Peter Dutton: [And Greg Jericho]

“For three years, Labor peddled the lie that they inherited a trillion dollars of debt. [Both sides care far too much about debt. But any for the record in the March 2022 budget it forecast net debt reaching 33.1% of GDP in 2025-26. In Tuesday’s budget it forecast debt for next year of 21.5% of GDP, so not sure why Peter Dutton would want to talk about this topic. But then nominal numbers makes things look bigger]

Now, Labor’s own Budget papers confirm they will burden Australia with a trillion dollars of debt next financial year.

Jim Chalmers’ so called tax cut ‘top up’ is simply a tax cut cop-out.

It’s a cruel hoax. [Hoax: transitive verb “to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous. Is this tax not real?]

Labor will spend $17 billion of taxpayers’ money to give you back 70 cents a day – in 15 months’ time. [reminder – that is $17bn over 4 years. Also 70 cents a day is not right given he is counting the whole 4 years, which include both of the tax cuts and means not $268 a year but $536 – or $1.47 a day]

And yet, a family with a typical mortgage is $50,000 worse off under Labor. [That’s the RBA’s doing]

Frankly, it’s insulting.

We oppose these tax cuts and will repeal them – because they come at a great cost to the economy with little cost relief for Australians.

Peter Dutton continues (and Grogs continues to annotate)

“In his fourth Budget – like the previous three – the Treasurer again painted a rosy picture of the economy.

But Australians aren’t stupid.

Your bills tell the true story of Labor’s cost-of-living crisis.

And here’s the facts of the Albanese Government’s economic legacy:

Rents are up 18 per cent.

Housing is up 14 per cent.

Groceries are up 30 per cent.

Electricity is up 32 per cent.

Insurance is up 35 per cent.

Australians have experienced the longest household recession – and the worst collapse in living standards – on record.

Interest rates have gone up 12 times – with only one cut – and stayed higher for longer compared to similar economies. [And yet they went up by less than other countries – right now the RBA has the cash rate at 4.1% that is lower the in the US (4.25%-4.5%) and the UK (4.5%)]

Labor was only able to deliver two surpluses by piggybacking off the former Coalition Government’s strong economic management – as well as record commodity price windfalls. [lulz. Surpluses have NOTHING to do with what happened the year before. Sure record commodity prices helped, but so did a one in a hundred year’s mining boom help John Howard have surpluses. As an aside quite hilariously in today’s The Australia they had a chart that suggested the 2023-24 surplus was a LNP surplus!]

And now, the outlook is one of deficits as far as the eye can see. [In the March 2022 budget handed down by Josh Frydenberg before the 2022 election it forecast *gasp* deficits as far as the eye can see. How far is that exactly, anyway? I need glasses, so I actually can’t see that far. Anyway, that budget the govt predicted a budget deficit in 2025-26 of 1.6% of GDP. In Tuesday’s budget, Jim Chalmers predicted a deficit of 2025-26 of 1.5% of GDP]“

“A returned Albanese Government in any form won’t just be another three bleak years.

Setbacks will be set in stone.

Our prosperity will be damaged for decades to come.

But you have the power to change the path our country is on.

You have the ability to reverse the decline.

You have the opportunity to get our country back on track.

You can do that by voting for your Liberal or Nationals candidate – so a new Dutton Coalition Government can be elected.

At this election, the choice could not be clearer.

Tonight, I will outline the choice Australians face at this election and our plan to fix Labor’s mess.

We have a positive plan to deliver:

1. A stronger economy with lower inflation;

2. Cheaper energy;

3. Affordable homes;

4. Quality healthcare; and

5. Safer communities.

A plan to help you and your families.

A plan to bring about a stronger, safer, and better Australia.

A plan to usher in a more confident, resilient, and self-reliant nation in a more dangerous and disruptive world.

And to these ends, tonight, I will announce new policies that a Dutton Coalition Government would implement.

Tonight, I commit a Dutton Coalition Government to the following:

We will introduce four critical pieces of legislation on the first sitting day of the next Parliament: [very Trump like]

1. The Energy Price Reduction Bill;

2. The Lower Immigration and More Homes for Australians Bill;

3. The Keeping Australians Safe Bill; and

4. The Guaranteed Funding for Health, Education and Essential Services Bill.”

As annotated by Greg Jericho:

“To Australians listening tonight, thank you for your time.

Soon, you will have a say in determining the future of our great country.

We live in the best country in the world.

We’re the beneficiaries of what our forebears built and defended.

We love this country because it has forged us into a remarkable people.

We’re compassionate [unless you are seeking asylum, or protesting genocide of climate change], stoic, fair, and quietly patriotic.

We cherish this country because it affords opportunities like no other.

But only – and I stress this point – if we’re governed well.

When Australia is governed badly, dreams and ambitions become beyond reach.

And that’s what’s happened during the last three years under the Albanese Government.

In my travels across the country, Australians tell me they’re working hard, but can’t get ahead.

In Perth, I met a mum in a grocery store. In tears, she told me how she and her husband couldn’t keep their heads above water with the bills stacking up.

In Adelaide, I spoke with a food manufacturer whose electricity prices have gone up by 300 per cent.

In Victoria, I heard from a supermarket employee – a woman in her 60s – who had a machete held against her throat.

