Category Archives: Jim Chalmers (Australian politician)

‘A lethargic result’: Labor says it is ridiculous for Peter Dutton to take heart from Fadden byelection win

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Deputy prime minister Richard Marles says byelection swing to LNP was ‘half the average swing you would expect against a sitting government’

Senior members of the Albanese government insist they are not troubled by Labor’s loss in the Fadden byelection, as they seek to reassure Australians their main focus is on the cost-of-living crisis.

The Liberal National party retained the safe Gold Coast seat on Saturday in a byelection caused by the resignation of former minister Stuart Robert. There was a swing of about 2.4% to the LNP after preferences.

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Fadden byelection: Peter Dutton’s leadership given breathing room as LNP retains Gold Coast seat

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Cameron Caldwell wins retiring member Stuart Robert’s seat with Labor candidate Letitia Del Fabbro conceding less than 90 minutes after polls closed

The Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, has been given some breathing room with the LNP comfortably retaining its safe Gold Coast seat of Fadden.

Labor, which had debated whether to even run a candidate in the poll, went into the byelection expecting the LNP to win – it was always about by how much.

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RBA lifer Michele Bullock may have the luck of playing good cop to Philip Lowe’s bad

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The Reserve Bank of Australia’s first female governor will begin her appointment at or very near the end of the cycle of rate rises

Australia will get its first female Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, and the order of the day is continuity with change.

Continuity because Bullock is an extremely well qualified RBA lifer with four decades of experience.

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Australia news live: ANZ says customers ‘by and large are faring extremely well’ despite interest rates squeeze

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A student on New South Wales’s Central Coast has died after contracting the influenza virus, just days after NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant warned circulation of influenza B was rising and young people were at heightened risk from the strain.

You can read the full story here:

Having a budget which is in much better nick means that if at some future point – and we’re not contemplating additional measures right now – but at some future point if we need to, we do that from a much more solid foundation. And that’s because we’re managing the budget so responsibly.

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Australia’s budget surplus swells to $19bn due to surging tax revenue

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Economist Chris Richardson says figure well above earlier forecasts is a reminder of ‘how lucky the Lucky Country has been’

The federal budget is on track to smash its earlier surplus forecasts as the government rakes in much more revenue.

The underlying cash balance for the 12 months to May was $19bn, well above the $4.2bn surplus flagged for the 2022-23 financial year in the last federal budget.

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Greens and Coalition unite to refer bill to its own inquiry

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Albanese takes swipes at the Greens

The Midwinter Ball was held overnight. It seems to have been a fairly staid affair but I am still ferreting out info.

Consulting firm PwC engaged in a “calculated” breach of trust by using confidential information to help its clients avoid tax and engaged in a “deliberate cover-up” over many years, a Senate committee has found.

PwC should be “open and honest” by promptly publishing the names and details of its partners and staff involved, the finance and public administration committee has recommended.

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Australia news live: budget and minimum wage hike not to blame for rising interest rates, Chalmers says

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Treasurer points finger at inflation, adding ‘people are under pressure and the global economic conditions are not helping either’. Follow live

Parts of Victoria and South Australia are being warned to expect heavy rainfall today.

The heavy rain that’s already hit Western Australia is sweeping across the country, with South Australia’s Riverland and Murraylands warned to brace for heavy rainfall to last until Friday.

We want to see productivity get going. We have had the worst decade, I think, in productivity growth in the last 60 years in the previous decade so there’s a lot of work to do. We can’t turn that around in one year.

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Palaszczuk pledges $500m for renewables as Labor sharpens pitch for 2024 state election

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Premier suffered lowest approval rating on record in recent poll but message at Queensland Labor state conference was about unity

The first day of the Queensland Labor state conference was as rehearsed as the government probably hoped, with little infighting or division on display.

In the sugar town of Mackay, where Labor has held the state seat for more than a century, MPs were keen to portray the government as a united front ahead of next October’s election and to keep the focus on three key pressure points: cost of living, health and youth crime.

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PM questions migration attacks – as it happened

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Plibersek says new coalmine approved ‘in accordance with the facts’ and law

Circling back to the environment minister’s interview with ABC Radio:

I need to make decisions in accordance with the facts and the National Environmental Law. That’s what I do with every project. That’s what’s happened here.

