The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says ‘Australia will not relent in their advocacy for justice’ for Dr Yang. Follow the day’s news live
Finance minister Katy Gallagher was asked about the Grattan Institute research (we had this earlier in the blog) showing that a third of households don’t pay tax and therefore miss out on the benefits.
Will the government consider raising jobseeker?
I think the treasurer and I have made it clear that every budget, we look at all aspects of expenditure across government, that would include looking at our payments and looking at our services … I think the PM committed to that before the election, this is something that we keep under consideration. It has to be balanced up with all of the other competing pressures where people want additional spending as well.
I think people are up for a rational and reasonable discussion… We made this decision based on putting people before politics.
I’m sure there’ll be others that will write things about [this] in future, but that hasn’t been something that we’ve been conscious of, it really has been about what we can do to help people – particularly those that have been feeling the crunch from the interest rate increases.
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