In Brisbane, I listened to a young couple in their 30s who have moved in with parents because they can’t buy a home – even though they’re both working overtime.

Such stories are common across the country.

Stories of rent and mortgage stress.

Stories of power, shopping, and insurance bills going through the roof.

Stories of home ownership being out of reach for so many.

Stories of it being increasingly difficult to see a GP.

And stories of crime on our streets.

For so many Australians, aspiration has turned to anxiety, optimism to pessimism, and national confidence to national uncertainty.

The truth is, Australians can’t afford three more years of the Albanese Government.

Every election is important.

But this election matters more than others in recent history.

It’s a sliding doors moment for our nation. [Is Dutton the short haired Gwyneth Paltrow in this story or the long haired one??]“

Here are the cuts Dutton has announced:

We will end the reckless $20 billion Rewiring the Nation Fund.

We will stop the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund – under which not a single additional new home has been built.

We will scrap Labor’s $16 billion of production tax credits over the next decade for critical minerals and green hydrogen.

And we will reverse Labor’s increase of 41,000 Canberra-based public servants – saving $7 billion a year once in place, and well over $10 billion over the forward estimates.

The first two are funds, and I am pretty sure are off-budget – they don’t cost $10bn or $20bn – it’s just that is how much money the goverment has put into a fund with projects paid for by the dividends. It is considered ‘off-budget’ because the money for the funds isn’t counted in the budget, because it is not technically spending, it is investment.

Scrapping the tax production credits for critical minerals and green hydrogen is a Trump move – he is doing the same thing in the states.

And the 41,000 public servants are people. He wants to sack 41,000 people in Canberra. That’s about the population of Dubbo. And those people will be replaced by labour force hires and private consultants.

Cutting the public service to save money is like saying you’ll save money by cutting your grocery spend and dining out every night. So you can point to your grocery bill and say you’ve saved $200 a week, but you’re just hiding that you’re spending $450 a week on dining out.

Dutton’s speech leans hard on the emotion. He begins by laying out several case studies of people he says he has encountered:

In Perth, I met a mum in a grocery store. In tears, she told me how she and her husband couldn’t keep their heads above water with the bills stacking up.

In Adelaide, I spoke with a food manufacturer whose electricity prices have gone up by 300 per cent.

In Victoria, I heard from a supermarket employee – a woman in her 60s – who had a machete held against her throat.

In Brisbane, I listened to a young couple in their 30s who have moved in with parents because they can’t buy a home – even though they’re both working overtime.

It’s been part of Dutton’s rebranding – that he is just the hard working family man whose heart is breaking from the stories of woe he is hearing across the country.

At the same time, Dutton continues to create his own narrative of events:

In my travels across the country, Australians tell me they’ve never been more worried about crime and division.

It started with the Prime Minister’s Voice referendum which sought to divide our country by ancestry and race*.

He then left a vacuum of leadership following the crime wave in Alice Springs and the antisemitism on the steps of the Sydney Opera House**.

All too often, this Prime Minister is too weak, too late, and too equivocal.

*The Voice to parliament did not seek to divide the nation by ancestry and race. It was an advisory body on Indigenous issues, which could not be scrapped by future governments, but did not have any power to pass or impose laws. Dutton knows this. I mean, you could say the Lobbying register is the actual Voice to Parliament, but he’s not worried about those who pay to play.

**This did not happen.

Well Peter Dutton is about to deliver his response to the budget. As is usually the case with these speeches, they are mostly about laying out the political messages, but with an election call just hours away, this one has a few more policy announcements compared to Dutton’s previous budget-in-replys.

The main take aways?

A 25% cut to migration, sacking 41,000 people in the public service, establishing an east coast gas reservation policy, pretending nuclear is still a go, scrapping regulations, crack down on unions, increase the instant-asset write off to $30,000 (was $40,000 under Morrison, reduced to $20,000 under Albanese), allow businesses to write off long lunches, allow people to access their superannuation for home deposits (which will only drive up prices further) and establish an ‘anti-Semitism taskforce’ (which will consider criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitic). And of course, the fuel excise that was announced today.

How? Detail is scant for a lot of it, but Dutton is promising four new pieces of legislation. The fourth one on this list is part of a promise to not cut frontline staff, but given the amount of processing, developing and implementing policy the public service does, cutting them just means hiring labour force workers or private consultants to do the work.

The four bills (along with the fuel excise)

1. The Energy Price Reduction Bill;

2. The Lower Immigration and More Homes for Australians Bill;

3. The Keeping Australians Safe Bill; and

4. The Guaranteed Funding for Health, Education and Essential Services Bill.

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We’re going to rest the blog for a few hours and pick it up just before Peter Dutton begins his budget-in-reply speech.

It has already been dubbed ‘the speech of his life’ by the Australian, despite not having yet given it and despite the ‘average Australian’, especially those who drive giant gas guzzling utes which cost the better part of a house deposit and who Dutton is aiming his entire election campaign at, absolutely will not be watching. And neither will most undecided voters.

Because shockingly, most Australians have lives and won’t be watching the opposition leader deliver a budget-in-reply speech at 7.30 on a Thursday evening.

But don’t worry! We’ll be watching for you.

So see you around 7.30 – be good and take care of you. Go get a little treat. You deserve it. Ax

Also not getting a lot of attention – this happened yesterday

How did the leaders look for their final question time in this house of representatives?