Category Archives: Australian budget 2022

Government to crack down on NDIS provider fraud amid warning scheme will soon cost $50bn annually

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Bill Shorten says $126m earmarked in Labor’s October budget will help protect national disability insurance scheme ‘from crooks’

The federal government is creating a “fraud fusion taskforce” to try to claw back nearly $300m from national disability insurance scheme providers, amid warnings the NDIS could cost more than $50bn annually within four years.

The new body, which will replace the existing NDIS fraud taskforce, will target “fraud and serious non-compliance” with the help of law enforcement, regulatory and intelligence agencies.

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Jim Chalmers’ first budget comes amid a darkening economic outlook. Here’s what could go wrong

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The federal budget forecasts growth of 3.25% this year but hints at a slowing global economy with high inflation and interest rates

The resilience of Australian households to soaring expenses and the nascent recovery of China’s economy will likely determine whether Jim Chalmers’ first budget is a charm or chimera.

This year’s forecast for Australia’s economy to grow 3.25% may be the best this side of the next federal election as the Reserve Bank tries to douse inflation with another 75 basis points of interest rate hikes. The outlook, though, is darkening at home and abroad, adding to looming fiscal strains.

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Australian budget forecasts heavy hit to economy due to floods and disasters

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Estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of flooding

The increasing frequency of weather disasters will take its toll on the economy in the near term and force the government to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to build resilience for more to come.

As Australia endures its third La Niña event in as many years, the budget estimates growth will lose about quarter of a percentage point during the current quarter, or about $5bn in economic activity, because of the flooding across the country’s south-east.

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Labor pledges extra $200m in Australian aid for Ukraine and $500m for veterans in budget

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Albanese government unveils big boost to Pacific aid partly offset by axing Coalition’s agriculture visa while sparing defence from major cuts

The Albanese government has earmarked more than $200m for additional help for Ukraine and $500m to support Australian veterans and their families, while largely sparing defence from major funding cuts.

But a massive boost in aid to the Pacific and the expansion of Pacific worker schemes announced in Tuesday’s budget will be partly offset by a $213m cut to the previous Morrison government’s programs in the foreign affairs portfolio.

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Labor hints at more controls on energy sector – as it happened

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We will be breaking into the political coverage today to keep you updated on the floods as well:

Overnight, residents of the north west NSW town of Narrabri have been ordered to evacuate due to flooding, with the SES issuing the warnings for the town’s industrial and residential areas.

The rivers are very, very full and, of course, our dams are mostly at full capacity at present. So, even the smallest rainfall can cause an elevated risk of flash flooding and riverine flooding. We will see rivers decline, but the risk is real.

We are bracing for another wet weather system into the state on the weekend.

He is a friend of Australia as the UK is a friend of Australia. We congratulate him on his elevation to the Prime Ministership. The UK, like Australia, has no shortage of challenges and no shortage of economic challenges.

So, we wish Rishi Sunak well. Some of us had the opportunity to work with him briefly when we first came to government. I was able to exchange messages with him when he was unsuccessful in the last leadership ballot. I think it says something about his commitment and his persistence, the way that he conducted himself in the interim. I don’t think it’s insignificant that a country like the United Kingdom has its first Prime Minister of colour.

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Budget deficit to halve this financial year but spending pressures mean boost will be short-lived

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Jim Chalmers’ first budget to reveal $42bn improvement to bottom line across forward estimates but conditions will deteriorate after two years

Soaring commodity prices and a strong labour market will deliver a $42bn boost to the budget bottom line over the next four years, with the deficit more than halving this financial year.

However, the improvement – to be revealed in Jim Chalmers’ first budget on Tuesday night – will be short-lived, with worse-than-expected deficits by the end of the forward estimates as a result of growing spending pressures.

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Politics live: Nationals accuse Labor of regional ‘vendetta’; Chinese state media denounces closer security ties between Australia and Japan

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Albanese government will scrap two Coalition grants programs to set up two new regional programs worth $1bn over next three years. Follow the day’s news live

Gallagher: spending audit is an ‘ongoing piece of work’

And it will continue, Katy Gallagher says:

My view is finance minister is that this is a process that should keep going. We’ve identified obviously, some of that the short term work and that will be reported in the budget.

