu decided to bomb Iran.

But the halving of the petrol excise and the general moderating (so far) of world oil prices has brought the price down to now 182c/l – lower than before the start of the war.

Without the halving of the excise it would be around 209c/l – bad, but not as bad as what the government was looking at dealing with when it was finalising the budget last month.

There are crowded buses … and then there’s the gas tax bus. 

On board are the Greens, David Pocock, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Clive Palmer, ACOSS, the ACTU and even the Commonwealth Bank!  

These are unusual travelling companions, but they all agree one thing: Australians aren’t getting a fair return for their gas. 

What does this tell us? Taxing gas exports properly is not a left-wing idea or a right-wing idea. It’s a common-sense idea. Australia has vast gas reserves. We are one of the world’s largest exporters of LNG. Yet the public return from this boom has been embarrassingly small compared with the scale of the resource being extracted and shipped overseas. 

The gas lobby would like Australians to believe that asking multinational gas exporters to pay more is radical. It clearly isn’t. What is radical is allowing a handful of companies to profit from publicly owned resources while governments struggle to fund hospitals, schools, housing, cost-of-living relief and the list goes on… 

We only get to sell these resources once. Can we afford not to levy them? 

Pauline Hanson has said (repeatedly) that Australian gas should benefit Australians.  

David Pocock has asked why Australians pay more in beer excise than gas exporters pay through the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.  

The Greens have long argued that the PRRT is broken.  

Clive Palmer has backed a stronger gas export tax.  

Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn has suggested a gas levy could help fund broader economic reform. 

That is an extraordinary coalition. When environmentalists, independents, populists, business figures and welfare advocates all arrive at the same conclusion, the major parties should pay attention. 

The gas tax bus is leaving. Labor and the Coalition should get on board or risk getting run over. 

The “big” news of the budget is always about the size of the deficit or lack of a surplus. As Amy reported earlier, the media drop was on the $44.9bn “improvement” in the budget balance over the 5 years from 2025-26 to 2029-30.

Seriously, you can ignore it all. 

A budget deficit is not going to hurt you. Forget talk about debt hitting future generations. You know what hits future generations? Lack of investing in good schools, health, housing, infrastructure etc. 

And remember when you hear talk of budget improvements all that is happening is a change in the forecast from last year to this year. 

And also, the predictions are usually wrong. 

That’s not because Treasury are incompetent or cooking the books (usually), it’s just that the world is complex.  Morrison and Frydenberg talked up being “Back in the black” because in May 2019 they forecast a surplus for 2019-20. Should they have been able to predict a world wide pandemic? No, but that also does not mean they did not deserve all the egg on their faced due to their absurd hubris about the future being certain.

So whatever numbers come out today just remember as far as the budget balance goes it is the Treasury’s forecast of the future. If they are wrong and next year the deficit is smaller, Jim Chalmers will talk up his ability to manage the budget. If they are wrong and next year the budget is bigger, the opposition will say Jim has lost control of the budget. 

It’s all balderdash.

Jim Chalmers did his doorstop this morning – which is part of the theatre of the budget day. He didn’t say anything of substance beyond the morning lines:

There will be more than the usual amount of savings and more than the usual amount of reforms in the face of more than the usual amount of global economic uncertainty.

Penny Wong has released a statement about the new sanctions on Iran:

AUTONOMOUS SANCTIONS TARGETING IRAN’S CAMPAIGN OF OPPRESSION AND DESTABILISATION

The Australian Government is today imposing further targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on Iranian individuals and entities in response to the regime’s ongoing brutal oppression of its people and destabilisation of the region.

In January, the Iranian regime massacred thousands of its own citizens and carried out mass arrests of peaceful protesters, torturing detainees, subjecting them to forced confessions and preventing them from communicating with loved ones.

The regime limited internet access to stop the world from learning of these atrocities.

The seven individuals and four entities sanctioned today include senior officials and entities involved in these horrific acts, including violence against women and children. 

One of these individuals is responsible for directing the oppression of women and girls in Iran by deploying 80,000 forces to conduct surveillance and enforce mandatory hijab wearing.

Another individual established neighbourhood intelligence databases, using door-to-door data collection and patrols to find and punish opponents of the Iranian regime.

Others have been responsible for the wrongful detention of foreign nationals.

These sanctions also target Iran’s shadow banking system that allow it to fund terrorist proxies such as Hamas, support its ballistic missile program, and other destabilising actions. 

