Over in the house of representatives, Jim Chalmers is introducing the supply bills that keep the money flowing and the parliament going (at least until it is dissolved later this week).

Chalmers uses it for one of his favourite past times – smashing up Angus Taylor:

There is no consistency or clarity in the Coalition’s policy positions except for this – their commitment to cut cost-of-living help for Australians.

Those opposite want to cut everything except for income taxes. That’s their position. They’ve consistently proposed the Government’s cost-of-living relief over the past three years.

If they had their way, Australians would be thousands of dollars worse off already. And they’ve now made it clear that Australians will be worse off still if they win the next election. They opposed cuts to student debt.

They opposed cheaper early childhood education and cheaper medicines. They opposed the first two rounds of energy bill rebates. They opposed more homes for Australians and more urgent care clinics, if you can believe it and now they oppose the tax relief that started rolling out halfway through this year and now these top-ups.

They are saying no three times in three years to three tax cuts. And this makes the choice at the election abundantly clear.

The Shadow Treasurer’s brain explosion opposing tax cuts now makes the choice at the election absolutely crystal clear – a Labor Government under this Prime Minister cutting income taxes for Australian workers and helping with the cost of living or those opposite and an Opposition Leader with a secret agenda for cuts which will make Australians worse off. That is the choice at the election. On this side of the house, we proudly stand for lower taxes for Australian workers. We are for Australians earning more and keeping more of what they earn and we are for doing everything that we responsibly can to help Australians under pressure. That’s what the Budget was all about last night. That’s what this legislation does and why we are proud to introduce it to the house.

The ‘brain explosion’ Chalmers is referencing there was Taylor’s 7.30 interview last night where he said that the Coalition was against Labor’s tax cuts, but not tax cuts, and implied the Coalition would do their own tax cuts. But also, maybe not do tax cuts.

This is after Taylor has been screaming about tax. But in this budget, the Coalition can’t actually afford to do tax cuts of their own unless they massively cut services and sack a bunch of people. Which you know, they have done before, but in this economic climate it would plunge the entire nation into recession quicker than Gwen Stefani can change cultures.

As part of the broadened media strategy Labor put in place while in opposition, it is not just traditional media that Anthony Albanese and other senior Labor ministers are engaging in. For the second year in a row, the government invited influencers, small online media organisations and youth media for a budget briefing and many of those people will also be interviewing the prime minister for their own audiences.

It’s not often given a lot of attention, but independent journalists and content creators are shaping their own media landscape which is attracting a lot of people, especially those under the age of 35. It’s a conversation that the mainstream aren’t tuned into – which is why there is a lot of hand wringing about younger people not being engaged with media or politics. They are – they are just doing it in different areas.

The bells have rung, the prayers have been said and Milton Dick is in the big chair.

The second last sitting day – and last full day of senate sittings (which switches to estimates tomorrow) of this parliament is underway.

Anthony Albanese will most likely trot off to Government House on the weekend, so take a good look around – this will be one of the last times you see the parliament look like this.

The parliament will sit at 9am today – and first up will be the supply bills (which keep the money flowing) which both the house and the senate will deal with. The senate will then have to deal with Labor’s environment bypass laws which the Coalition passed along with Labor late yesterday afternoon in the house.

The Greens had moved to delay the laws by sending them to a committee for an inquiry, but that was voted down. The Greens and crossbench will try that again in the senate later today, but it will hinge on the Coalition.

These laws are part of John Howard’s legacy which no one has done anything to address in the decades since. The laws have led to more than 700 coal and gas mines being approved without any consideration to their impact on the climate. Australia has one of the worst extinction rates in the world (and we are about to add the Maugean Skate to that list with these new amendments Labor is ramming through) and deforestation continues.

Labor promised an environmental protection agency, but offered one up that wouldn’t actually do much to protect the environment. Rather than negotiation with the Greens and crossbench on it (which would have made it stronger) Labor pulled the legislation and now claims it was the Greens and crossbench which stood in the way of an EPA (when it would have been another toothless tiger).