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Deeming vows to stay in Liberal party – as it happened

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Chalmers grilled about potential rent freeze

Chalmers is asked three times whether he has any views about a potential rent freeze. He says he has been focused on cost-of-living measures at the federal level.

My thoughts are we’re better off trying to encourage supply. While doing that we’re trying to take some of the edges off the pressure people are funding, that’s why I funded the biggest increase in rental assistance.

What we’ve been able to do, and I acknowledge the work of Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese working with the states and territories to do this, is to try and moderate the costs. It’s still a demand-driven program. It still will be growing very quick, the quickest growing in the budget but we need to moderate some of these costs.

In the near term that’s about cracking down on fraud and money going where it’s not supposed to be going. We also need to be making sure that we are moderating costs in – growth in costs in services and equipment, for example.

We don’t have enough homes and so whether it’s the build to rent tax breaks, the housing Australia future fund or the housing accord or some of these other measures, it recognises if we need - if we’re going to make housing more affordable, we need more supply.

But Anthony Albanese, to his credit, has shown leadership at the national cabinet level to see how we can work with the states and territories on issues like renters’ rights and that’s really important. When it comes to the agreement with the states and territories, we will do what we can.

It wouldn’t be the best negotiating tactic, David, to nominate a number today but we have said we’re prepared to extend it.

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Labor leaves door open for jobseeker recipients to work more hours before losing payments

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Treasurer says government won’t rule out adopting Peter Dutton’s proposal for social security recipients to be able to earn more before being penalised

The Albanese government has kept open the option of taking up the opposition’s proposal to increase the hours jobseekers can work before losing their payments.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, declined to rule out adopting the idea, saying the government was “always looking for ways to make it easier for people to participate in work”.

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Budget 2023 live updates: government ‘got the balance right’, PM says when pushed on inflation and $40 jobseeker rise – latest news

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Treasurer to resume spruiking his budget today at the press club in Canberra. Follow the day’s news and budget analysis, live

What about the jobseeker rate?

Anthony Albanese:

Reform is never done.

What we do as a Labor government is focus on what we can do for people, but we focus as well on doing it in a really practical way. I think one of the things that we need to examine, for example, with people who are on jobseeker, is how we improve employment services to get those long-term unemployed into work quite clearly. When you have an unemployment rate of 3.5% but you have a whole lot of people who are just stuck in, in unemployment, then what you need to do is to focus on how is it that the system can be reformed so that we provide those people with employment opportunities, because that’s the key.

You can’t do everything in every budget. And if I did that, you would be asking me questions about inflation. You’d be asking me questions about whether the deficit was too large. As it is what we’ve done is produce a projected surplus. We’ve got the balance, right, providing support, doing, I think, very significant changes.

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Treasurer delivers budget speech – as it happened

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Greens accuse Labor of designing budget surplus ‘for political reasons’

Greens treasury spokesperson Nick McKim is next on ABC radio RN Breakfast and he is still not happy with the changes to the petroleum resource rent tax.

This surplus has been designed for political reasons, by Jim Chalmers. And again, what we are seeing in this budget is an acknowledgment rhetorically that the government needs to do more to help people who are doing it really tough, but they are not taking the action they need to actually deliver help at the extent that it is desperately needed.

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Australia politics live: Pocock says gas tax hike just ‘tinkering around the edges’; Lambie to headline Hobart anti-stadium rally

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Labor will cap deductions to collect $2.4bn more in petroleum resource rent tax over four years. Follow the day’s news live

Jane Hume: Coalition government would offer ‘real savings’ and not ‘offsets’ in budget

The Liberal senator and shadow finance minister, Jane Hume, is now speaking to Patricia Karvelas on ABC RN Breakfast, rebutting everything Jim Chalmers just said.

The most important thing we would do is rein in expenditure … And I’m not saying that we would make cuts. I think that that is far too simplistic a term. But when something gets tight, for instance, we probably wouldn’t put on an additional 8,000 public servants which is what we’ve seen from this government just in the last 12 months …

We would make sure that the guardrails were on the budget so that we had a tax to GDP ratio, so that not only do we have offsets for your expenditure – which is of course, what this government is talking about when it says savings – we would have genuine savings and bank those savings to make sure that you don’t just deliver a surplus in one year, but you deliver it sustainably in future years.

