Jim Chalmers:
Okay, good day everyone. Thanks for making time for us this afternoon as we release the Albanese government’s fifth Budget. I’ll make some opening remarks, then throw to Katy, and then obviously try and take maybe half a dozen questions or so, because I know that people are under pressure to file.
This Budget is ambitious in the face of adversity. It helps people with the pressures that are bearing down on the Australian economy as a consequence of the war in the Middle East, at the same time as it reforms our economy for the future. One of the things that we are proudest of in this Budget that we will hand down tonight is that we haven’t used the developments in the Middle East as a reason to delay some of the necessary longer‑term reforms in our economy.
And so the Budget is really 5 budgets in one. There’s a fuel security package, there’s a cost of living and housing package. There’s a tax reform package which is bold, broad and ambitious. There’s a very comprehensive productivity package. And there’s also a huge effort when it comes to budget sustainability and savings. And so 5 major elements really make this more like 5 budgets in one.
At a time of very serious global uncertainty and adversity, it’s all about aspiration and opportunity. It recognises that there are a lot of challenges in our economy that can’t be left unattended any longer. It recognises that we have a number of issues in our economy, some of them long standing, some of them brought to us by a war on the other side of the world, but all of them very, very important and all central to our considerations in this Budget.
So, we’re helping people now and we’re giving hope to future generations. That’s what this Budget is all about. If you think about the challenges that we are addressing, inflation and productivity, housing and tax, and also issues around intergenerational anxieties and making sure that aspiration, opportunity and ambition are the defining characteristics of our country in the future, and not just the defining characteristics of our country in the past.
We take seriously our obligations to help people through a difficult period, but also our intergenerational obligations as well and you can see that really right throughout this Budget in the tax package, but also in the package that goes to budget sustainability. Also in the productivity package, which is all about lifting the speed limit in our economy so we can grow more quickly without adding to these inflationary pressures.
In addition to some of those elements which have been made necessary by the war in the Middle East. As we’ve said on a number of occasions, Australians and the Australian economy paying a really hefty price for this war in the Middle East. You can see that in the economic forecast, and you can see that in the cost and consequences that Australians are being asked to pay because of decisions that they have absolutely nothing to do with.
And so if you think about the global oil shock, and the first chart here, it’s really just to give you a sense of the magnitude of this shock. You can see on the left‑hand side compared with other major energy shocks. The one on the left‑hand side is this one. The one on the right‑hand side is the Ukraine war, that gives you a sense of the magnitude of this huge shock which is reverberating in our economy, playing out in our forecasts, but also playing out in our Budget deliberations. And you can see on the right‑hand side of that page the global oil price, which is obviously one of the main ways to understand this extreme volatility that we are dealing with. And so all of this did shift our priorities a little bit.
This is not exactly the same budget that we would have handed down in February for obvious reasons. We needed a fuel security package and that’s a really important part of the Budget. It changed the way we thought about our cost‑of‑living package as well, finding $3 billion to cut fuel taxes too. But it also reinforced some of our core challenges, some of our longer‑standing challenges, those inflationary pressures, those issues around productivity, issues around supply chain resilience. And so I’ve made it really important that as we worked out how to help people through this, that we’re also investing in resilience, recognising that it’s not a choice between resilience or reform, but it’s resilience and reform. Resilience is reform. And that’s one of the really key influences on this Budget as well.
So, without dwelling on all of the economic forecasts, you can see that we’ve presented a central case and a more severe case. The central case is that we expect inflation to hit 5 per cent in the middle of the year. Heavily dependent, heavily hostage to developments overseas for obvious reasons, including the duration of the conflict. Growth is expected to take a hit calendar ‘26 and calendar ’27, and also in financial year terms. If you look at that second chart, that really compares our calendar year growth with some of our peers. So, even with the hit that we expect to take to growth, we still expect to outperform those other economies in the chart when you compare our GDP forecasts to theirs.