But this spending audit should should keep going. We should do it in every budget, just to make sure that we’re constantly looking at ways we’re spending money and I think the Australian public would expect us to do that, that it’s not always adding in new spending when there’s … need that arises, and there will be, but we’re looking at existing expenditure as well and how we can reuse that or … realign it with … new investments.

It’s not exclusively infrastructure. We are finding savings across government. We have gone to every single department and ask them to look at their programs to identify programs that don’t need to be done any longer or don’t align with government priorities and where we’ve been able to return some money to the budget we’re doing that.

The other part of it is actually not adding new funding to things but using existing funding to fund some of our our priorities. So it’s been a very useful exercise and I think $22bn is a pretty reasonable figure to have achieved over just, you know, a couple of months in government.

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Australia will join Biden’s global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, Albanese confirms

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Funding of more than $3bn will support agricultural methane reduction, clean tech initiatives and the commercialisation of seaweed feed supplement

The Albanese government has confirmed it will join Joe Biden’s global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, as the prime minister warned climate change is increasing the frequency of Australia’s extreme weather events.

Guardian Australia revealed in June that Labor was considering signing the pledge, and the climate change minister Chris Bowen confirmed on Sunday Australia would be joining more than 100 other countries by making the commitment in the run-up to United Nations-led climate talks in Egypt next month.

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Housing, Indigenous and domestic violence services to receive extra $560m in federal budget

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Exclusive: The partial indexation of funding aims to help community organisations cope with rising costs

Community organisations such as housing, Indigenous and domestic violence services will receive an extra $560m over four years in Labor’s first budget since its re-election.

The partial indexation of funding revealed by the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, aims to help community services keep up with rising costs.

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Albanese government to give $900m budget boost to Pacific countries

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Funding will help tackle poverty and shore up security in the region and make Australia ‘more influential in the world’, Penny Wong says

The Albanese government will increase aid to Pacific countries by $900m as it declares next week’s budget will deliver the biggest rise in Australia’s official development assistance in more than a decade.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, will announce the extra funding during a speech in French Polynesia on Friday, arguing the budget will be “a major step toward the goal of making Australia stronger and more influential in the world”.

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Albanese urged not to ‘lose the moment’ for tax reform as he squashes debate on stage-three cuts

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Economists say the tax cuts are unaffordable and should be trimmed or changed, either now or in May

Economists have urged the federal government not to squander the chance for tax reform, after the prime minister hosed down speculation about possible changes to the legislated stage-three cuts in this month’s budget.

The chief executive of the Grattan Institute, Danielle Wood, said she would be “sad” if “we lost the moment” for a substantial discussion about tax changes and hoped a broader debate was still possible before the next budget in May.

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Australia news live: government asks Optus to pay for new passports after data breach; severe thunderstorm warning for Sydney

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Prime minister says Labor believes ‘Optus should pay, not taxpayers’ after customer data compromised. Follow the day’s news

Election wash-up

As we reported yesterday, the AEC will be appearing at the electoral matters parliamentary committee hearing this morning.

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Women struggle to get federal government’s $5,000 payment to escape domestic violence

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Concerns women in abusive relationships or refuge accommodation face delays and poor communication with service providers

Women escaping domestic violence say they are struggling to access a $5,000 government payment designed to help victims leave an abusive relationship.

Women have reported delays and poor communication with service providers about the escaping violence payment (EVP), which has been allocated $240m as part of the federal government’s $1.3bn investment in women’s safety.

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Budget reply speech: Anthony Albanese pledges $2.5bn extra for struggling aged care system

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Federal Labor leader says if Australians want higher standards in aged care ‘we need to support higher wages for our carers’

Anthony Albanese has pledged to spend an extra $2.5bn fixing the problems in aged care if Labor is elected – as the major parties accelerate towards a campaign contest to be called within days.

The federal opposition leader used his budget reply speech on Thursday night – a set-piece that followed a historic address to the Australian parliament by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – to outbid the Morrison government on the policy response to the royal commission into aged care quality and safety.

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Australia’s minimum wage should be raised by 5% to counter inflation and living costs, unions say

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ACTU secretary Sally McManus says increase needed for low-paid workers to ‘keep their heads above water’

Australia’s lowest-paid workers should get a 5% pay rise – or $2,000 more a year, according to a submission from unions to the industrial umpire.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions has called for the minimum wage to increase from $20.33 an hour to $21.35, to boost the wages of 2.67m employees who rely on the annual wage review for a pay rise.

