Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ second federal budget in seven months delivered a surprising surplus, some support for battlers, and the usual appalling devil in the detail.
The surplus of $4.2 billion was quite a turnaround from the expected $77.9 billion deficit, and appears to be largely due to the war in Ukraine, which has sent tax receipts from commodity exports soaring, along with increased employment. Economic gurus said this was just a temporary glitch in the matrix, with deficits set to return soon, which will be a great relief to the Liberal Party, which has campaigned for decades on the ALP’s inability to preside over a positive economic situation.
Jobseeker has been extended by $20 a week, there will be expanded eligibility for the single parent payment, and $3.5 billion to improve incentives to doctors to bulk bill those most in need, plus more tobacco tax, and some power bill relief for struggling households. Kicked down the road has been any serious overhaul of the NDIS.
Some tax loopholes for wealthy retirees have been closed, and there will be some new incentives for households and businesses to transition to renewable energy.
Burning stuff
Being a Labor budget though, there has to be a but, and as usual it involves the unelected government of Australia, namely the mining industry, which got another green light on budget night to proceed on its climate-wrecking way.
Trumpeted by the treasurer was a modest change to the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, expected to raise about $2 billion over four years.
This was immediately undercut by the Australia Institute, which published a list of things that each raise much more tax money for Australia than the PRRT, including beer, visa applications, hard liquor and cigarettes, which is odd considering that we are now a dirty energy superpower, even without considering coal. In Australia (unlike our main gas competitor, Qatar) most of this money flows straight off shore.
Protesters hit the green lawns of Parliament House, calling on the government to listen to traditional owners in the Northern Territory and ban shale fracking, which is set to expand massively in the next few years thanks to Labor governments in the territory and federally.
Widjabul Wia-bal woman and GetUp chief executive Larissa Baldwin-Roberts said Labor had broken promises to traditional owners across the country. ‘They’ve been saying no to fracking on their country and they’ve been saying that they want to protect their cultural heritage and their water,’ she said.
‘What we saw in last night’s budget was millions and millions of dollars going in to supercharge these projects and steamroll our communities in order to get fracking going.’
Thanks Vlad
Ironically, current global supervillain Vladimir Putin is also responsible for rescuing the fracking industry in Australia, which was tinkering on the brink of financial collapse until the Ukraine war.
Soaring gas prices have now triggered a boom, accompanied by all the destruction and instability of similar booms in the past.
But the ‘opposition’ in Canberra wasn’t interested in any of that, of course. The Liberal Party’s response to the budget boiled down to the suggestion that helping poor people slightly would be ‘inflationary’, in spite of Mr Chalmers’ protests, along with some dog whistling from Peter Dutton about immigration.
And so we went from back in black to hell’s bells, with no guitar solos from Angus Young to ease the pain.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
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