Back to the budget sell. Anthony Albanese was on ABC radio RN Breakfast, where he was pressed on the tax cuts, which have been criticised for their cost to the budget – $17bn – and for their modest impact (it’s about $5 a week for someone earning $70,000).

Albanese says it’s a ‘top up’ and needs to be taken in consideration of the changed stage three tax cuts:

It’s a top up with around about $50 a week, or $2,500 a year once all of our tax cuts are put fully in place. We changed the legislation, as you’re aware of, to make sure that every Australian got a tax cut, and we were what we wanted to make sure was that every Australian got a tax cut, but did so in a way that was responsible.

Andrew Wilkie continued:

Do these people know how silly they look? It would be funny except it’s so serious. It’s serious insofar as ensuring the industry is sustainable. It’s serious insofar as ensuring the environment is protected and safe. And it’s serious when it comes to the very pointed matter here tonight of the extinction crisis. This is the context in which we’re saying: ‘The fish farms can stay in Macquarie Harbour,’ and the government and—I don’t know—I think the opposition are saying that they don’t give two hoots about one of the planet’s oldest species becoming extinct.

Why is all this happening? Why are the government and the opposition acting so patently at odds with the best interests of the natural environment, and of a threatened species in particular, and so at odds with the public interest, so at odds with the groundswell of discontent on the backbench and so at odds with having the best reputation for he industry in the future? It is for one reason: to harvest a few hundred votes in the electorate of Braddon.

It is that crude, that blunt and that ugly. The government is happy—well, it is prepared, I should say—to drive the Maugean skate to extinction because it might improve its chances of winning the Tasmanian north-west and west coast seat of Braddon.
When you think about it in that context, it’s all the more ugly. I suppose the government might hope there’s some benefit in the seat of Franklin and in the seat of Lyons, both of which also have fish farms. But, oh, the irony of it!
The member for Franklin is the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and the Tassal factory has a lot of Huon aquaculture farms down the channel and down the Huon River. Oh, the irony of it! That minister is going to be in here voting in favour of this, even though it is actually hastening the demise of the industry by the trashing of the industry’s reputation.
I struggled to get my head around this. For one seat—which, by the way, Labor has almost no chance of winning, so the whole exercise becomes even more ludicrous—they’re taking a species closer to the edge of extinction. They are annoying the majority of Tasmanians who want fish farms kicked out of Macquarie Harbour, all to chase some votes that ultimately won’t see them win the seat anyway. It’s just bizarre behaviour. It’s just crazy behaviour. It’s inexplicable, but that’s what raw politics is like.

To echo my colleagues behind me, it helps to explain why the primary vote of the major parties is collapsing and why, at this federal election, again, a third or more of the country will vote for someone else.

They will vote for people who will fight for the environment, fight for the public interest, fight for their communities, fight for rational policies to grow industries, not to kill them.

While there was a lot of focus on the budget (as expected) Labor and the Coalition also voted together to pass the environmental wrecking laws which will let some projects bypass the environment minister’s reconsideration powers. It’s been sparked by the foreign-owned salmon farming industry which wants to keep farming in Macquarie Harbour, despite scientists saying it will mean the extinction of the Maugean Skate.

Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie didn’t hold back in the house debate:

…At the moment, in Tasmania, fish that have died from Rickettsia bacteria in this appalling fish die-
off, so long as their gills are still pink, with a bit of blood in the gills, and so long as the fish aren’t already rotting on a beach somewhere, are being put in an ice slurry, taken away and processed for human consumption.

Even the fish that are apparently not infected by Rickettsia and are being harvested and processed are not being tested for Rickettsia.

Given that it can take up to two weeks for the symptoms of Rickettsia to present themselves and given
that we know as a fact that all of the farms and all of the farm sites and all of the pens now are infected with Rickettsia, you can draw no other conclusion than the fish companies in Tasmania are selling and consumers are purchasing and eating infected fish.

How on earth does that help maintain the reputation of Tasmania or the reputation of this industry? It doesn’t. I make the point again—I want to labour this point—that the people that are running a protection racket for the salmon industry in Tasmania are actually going to be part of its demise. What we should be doing is coming in here and making sure we have the very best environmental safeguards possible at a federal level and pressuring the state and territory governments to make sure they have the very best environmental safeguards and that they have the very best environment protection agencies so that we can have absolute confidence we’re not eating fish that died in a bacterial outbreak and looked good enough with their gills pink enough to be processed and sold at Coles or Woolies.

Rebekha Sharkie: “Yuck!”

Wilkie:

Yuck, yes! It’s gross. It’s really gross. That’s not as gross, believe it or not, as the images I’m sure
some honourable members have seen of the beaches on the east coast in Tasmania and on Bruny Island in recent weeks with rotting fish carcasses and globules of fish oil—up on the beaches, which the Tasmania government said are completely safe. ‘The water is clean, and the beaches are fine, but do not touch the fish.’

Is Jim Chalmers trying to “bribe” Australian voters at the coming election as the Coalition claims?

Chalmers tells the ABC:

No, what the budget papers make really clear is that what we are proposing and what we are announcing in the budget last night is consistent with inflation coming down lower and sooner. One of the most important things is Treasury expects inflation to be within the target band, six months earlier than had been anticipated at the end of last year.

That’s a very good thing. And what it shows is that in our economy, we’re getting inflation down. We have wages up. Unemployment is down.

The debt is down. Interest rates are starting to be cut and growth is rebounding solidly in our economy as well.

So our economy is turning the corner. The credit for that belongs to the people of Australia, who have been through a lot. We want to help them with the cost of living. Peter Dutton wants to prevent that. Peter Dutton wants to cut everything, except for people’s taxes. We’re providing tax cuts in the most responsible way that we can, recognising that people are still under pressure and we’re helping them.

Hello and welcome to the show – no one has had any sleep, everyone is seeing numbers behind their eyelids and we have all had wayyyyyyy too much sugar. Must be the post-budget mania!

Treasurer Jim Chalmers and prime minister Anthony Albanese are preparing for the big sell – every major broadcaster in Australia sets up on the parliament lawns and the leaders go from tent to tent speaking to different media hosts about the budget.

Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor will be doing the same thing – but like a wedding with divorced parents, they usually start from different ends.

The budget is not going to be an entirely easy sell – there is a lot of red in those numbers, but more importantly they show an economy which has reacted exactly as it is supposed to under the conditions it has been under for the last couple of years with higher interest rates, and budget surpluses (which is just taking money out of the economy) and is pretty depressed.

So let’s grab this third coffee and get into it?

Ready? I hope so because I am not.