So that’s the situation. We are about to see the parliament pass laws that will allow nature-destroying projects bypass an environment minister’s reconsideration powers and lead to the extinction of a fish that has been around since the dinosaurs, as well as severely impact a World Heritage area, all because the government doesn’t want to tell a foreign-owned industry that employs about 60 people in the area and pays no tax they can’t farm salmon in that one little spot.

Unless the Coalition decide to do something. Doubtful.  

As we said last night (and no doubt will continue to say because it’s very depressing) there is nothing in this budget which lifts people on welfare payments out of poverty. Currently, we are forcing people to live about 38% below the poverty line. We are compounding chronic health conditions, malnutrition, lack of community, isolation, mental health issues and everything else that goes with being unemployed (And having a proportion of the population unemployed is something we rely on to keep inflation down by the way) by ‘supporting’ them with a payment that can’t pay for a single rental property in Australia and increasingly makes rooms in cities unattainable.

Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and Disability Support Pension recipient Kristin O’Connell said of the budget:

This is an irresponsible budget that once again has betrayed millions of welfare recipients and left us in deep poverty – poverty that causes sickness, homelessness and suicides. This budget puts the nail in the coffin of Anthony Albanese’s cruel, false promise to leave no one behind.

So-called energy bill relief does nothing to help when energy companies keep ratcheting up prices. The government needs to stop pretending to help poor people with more handouts for big business, landlords and corporate charities.

For people on Centrelink payments life is harder now than it was three years ago, and this budget does nothing to change that.

We will bring you other bits and pieces from the budget responses today, but you get the main drift – both parties are heavily in sell mode and willing to slide around with the truth. The Coalition more so than Labor at this early stage, but again – it’s early.

Peter Dutton and the Coalition is running around with the lines “cruel hoax” and “a budget for the next five weeks” while Labor has “struck the right balance” and “a new generation of prosperity in a new world of uncertainty.”

But what politicians (and in a lot of cases the media) don’t understand is that people are not as obsessed with the budget as they are, they don’t pour through the pages and they don’t listen to politicians. It’s more of a ‘what’s in it that works for me’ and then that’s it. They move on with their life. It’s the vibe they pay attention to more than anything.

So how is sacking 41,000 people, sending them into unemployment, going to help Australia? Does Peter Dutton and the Coalition mean they want to help Australian families, just not if you work in the public service?

We’ll provide our budget reply on Thursday night, but we’ve been clear that there are real, really, three pillars.

So the mandate I seek at the next election is around making sure that we can provide support to families in a cost of living crisis that Labor has created (Labor didn’t create it) and that means fixing our energy system. (The Coalition’s plans for ‘fixing the energy system’ are a fantasy that includes opening more gas reserves that we don’t need, because we export 80% of our gas already and opening up more fields will just see more gas exported, making gas more expensive. And the Coalition already voted against gas reserves when it voted against the energy rebates. Nuclear is a complete and utter fantasy and is not happening.)

That means providing hope for young Australians in terms of home ownership. So that means cutting back on the massive, big Australia policy that has been implemented by stealth under the Albanese government. (Migration was forecast as being just as big, if not bigger under the Morrison government. But migration is not the reason people can’t afford houses. The average wage not being able to buy the average home any longer is the reason people can’t afford houses. Tax settings the major parties refuse to change, like negative gearing and capital gains, is the reason people can’t afford houses. Allowing a few people to cannibalise homes for investment is the reason people can’t afford houses. It’s not migration)

And it also means making sure that we can provide guarantees around health and education funding and essential services otherwise, and making sure that we can provide security, and we live in a very uncertain world. And I think Australians instinctually get that. They see it every night on their television screens, and people feel less safe at home, and our country is less less safe in this century, so we need to make sure that we protect our people in our country as well. (Dutton’s answer to this has largely been ‘I’ll be better friends with Trump’ which is not exactly standing up to Australia either – it’s kowtowing)

Peter Dutton is asked about what the Coalition would do to fix the structural problems in the budget (governments spending more than they collect) and pivots to the old tired line that the Coalition “cleans up Labor messes”.

