Television interview – Ten News First Midday
NARELDA JACOBS, HOST: Prime Minister, thanks for joining us on Midday. Now despite increases to welfare, JobSeeker is still regarded as a poverty payment. For a million Australians who are in line for a boost of $2.85 a day, how do you expect them to put a third meal on the table?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: What we’ve done in last night’s Budget is provide for responsible support to take pressure off families and to take pressure off people who are feeling it without putting pressure on inflation. And that’s why we have that $40 per fortnight increase, but we have a range of other measures, of course, that will provide assistance as well. Our energy price relief plan of $3 billion will make a difference to people’s energy bills. The cheaper child care plan that we’ve put in place will make a difference as well. Fee-free TAFE, so that people can get their skills up so they can get into employment as well is very important.
JACOBS: So the energy bill alone, that’s just a one-off payment, so that’s going to cover families for one bill alone. And when you talk about the rent assistance that you’re offering, can you guarantee that the 15 per cent increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance won’t be absorbed by landlords? I mean when you have people saying that one rent increase alone is enough in to tip them over the edge into homelessness, and we see families living in their cars, is it worth the bragging rights of having the first surplus in 15 years if you have people living in their cars?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, one of the things we did in the last Commonwealth-State ministerial meeting that we had in Brisbane, just a couple of weeks ago, was agree to work together with state and territory governments who control some of those issues of housing, for renters’ rights, and to work together to increase the rights that renters have to make sure that exploitation doesn’t occur. One of the things I discussed with Premiers and Chief Ministers at that time was to foreshadow the increase that we were going to make in rental assistance to make sure that measures can be put in place to make sure that that flows through to them.
JACOBS: Prime Minister, there’s not much here to combat climate change in the Budget and wouldn’t you argue that a spend now on climate would put more money in the hands of households to be able to pay their bills into the future stop, so why not tackle climate change in a bigger way in this Budget?
PRIME MINISTER: We are tackling climate change, including, we have a $2 billion fund in this Budget, a new announcement for hydrogen, dealing with the emergence of hydrogen as a stabilising fuel that can make an enormous difference so that we’re producing green steel, green aluminium going forward. Making sure that we can create those jobs and new industries whilst reducing our emissions. We have our Net Zero Authority to make sure that we deal with the transition so that communities and individuals aren’t left behind as well. And in addition to that, of course, the measures that we put in place in last October’s Budget, consistent with our plan for net zero and a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. Our engagement with the world, Australia is back around the table when it comes to dealing with climate change and we have a comprehensive plan. And already you are seeing renewable energy projects expand around the country, but particularly in our regions. What I want to make sure is that Australia benefits from that through manufacturing and through jobs that will feed into that transition as well.
JACOBS: Let’s turn to some of those big increases in spending like defence, Medicare, aged care and the NDIS. Where is the money coming from, if you’re not targeting things like stage three tax cuts, capital gains and family trusts? How are we affording these big spends?
PRIME MINISTER: Well you can see in the Budget last night – so in defence, for example, there’s new investment, but it’s all within the existing budget framework. We’ve made tough decisions. We have $40 billion of savings that we have made over the last two budgets. We’ve returned 87 per cent of any revenue gains to the bottom line, to pay down the debt that we inherited, a trillion dollars of debt from the former government. They projected a $79 billion deficit in this year’s budget when they handed down, in this financial year, when they handed down their budget just a year ago, and instead of that, you have this massive turnaround which is in Australia’s interest to have a small projected surplus of $4.2 billion. We’ve made the difficult decisions that are required, but at the same time we’re putting in place measures that take pressure off families whilst also not putting pressure on to inflation. Because inflation affects the poor more than it does the wealthy.
JACOBS: Let’s have a look just very quickly at the Voice to Parliament. $364 million in funding the delivery of the referendum, and that includes $10 million in mental health support for Indigenous people during the campaign. So are you worried about the mental toll that some of the discourse will be taking?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes we are. We saw in the marriage equality postal survey that people in that community, advocating for marriage equality, particularly, were targeted with some harmful comments and we’ve already seen harmful comments in the debate. I hope that it is kept respectful, but we need to be very conscious that Indigenous Australians are simply asking in this referendum, which has come from them through the Uluru Statement from the Heart, they’re asking to be respected and I’m very hopeful that Australians will vote yes in the last quarter of this year to show that respect to Indigenous Australians, but also to benefit non-Indigenous Australians, to show that we’re a more confident, mature nation going forward.
JACOBS: Prime Minister, just lastly, how confident are you that you’ve got the balance right here between managing inflation and not painting the RBA into a corner that they’re having to raise interest rates again?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’m confident we have got the balance right, that we’ve made the difficult decisions whilst providing support for those who need it, that this provides a strong foundation for the better future that we promised when we went to the election just a year ago.
JACOBS: Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, thanks for your time at Midday.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much.