This announcement, made alongside the United Kingdom’s further sanctions on Iran, continues our work with international partners to hold the Iranian regime to account for its egregious campaign of oppression and destabilisation.

The Albanese Government has taken stronger action on Iran that any previous Australian Government, with more than 230 new sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities. 

This includes more than 100 individuals and entities with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which we have listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Australia continues to stand with the brave people of Iran against a brutal, oppressive regime.

Independent MP Allegra Spender has released her wish list from the budget:

The 2026 Budget needs to do 2 key things – address the short-term inflation and cost of living pressures in the economy, and deliver longer-term reform to improve the living standards of Australians by creating a better environment for Australian businesses, and making sure every dollar spent on public services does as much good as possible.

Here are the 4 ways the budget needs to deliver:  

1. Spending restraint to reduce inflation: At 26.9% of GDP, government spending is at historical highs, adding to inflation pressures and is part of a long-term structural deficit. This is hurting Australian households and businesses. The budget must reduce overall spending including off-budget spending especially in the next 2 years. Every dollar the government is spending needs to work as hard as possible. That should means not wasting money on infrastructure projects that don’t have good business cases or are vulnerable to the CFMEU, like the Suburban Rail Loop, or on propping up businesses on “resilience” grounds without really strong guardrails. It should mean reducing carbon emissions at the lowest cost which means scaling back the FBT concessions on EVs and redirecting them. And it should mean ensuring the NDIS, which is a life-changing service for so many in our community, is on a sustainable footing.
2. Support for the vulnerable: While we need to reduce government spending overall, we still need to look after vulnerable Australians, particularly in these hard economic times. That means funding food relief, legal assistance and community services already stretched to breaking point, and seeing if any increase in Job Seeker can be managed. We also need better protections for renters, including ensuring they are not left out of the clean-energy transition. It also means investing in health, such as rare cancers including gynaecological cancers, medical research and better-coordinated mental health services.  
3. Tax reform that gives back to Australians: I want to see tax reform that supports business investment and innovation, a fair return to Australian resources, and creates opportunity for more Australians to build financial security. In my Personal Tax White Paper, I argued that we need a tax system that better rewarded work and ensured more Australians were able to build prosperity for themselves and buy a home. I pushed for personal income tax reform to reduce income tax rates, paid for by reducing concessions on areas such as CGT and negative gearing. I’m glad that some changes are on the table but it is critical that any revenue raised must go back to Australians in the form of income tax cuts, not for funding more spending. Changes to the CGT discount and negative gearing help tilt the balance toward young owner occupiers but reducing the burden on wage and salary income tax is essential so that young Australians can build their own wealth and security. I also want to see reform to gas and resource taxation – an issue the community is asking for. 
4. Long-term reform for productivity growth: Without productivity growth we cannot grow prosperity and that’s key to the living standards of all Australians and to intergenerational equity. The budget must lay the groundwork for reforms that will actually lift living standards for the next generation. That includes speeding up government decision-making and reducing red tape, making sure migrants can actually use their skills, delivering the clean-energy transition at lowest cost and reducing costs in housing construction. 

The government will table its long overdue response to the Peta Murphy led gambling advertising report…today. While most journalists are in the federal budget lock up, or focused on budget adjacent things.

Chief Advocate for the Alliance for Gambling Reform Reverend Tim Costello spoke to ABC radio RN Breakfast about the timing a little earlier this morning:

Well, the Prime Minister would say that he promised to table it the first day of the next parliament sitting, which I think is today. 

But look, it was announced the day before Good Friday when the main speech at the press club was about the Middle East-Iran war. 

We’ve had over a thousand days of silence. We do have a very timid package and for it not to be when it’s tabled today examined by journalists when I think this is one of the most profound intergenerational issues that Australia is facing. 

Why? Because some 600,000 12 to 17-year-olds gambled last year, though it’s illegal. That’s 30% of our teenagers gambled. In fact, more gambled on sport than playing soccer and basketball combined. 

This is a profound intergenerational issue because gambling ads has utterly captured and groomed our kids for the profits of multi-billion foreign sports betting companies. 

So I’m disappointed journalists will not be seeing this package when it’s tabled today. 

Costello said he hoped the Coalition would start pushing the government to act further:

I’m hoping the Coalition will realise that the reforms in this package, though there are some good reforms, do not solve the problem. The Prime Minister’s tests and their excellent tests were to de-link gambling and sport. Well, these reforms won’t do that. We still will have any number of ads after 8.30. Now, I say that, and half-time in a night game. I say that because Peter Dutton’s proposals, even before the Murphy report was tabled, was stronger than that. He had said a total ban an hour before and an hour after and during a game. What we’re now going to see is perhaps no cap on ads from 8.30 on halftime when kids are still watching it.