Now, the productivity package is a really important way to think about lifting the speed limit in the economy. If you go back to the speech we made at the Business Economists, which was really all about recognising productivity is the key to lifting the speed limit in our economy, lifting living standards over time, productivity has been a perennial challenge for decades. In our economy, we’ve seen some positive developments in the last 12 months or so, but nowhere near enough to what we need to genuinely lift living standards over time and so the productivity package in here won’t get all of the attention tonight in your evening bulletins or in the paper tomorrow, but a huge amount of effort’s gone into this productivity package, very broad productivity package.
It’s all about getting compliance costs down, attracting more investment, making it easier and faster to build things in our economy, whether it’s energy projects, housing or other types of projects. And so the productivity package is very broad, the most comprehensive productivity package in some decades, recognising there’s not one thing we need to do to make our economy more productive and dynamic, but a number of different things simultaneously.
And if we do all of these things in the Budget, we’ll get compliance costs down by more than $10 billion a year. And if we do all the national competition policy reforms with the states, we expect the GDP uplift to be about $13 billion a year. And so those are the sorts of positives we’re expecting to get from taking productivity seriously in our economy. What links the productivity package with the tax package is obviously the emphasis on investment. I’ll come to the interaction of the housing market and the tax system in a moment, but first, I encourage you to check out the $3.5 billion in incentives for investment and innovation in the Budget.
A really big serious part of the Budget is the tax package for business, for innovation and for investment. And that’s another way that we are trying to make our economy more productive. So, that’s one part of the tax reforms. There’s also some simplification. And then the biggest part, which has attracted most of your interest, is in the personal income and intersection between the tax system and the housing market as well.
We’ve really got 3 motivations here when it comes to the tax reform package. The first one is to better align the treatment of, the tax treatment of people who work with the people who get their income in other ways. And so trying to better align the tax system, it’s out of whack. And tonight we take some serious steps to try and address that challenge.
Second challenge, we’re addressing is too many people are locked out of housing. And if you look at the way that the housing market has developed since the big tax change in ‘99 around capital gains created a very substantial distortion in the tax system. And that’s locking too many people out of the housing market, especially younger people. So, a big motivation for us is to address that challenge where too many people are locked out of housing and then thirdly to try and help investment flow to areas where it’s most productive.
So, rebalancing the system. If you look at this third chart that is up there now, that gives you a sense of average tax rates and what we are trying to do to kind of rebalance those average tax rates, return bracket creep, where we can afford to do that. We’re actually cutting income taxes 5 different ways. Now the 3 income tax cuts that we legislated, the instant deduction provides a bit more tax relief. And then we’ve got this Working Australian Tax Offset as well. And what that does is really for the first time, it says we are finding a way to increase the effective tax‑free threshold just for workers, not for people who derive their income in other ways. And so we are creating the architecture to use that as a way to dial up tax relief for people who work.
So, a big motivation is to try and get this balance right between the tax treatment of people who work for a living and people who earn their income from investments, not making judgements about people who do that in legitimate and understandable ways. But the tax system got out of whack and we’re trying to realign it a bit. And you can see one of the ways that we do that is by getting those average tax rates down. And a lot of you have asked me in the course of the lockup, you know, what do we think about future tax cuts? One of our motivations here in the tax package, the tax package overall is neutral in the forward estimates. But you can see over time that we are creating space to return more bracket creep. We’re enthusiastic about that, as I said, we’re doing it 5 different ways already. And we see that the tax system is a really important way to help people with the cost of living, returning bracket creep, where we can afford to do that.
We’re also going out of our way to respect and recognise decisions that people have taken in the past because we think it’s important that the major changes here are prospective. When it comes to negative gearing, you can keep negatively gearing a new property. That’s because we want to make a contribution to supply. The housing package overall is a positive for housing supply overall. Encourage you to consider the housing package in its entirety. But where people are still negatively gearing in the future, we want that to be for new homes to add to supply in this country.