The previous Coalition government spent $20.8bn outsourcing more than a third of public service operations, an audit has found.

The federal government released the findings of the Australian public service audit of employment on Saturday, which examined the hiring practices and associated costs of 112 public service agencies, excluding the CSIRO, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and parliamentary departments.

It’s nonsense to say that consultants aren’t needed to assist with public service responsibilities. All governments need external expert support and advice and often it’s a more efficient means of having access to that expertise.

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Anthony Albanese gives ‘crucial’ pledge of allegiance to King Charles III at coronation

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Prime minister returns to Australia on Sunday after joining in pledge to new monarch, a decision backed by colleagues

Anthony Albanese’s decision to pledge allegiance to King Charles at the monarch’s coronation has been described as “crucial” by his own government, despite the prime minister’s stance as a staunch republican.

The prime minister on Sunday said it was an honour to represent Australia at the coronation, where he entered Westminster Abbey behind Governor-General David Hurley and the national flag-bearer, soccer star Sam Kerr.

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Tasmania pushing to fast-track new AFL stadium; Chalmers slip hints at budget surplus – as it happened

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‘It’s tough’: Taylor on whether LNP can hold Fadden after Stuart Robert retirement

Taylor is asked whether the LNP can hold Fadden at the upcoming byelection to fill the spot left by Stuart Robert after he suddenly announced his retirement and says “it’s tough”.

That’s the nature of modern politics.

But the point I would make is the real test right now is this inflation test.

The more the treasurer talks about restraint, the more we know he’s planning to spend. That is the double speak we are getting from Labor right now.

I think it is a test of whether inflation is being dealt with. The truth of the matter is we know there is no bigger conversation around the kitchen table right now than this inflation that’s hitting. It is a tax on everyone and everything. We want to see a budget that deals with that.

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Deeming says she ‘never once’ considered suing party – as it happened

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Suspended Victorian MP says she remains a ‘proud Liberal’ and past six weeks have taken a ‘terrible toll’. This blog has now closed

Stuart Robert says his time in parliament ‘has not been the smoothest ride’

Stuart Robert, who was a close confidant of the former prime minister Scott Morrison, served as the minister for veterans’ affairs, the minister for the national disability insurance scheme and the minister for government services under the Turnbull and Morrison governments.

I am the first to acknowledge my time in parliament has not been the smoothest ride. Politics is tough. People throw the kitchen sink at you. And promises of a kinder, gentler parliament need to be taken with a grain of salt. We may all aspire to it, but ambition in politics will always win – as Labor stalwart Graham Richardson aptly put it: whatever it takes.

I do hope civility does eventually come to the theatre of politics. But I do fear division has well and truly entrenched itself in the current parliament. A kinder, gentler parliament it is not.

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Opposition leader says no federal intervention needed – as it happened

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Albanese added he is concerned about Assange’s mental health.

There was a court decision here in the United Kingdom that was then overturned on appeal that went to Mr Assange’s health, as well, and I am concerned for him.

It’s frustrating. I share the frustration. I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is.

… I think that the Assange case needs to be looked at in terms of what occurred, what the allegations are, and whether the time effectively that has been served already is in excess of what would be reasonable if it were proved that this had occurred.

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$60m a day: soaring interest bill on Australia’s debt eclipses cost of childcare or infrastructure

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Treasurer says $112bn cost over five years is one of fastest growing pressures on budget, blaming Coalition for the ‘mess’ it left

Interest payments on commonwealth government debt will cost the federal budget $112bn over five years, or $60m a day.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, revealed the soaring cost of debt ahead of Tuesday’s budget, which will show interest now costs more than the family tax benefit, childcare or infrastructure.

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Coalition’s $50 jobseeker rise more generous than Labor’s proposal, Pocock says

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Albanese government risks being unfavourably compared to the Morrison government if it does not raise the payment for all, the key independent says

The Morrison government’s post-Covid decision to lift jobseeker payments by $50 a fortnight helped more people than the Albanese government’s mooted 55-plus budget proposal, the key crossbench senator David Pocock says.

With less than a week to go until the budget is handed down, advocates and MPs are becoming increasingly concerned the Albanese government’s second budget will not do enough to help those living below the poverty line, or help women re-enter the workforce.

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