Well, so I think if you look at history, a Coalition government has always come in to clean up a Labor mess. John Howard did it post the Hawke/Keating period, and got our economy and our country back on track. And Tony Abbott did after Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, and we will do the same for our country, because Australian families know that the debt and the deficit and the reckless spending that has now become the hallmark of the Albanese government has led to higher inflation. And the Reserve Bank Governor points this out independently, says that there is a homegrown inflation problem, and interest rates already started to come down in the US and the UK, New Zealand and Canada, before that came down here, and it gives an insight into the reality of what domestic impact the Albanese government has had, and it’s been all negative. Families are really struggling. 29,000 small businesses have closed over the last three years, and a lot of people despite working harder and going backwards under Anthony Albanese.

Ugh. Where to begin.

OK, first of all, John Howard and Peter Costello inherited the mining boom, which they spent like catnipped cats and increased inequality. Then Tony Abbott came to power after a little thing called the GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS which hit economies across the developed world (and Australia didn’t enter recession unlike other nations).

The inflation crisis we have just lived through was a result of the shock to the global economy from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Australia experienced the inflation hit later than the US and the UK and didn’t start raising interest rates and until after the US and the UK, so it is no surprise that inflation, which arrived earlier, in the US and the UK, also started going down earlier in those countries. (same with Canada). And I don’t know if you have seen the impact the austerity measures have had in New Zealand but that is an economy which has absolutely tanked. So if Dutton is really worried about people going backwards and small business then he should take a look at what the conservative government has done in NZ.

You know how close we are to an election by Peter Dutton’s willingness to speak to the ABC. He was pretty happy dropping by the ABC RN studios where he spoke to Sabra Lane this morning about very Peter Dutton things.

One of the issues with interviewing Dutton is he is such an ideologue and states so many non-facts as facts in almost every sentence, it is almost impossible to pull him up.

Dutton:

I think what’s obvious to all Australians is that the Prime Minister is out of his depth, and I don’t think that they have put together a credible document, and we plunge into debt. And what is obvious is that there’s just red ink everywhere across this budget. For as far as the eye can see, there is Labor debt, and Labor debt now will extend to a trillion dollars in this budget. And not only that, I mean the impact on housing, for example, bringing in 2 million people over a year, bringing in 2 million people additional that is having a massive impact on housing in this country, and that’s why a lot of young Australians have lost the dream of home ownership under this government as well.

OK, well first of all, it isn’t ‘Labor debt’ – we all knew these deficits were coming. Even in the Morrison/Frydenberg years – you could see it coming. The forwards showed it. And when you have a lot of big spends – Aukus, stage three tax cuts, the NDIS and an aging population – and don’t change up the revenue streams, like – let’s say taxing fossil fuel companies properly – then this is what happens. But both major parties are guilty of that, and the Coalition was in power for almost a decade before these last three years, so it is not ‘Labor debt’.

Migrants are not the reason you can’t afford a house. House prices exploded during the pandemic border closures – when there was no migration.

There are a lot of very furrowed brows over the debt position with very serious mutterings about ‘what is in reserve’ if the geopolitical situation goes to sh*t. So there are a lot of questions about that floating around this morning. Here is Anthony Albanese’s answer to one of them:

What we’ve done is, through our responsible economic management, turn a liberal deficit that we inherited a $78 billion deficit in the first year into a $22 billion surplus, and we’ve continued to provide fiscal policy that was responsible. We have forecast the deficit this year is half of what was forecast at the last election, and combined, we have improved the budget bottom line by $207 billion in the year ahead.