Also, the piece around incentivising investment and innovation. Big emphasis on startups, big emphasis on VC, the newer, smaller parts of our economy, but really dynamic where we’re going to get a lot of the productivity growth and so recognising the special role that they play as well.
As I said revenue neutral over the forwards, that’s important too. It means that the heavy lifting on budget repair is being done by savings and spending restraint, not by the tax changes over the forward estimates. We’re returning the upside of the tax packages being returned to workers and businesses in ways that I have described.
Now the next part of course is around structural repair and the stronger budget. This is a reform budget not just because of tax and productivity, but also because the savings package goes beyond the usual kind of nips and tucks. The NDIS reform is a genuine economic reform. It’s all about saving the NDIS from itself. It’s all about making sure that we can continue to provide levels of support that people need and deserve in a way that the country can afford. I pay tribute to Mark and Jenny and others, Katy, for the work that’s happened here. That’s the biggest part of the sustainability package, but not the only part. There’s a number of elements and I’ll throw to Katy on that in a moment, but that savings package, gross savings of $64 billion, that’s historically high.
Positive net impact of decisions at $26.1 billion dollars, that’s historically high and that’s because we take the inflation challenge in our economy very seriously. And you can see that because of our efforts we’ve got the budget position is much stronger than it was even in December. The deficits are smaller, debt is lower, we’ve been able to get spending as a shared GDP lower. That $45 billion improvement over the forward estimates since the mid‑year update, that’s a substantial improvement. We know we’ve got more work to do as well.
And over the medium term we’ve made a meaningful difference too. We’ve actually charted the course back to balance over the medium term and that’s because of the seriousness with which we’ve approached the savings task. But perhaps the starkest way to understand the progress we made on the Budget is have a look at the debt trajectory compared to what we inherited. And so if you look at the top line there, that’s the 2022 PEFO. That was the debt trajectory when we came to office.
You can see the very substantial inroads that we made up to MYEFO which is the middle line, and then subsequently now, which is this Budget, and you can see how substantial that difference is that we’re making to the debt trajectory in this country. And that’s because of the really great work that’s been done by colleagues when it comes to the savings task. Now, if you compare our gross debt with other countries, this is the comparison. So, we’re the blue chart. We’re the blue bar in the chart. That’s gross debt compared to other economies as a share of their economy. And even better, if you look at the little grey dot in the blue bar, that’s the Commonwealth. So, the Commonwealth compared with other countries is a much smaller, has much less debt than countries with which we compare ourselves.
By the end of the medium term, we’ve got the show in much better condition. And that’s obviously deliberate. If you look at the last chart that I’ll show you before I throw to Katy, this is the structural position of the budget. And what I want you to take from that is you look at the way that we are charting a course back to surplus at the back end of the medium term.
What you can see is that the savings package is doing the heavy lifting in the change. You can see in the light blue bars, that’s the savings package. And you compare that to the dark blue bar, which is the tax reform. And what you can see from that is multiples of the heavy lifting being done to improve the structural position of the budget over the medium term is being done by savings, not by tax changes. That’s important and that’s deliberate. And really the big driver of that has been the Finance Minister. So, I’ll throw to Katy and then I’ll take about half a dozen questions.
Katy Gallagher:
Thanks very much, Jim. Well, under this Budget, the budget is stronger, the deficits are smaller, and debt is lower compared to what we inherited when we came to government back in 2022. As Jim just took us through, gross debt is better than what we inherited and better than MYEFO, $173 billion lower in ’26‑‘27 than the ‘22 PFO and $18 billion lower than MYEFO. And this avoids significantly about $70 billion in interest payments over 11 years. So, the bottom line is better in every year of the medium term compared to MYEFO. And we’ve achieved this through restraining spending, identifying savings and returning tax upgrades.