Greg Jericho has taken a look at the papers for us and reports the Sydney Morning Herald (whose team currently has the best line into the government) reports negative gearing will be restricted to new builds (which was what was expected) and that there will be no new tax cuts other than the earned tax credit (most likely the low and medium income tax offset) received at the end of the financial year.

That would be partly because the government wants to spend and save at the same time and it is trying to head off criticism it is not helping the RBA address inflation.

Asked about broken promises (which in this case, only parts of the media and Tim Wilson seem to care about) Katy Gallagher says:

Well, again, I think Australians expect governments to respond to the situations they face at the time. I mean, we’ve had a heavy focus the first year on delivering against all of our election commitments, which we have done. But, you know, if, and again, not pre-empting decisions, the announcements the Treasurer makes later today, tonight, but if a government changes its mind, comes to a different view, gets advice that has an alternate position, whatever, then their job is to front up and explain why they have come to that decision. 

I think that’s the responsibility of governments. And, you know, again, that’s part of what we’re doing now. It’ll be what we do tomorrow and ongoing. But I think, again, if people see the budget as a whole, see what it’s trying to do, I think there is a lot of support to make sure that younger Australians are, you know, getting a fairer deal. Final question, we’ve just got a minute or so up our sleeve. The Treasurer says the budget has an element of political risk. What is that risk, do you think? Well, I think whenever, you know, one of the big parts of the budget, we’ve gone through them, there’s, you know, resilience, relief, you know, through the tax cuts, through Medicare, urgent care clinics, et cetera. 

And then there’s reform. And, you know, reform isn’t easy, you know, there’s obviously contested space and it’s political, you know, that comes with risk. 

But, you know, I feel confident that when you take a risk, if you’ve got the right reasons and the right policy underpinnings to that, then, you know, that’s a risk worth taking because this matters for future generations.

Katy Gallagher goes on to tell ABC radio RN Breakfast:

This isn’t about generation versus generation. This is, you know, and the budget also has quite a focus. It’s about writing things. Well, it’s about making sure that there is fairness across the board and no one’s begrudging people’s ability to buy houses, have investments. This budget actually has a heavy focus on older Australians as well with investments in aged care and the like because those pressures are there and we need to ensure we’re looking up after older Australians. So that’s part of the budget as well. 

But it is about fairness across the board and it’s not about pitting one generation against the other. You know, people make these decisions based on the arrangements at the time, and that’s fine. 

And that, you know, should be acknowledged. But we also have to look at what’s coming next. And increasingly, younger people are being locked out and feel extremely frustrated with the position they’re in around their ability to become an owner of a house, which many of us grew up in this country believing was the Australian dream

What’s Katy Gallagher’s message to older Australians who are worried about these potential housing tax subsidy changes or unhappy that they might miss out?

Gallagher tells ABC radio RN:

Look, well, for a start, I think there’s a lot of older Australians, and I’d include myself in that category, who worry about their children and their grandchildren and the deal that they or the hardship they face in housing in particular. So I think there is a lot of understanding across the community about governments needing to respond to try and make housing more affordable. 

But this, you know, and again, I don’t want to pre-empt some of the detail that the Treasurer will outline later, but, you know, this budget tries to do a lot of things and one of it is about fairness. You know, it’s about resilience, it’s about reform, it’s about relief, it’s about getting the budget in better shape and, you know, we’ll have lower deficits and a stronger budget position as well. And we’ve managed to do all of that in a pretty volatile, uncertain environment where we’ve had new issues coming at us. But, you know, I hope Australians look at the budget in its entirety and sort of see how all of that sits together. 

If you went back to 2019 and told people that changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount were almost certain for the budget and no one really cared (except for Tim Wilson and some in the media who are now working out it’s serious) people would think you were crazy (they’d never believe you about covid).

Bill Shorten, who lost that election which was supposed to be Labor’s for the taking has spoken a bit about different timelines. He thinks Australia is ready now, telling AAP:

It’s an idea whose time has well and truly come.

…The idea that someone who might have three or four investment properties can turn up to bid on a house with a taxpayer subsidy in their wallet, compared to a young couple trying to buy their first home doesn’t seem fair to me.

