Radio Interview – ABC Sydney Breakfast with James Valentine
JAMES VALENTINE, HOST: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, joins us ahead of tonight’s Budget. Prime Minister, good morning
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning to you. Happy Budget day, if there’s such a thing.
VALENTINE: Oh look, we’re all overjoyed. The joy in the streets, the celebrations, it’s a little like a coronation, really here, which you know well.
PRIME MINSITER: Without the concert.
VALENTINE: Without concert, we’d get you curating the concert, I think, if that was going to be the case. Prime Minister, which was the better wedding, Kyle Sandilands or Charles Windsor’s Coronation?
PRIME MINISTER: Certainly the Coronation was quite an event. It was a moment in history and a great honour to be there. I think that you can be, as many people of course are, an Australian supporting of an Australian as our own head of state. I’m a republican, that hasn’t changed. But it doesn’t mean you can’t respect institutions and to respect history. And that was what was occurring, a transition of power for the first time in my lifetime, the first time in 70 years.
VALENTINE: Yeah. Extraordinary event, really. Let’s move on to the Budget. The Budget will be announced tonight at 7:30. We know an enormous amount of what’s going to be in the Budget. Give me three things, if we got you back here in six months’ time, give me three things that you think you’ll be able to come back and say, ‘See, that’s the difference – that’s what this Budget achieved. That’s what it was meant to do.’
PRIME MINISTER: That we continued to grow the economy. That’s the first thing that is a priority. Secondly, that we gave support to vulnerable Australians when they needed it. I announced yesterday the improvement to the single parent payment by raising the age of the youngest child from eight to 14 for that eligibility, and that will provide over $170 a fortnight of additional payments. And there are other measures we’ve announced as well. The energy price relief, some $3 billion combined with the states that will make a difference. The investment that we’re making in preventing family violence. More support for remote and Indigenous communities, all aimed at supporting vulnerable Australians. And the third, I guess, if I’ve only got to choose three, is the investments in strengthening Medicare that’s so important for our health care system.
VALENTINE: All right, well, let’s take those as benchmarks and let’s do that. Let’s come back in six months and say, these are the things that should be better, we should be seeing economic growth, Medicare should be better, people should fair feel price relief and the rest.
PRIME MINISTER: I’m going to cheat to add another one, which is the support for a wage rise for aged care workers. We spoke a lot during the pandemic about the extraordinary contribution that aged care workers made, and we said we wanted to give them more than thanks, they deserved a wage rise. And we’ve provided $11.3 billion in the Budget for just that.
VALENTINE: All right, excellent. So, surplus. You’re now saying that you’re going to be in surplus. What happens to that? What do you do with that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we’ve got to pay down debt. We, of course, haven’t confirmed what’s in the Budget, the bottom line, people will have to wait for this evening to see how it all adds up. But we inherited a trillion dollars of debt. And what that means is that the interest rate bill goes up on paying that, just as interest rates globally have increased, that has an impact on that as well, so it adds to future debt. And so we have been very careful to put together a responsible Budget, and that means trying to create space for the investments that we need to drive the economy and productivity, the support that vulnerable Australians need, whilst making sure that we’re very prudent, because that is what is required at the moment. An economically responsible Budget will also mean that there’s not pressure placed on inflation, which is the major economic target at the moment.
VALENTINE: Does the surplus mean that we will see a lift in JobSeeker for everyone?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we will, of course, hand down the Budget at 7:30 tonight and people will see support that’s there across a range of areas. We’ve said we would provide cost of living relief. People will have to wait till, no more sleeps to go, it’ll all be there at 7:30 this evening.
VALENTINE: All right, you’re hearing from the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, with his spruiking of the Budget on Budget day this morning. I put out for questions, Prime Minister, from people. I said I’d put one to you, I’ll fudge that and say two. They sort of come in, I think, in some ways under the same sort of area. Quite a few people have put it like this. They said, right at this point, you’ve got a lot of political capital and you’re not spending it hard enough. And in particular, they point to the Petroleum Rent Resource Tax, they point to the revenue that you could have got from that. You’ve got some, you could have gone a lot harder. There is so much money there. So many other countries do this in such a different way. Have you squibbed a little? This is the time to spend that political capital, isn’t it? You know, two years’ time, you’ll be up against an election, you won’t want to do it then.
PRIME MINISTER: What we’ve done is to receive reports that were commissioned by the former government who did nothing. And this is a change that will bring $2.4 billion of additional revenue through the PRRT by bringing it forward, by reducing how much deductions can be made to 90%. We talked through with industry, we wanted to make sure as well that we provide that certain investment environment which is there. It quite clearly is an industry that is important for the transition, gas is an important transition fuel as we move to renewables to provide that stability. But it also, of course, is an industry whose exports are producing substantial revenue to the government. And if you have a look at the books tonight, one of the reasons why you will see an improvement is because of the increased taxation and revenue being paid.
VALENTINE: But I think the suggestion is that $2.4 billion is nothing like enough. That’s perfectly acceptable to the gas industry, for example.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, some of those same people, well I certainly wouldn’t put it as perfectly acceptable. I assure you that no one ever put their hand up and said, ‘please, can I pay $2.4 billion worth of additional revenue’.
VALENTINE: But within the scope of what they do, that’s perfectly dealable.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we wanted to do is to make sure that we got the balance right. And the truth is that some people who are saying that are the same people who say ‘shut the industry, don’t have any revenue whatsoever, don’t have a transition fuel’.
VALENTINE: Yeah. Is this one of your most difficult balancing acts at the moment? You are still opening up gas refineries and gas mining at the very time that you’re saying we do have to shut them down?
PRIME MINISTER: No, we’re saying that gas has an important role to play as a transition fuel. If you look at a company like Rio Tinto that is moving towards all of its refineries in alumina and activity in Gladstone, they have four substantial refineries that together result in direct and indirect employment of many, many thousands of Australians. What they are saying is they want to be powered by renewables, and whilst green hydrogen is something they’re looking at as well, to be the stabilising fuel source, if you like, in that transition, gas has an important role to play. If it wasn’t there, they wouldn’t be able to move to renewables like they are.
VALENTINE: Yeah, all righty. Well, it all comes down at 7:30 tonight. We’ll have the full results of the Budget then. You’ve pointed to some things that we’ll be able to judge you on in a few months’ time. I’m sure we’ll talk before then, but let’s make sure we do that as well. Prime Minister, thanks so much.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much. Terrific to talk with you.