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Australian arts sector says budget cuts during pandemic recovery ‘highly disappointing’

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Federal budget papers reveal $190m or 19% reduction in 2022-23 compared to previous year, Fund the Arts coalition says

The arts sector is facing a significant drop in federal government funding as pandemic support measures come to an abrupt end despite some industries struggling to recover.

The arts minister, Paul Fletcher, said the inclusion in the budget of an additional $20m in Covid-19 relief under the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (Rise) scheme in 2022-23, first announced last week, was an “unprecedented injection” of art stimulus funding.

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Redspice: budget ushers in Australia’s ‘biggest ever’ cybersecurity spend

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Pledge of $10bn will see electronic spy agency ASD double and ramp up ability to launch offensive cyber operations

Australia’s electronic spy agency will double in size and ramp up its ability to launch its own offensive cyber operations as part of a $10bn national security budget pledge curiously dubbed Redspice.

But the funding is spread over 10 years and only $4.2bn will be spent in the first four-year budget cycle. Given the government is partly offsetting the package with savings from other parts of the defence portfolio, the cyber pledge is worth only $588.7m in new money in the first four years.

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Australia news live updates: many Lismore buildings ‘expected to flood again’; new Russia sanctions; man’s body found in Qld flood waters

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Many buildings in Lismore are ‘expected to flood again’ as CBD ordered to evacuate; severe weather warning for large parts of NSW; foreign minister announces ‘Magnitsky-style sanctions’ targeting 39 Russians; treasurer Josh Frydenberg says election will be held ‘in a matter of weeks’; nation records 24 Covid deaths, with record high daily case numbers in Tasmania. Follow the latest updates live

The New South Wales government has approved fewer than 400 disaster relief grants for flood-ravaged northern rivers businesses, despite receiving almost 8,000 requests for help since applications opened almost a month ago.

After the state’s north was left reeling by weeks of devastating floods, the government announced grants of up to $50,000 for small businesses to help pay for cleanup costs, repairs, replace damaged stock and to lease temporary premises.

Today it’s been revealed that the unemployment rate will have a friend for the first time in 50 years. This is a remarkable achievement that belongs to 26 million Australians. We’ve avoided the scouring of the labour market so reminiscent of previous recessions in Australia in the 80s and 90s.

We now have an unemployment rate that is very, very low and we are banking that dividend, now with the cost of living.

Would you be providing that if Australians weren’t going to the polls in a matter of weeks?

We would of course be providing cost-of-living relief given the circumstances that Australia now faces. There’s higher expected inflation, indeed, it’s a global phenomenon. There’s petrol prices rising above $2 a litre and with the other challenges on Australian companies.

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Morrison government predicts unemployment will drop to 50-year low as it spruiks pre-election budget

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Treasurer’s office says dip to last years, as Labor points to stagnant wages and vows to lift them

Josh Frydenberg’s pre-election budget will project Australia’s unemployment rate will drop to 3.75% this year, its lowest figure in 50 years, with the Coalition to talk up a “remarkable” post-pandemic recovery.

The treasurer’s fourth federal budget will also fund an extra 15,000 subsidised training courses for aged care workers, in a nearly $50m promise to boost the sector’s workforce.

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Australia news live update: NSW government seeks to suspend MP facing charges; nation records 26 Covid deaths

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NSW government seeks to suspend Gareth Ward; Craig Foster lashes treatment of asylum seekers in National Press Club address; new research suggests long-lasting Covid immune response from vaccine-induced T-cells; at least 26 Covid deaths recorded; Atagi expected to green light fourth booster shots for some Australians. Follow all the day’s news live

David Koch:

Have you spoken to the “mean girls” – Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong – in the last week or so since Kimberly Kitching’s death about the allegations of bullying?

I think that term is really unfortunate.

She used it, it is not just us.

There is a lot of people speaking on other people’s behalf at the moment. I think that in politics, there are a range of people who are involved in party politics who play it pretty hard. One of those was Kimberly Kitching. She was somebody who engaged in politics and was passionate about her belief and from time to time that could produce some conflict. But it needs to be done in a way that is respectful, in a way that is understanding, and attempts to reach consensus.

It is rather bizarre ... I am always available and indeed I lobby regularly to be on the Sunrise program. I am always happy to discuss things with the media, but I won’t be taking lectures from a prime minister who visited Lismore and had strict streets shut off so victims of floods could not get near him.

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