It’s Finance Minister Katy Gallagher’s time on the media carousel today and she is sticking pretty much to the script – you’ll find out what is in the budget soon, improved bottom line, wanting to do as much as they can but still having to be ‘responsible’ and governments also need to respond when necessary.

One of the last drops the treasurer put out ahead of the budget (a drop is when a political party or politicians releases information to the media, or ‘drops out’ something – it is usually embargoed for the next day’s papers and is something the party or politician wants out in the public) was an announcement that the 2026-27 budget “bottom line” will be “$44.9 billion stronger than forecast in MYEFO and more than a quarter of a trillion dollars better than the Government inherited ($263.8 billion)”.

That’s a fancy way of saying the projected debt is lower.

One of Jim Chalmers’ personal missions as treasurer has been to try and end the myth that the Coalition are the better economic managers. They are not – the data shows that – but you say something often enough and people believe it, and that is one of the Australian myths that people believe (thanks Howard!). So this sort of stuff is very important to him.

So the government wants you to know that the budget bottom line is better because it has been able to ‘find’ a ‘further $63.8 billion in savings and reprioritisations, taking the total since coming to Government to almost $180 billion’, made more debt payments, and ‘used revenue to improve the budget bottom line’ and ‘for the first time on record, consecutive updates have returned every single dollar of revenue upgrade to the bottom line’ (which just means when the government gets more revenue than expected from something, like iron ore etc, it is using it to pay down debt)

Hello and welcome to Budget day 2026.

Here is what we know is in there so far (with thanks to AAP for compiling the list):

* An overhaul of tax breaks for property investors will be framed as a way of giving younger Australians a leg up in the housing market

* Details will be revealed on Tuesday night, but the government is widely expected to pare back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, along with changes to the tax treatment of trusts

* The budget will show the nation’s finances are $44.9 billion better off than forecast in December 2025, the government says

* There will also be an increase in spending on Australia’s military to the tune of $53 billion over the next decade, to deal with intensifying security risks

* The budget will account for a 26-cent-a-litre cut to the price of petrol and diesel, along with a cut to the heavy vehicle road user charge, which are already in place and scheduled to expire on June 30. There is a chance the government will extend these measures

* There has been speculation the government could give Australians a one-off payment of between $200 and $300, but no details have been confirmed

* To reduce pressure on the budget, the government is stripping out about $15 billion a year from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, slashing eligibility and requiring the states to do more to support people with some disabilities

* Australians over 65 will no longer pay discounted rebates for private health insurance, bringing it into line with other age groups. Older Australians will have to pay more than $200 a year extra for their cover

* Tax breaks for electric vehicles will also be phased out. Incentives allowing employers to avoid fringe benefits tax on EVs under $91,000 through a novated lease will be changed to a 25 per cent discount

* The long-running inland rail freight project will be cut, but the government is pouring $3.8 billion into Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop and $50 million into improving the Sydney-Canberra train line

There has been a lot of people trying to make ‘broken promise’ happen, but it’s not taking hold, because it turns out that things are now so inequitable (I mean even the government sees it) that they just want someone to address it. And that tends to outweigh what someone said at an election. Circumstances change (although in this case they just became so obvious not even an incremental cautious prime minister who likes to do the least possible could pretend it wasn’t happening any longer) and governments should react to changing circumstances.

There was a lot of ‘broken promises’ over the stage three tax cuts as well. And what do you know – people accepted them because the new set up was fairer.

All of this is to say that there is going to be a bit of a shock for media coming down the track as well – the way they have spoken about the economy and budgets for the last 30 years is no longer what people are concerned about. And that means that dire warnings about what changing an unfair tax setting will mean for business investment doesn’t matter in the mainstream. That’s going to be a shock – people, when you talk to them, want the government to step in. They want the government to build houses (for more than just defence). They want the government to tax resources. They want the government to choose people over corporations. That’s going to be an adjustment for the political and media classes – and it is going to take them a bit to work that out.

It is also worth noting that the government has not said anything about raising welfare, which, as Greg Jericho reported yesterday is now sitting at about $291 under the poverty line. That should be more of a scandal than it is, especially considering we know the RBA wants to increase unemployment in order to address potential future spending inflation. Which is nuts.

So there is a lot to address and a lot to get through. You’ll have some very smart people to guide you through what happens today – including Mike Bowers, whose work is on-loan to us (aren’t you lucky) and then there is also me, who, while not as smart, can hassle smart people into explaining things to me.

Coffee number three is on the stove and the cats are fed.

Ready? Let’s get into it.