And these have been sensible and responsible decisions to provide those savings and reprioritisations, $64 billion of them which are identified in the Budget. Net policy decisions in the Budget are positive for the second update in a row, and this brings to a total $178 billion in savings since being elected in 2022. Importantly, to the end of the medium term, budget improvements from savings are almost 3 times those from revenue measures. And Jim just took you through that. I just wanted to make a few comments about the NDIS.
Now a large part of the $64 billion, about $38 billion in savings is from the NDIS is a major structural save. But there are also savings and reprioritisations across other portfolios. But just to get a sense of, and the NDIS or the work that’s been done on the NDIS, when we came to government, the NDIS was tracking, it had risen from about $28 billion a year up to $35 billion a year. In ‘25‑‘26 it’s over $50 billion a year. And without some of these structural reforms it would head to $70 billion dollars.
So, as Jim said earlier in the walk through the corridor, we’re big supporters of the NDIS, but it’s unsustainable to have a program growing like that. And we needed to take action to make sure the NDIS is returned to the program that it was originally intended to provide support for people with significant disability. And we believe this package does that.
In addition to that, there are other significant savings in the area of public service. We seek another $2.7 billion dollars to continue the pressure on the APS to reduce external labour and non‑wage spending. There’s about $5 billion dollars in reprioritisations in Defence, obviously they get injections as well, but it’s a big part of the work and we appreciate the work that the DPM and Minister Conroy have done there. Reform of the R&D tax incentive, we’ve looked at uncommitted funding right across uncommitted or unallocated grant funding across the APS. And you’ll see decisions there where we’re returning that to the Budget, including with programs like Battery Breakthrough and Hydrogen Headstart.
We’ve got a focus on compliance and around reducing MBS and PBS fraud, in addition to the work that’s being done in the NDIS on that and also looking at compliance to safeguard some investments in schooling, particularly when it comes to students with a disability. So, average real payments growth of just 1.5 per cent per year over the 8 years to ’29‑30. This is less than half the 30‑year average. By tackling those key structural spending pressures, including growth in the NDIS over the medium term now averages 3.7 per cent down from 8.5. And growth in aged care slightly down from 5.8 to 5.4.
And so this is work that has happened right across government. There’s 150 individual decisions, save decisions in this Budget, which shows you just how seriously we have taken this work. Can I just make 2 quick comments on the APS? You know, we’ve done a lot in the first term to rebuild the APS to make sure it’s got the capability it needs to do the job we’ve asked it to do. You’ll see from the ons and offs in the, I think it’s Budget paper 4 that, you know, our view that the APS is largely the right size now continues. There’re small upgrades in areas like Defence and importantly in Services Australia to make sure they’re able to keep delivering. But for the large part, you know, that maintains the size from previous year.
And just in women, I just draw you to the fact that this has a very, a huge piece of work that Tanya Plibersek and I have been working on, which is about how government systems are weaponised to perpetuate violence against women and children. This is something that we’ve done a lot of work on. This kicks off that work by looking at sensible reforms around the child support system, which we think are important and the women’s sector has been advocating for, for some time.
Chalmers:
Ok, we’re going to start with Clare Armstrong. We’re going to take about 6 questions so that you can all go on file.
Gallagher:
Thanks.
Journalist:
Treasurer, could you explain what has changed in the housing market, the economy, wages that didn’t exist 12 months ago when you might have sought an election mandate for CGT, negative gearing, those changes. And if nothing substantially has changed in that period, is it your view now that it’s just not politically tenable to take those kinds of proposals to an electorate at an election?
Chalmers:
Well, the comments that we made at the election I think reflected the government’s almost singular focus on housing supply. And we’ve maintained a focus in this Budget on supply. But also it’s become increasingly clear to us that even though the challenges in the housing market begin with housing supply, they don’t end there. There are particular challenges around youth homelessness that we are investing in in this Budget. But really, the main change, which I acknowledge, the main change in our thinking, is the view that we can’t let the intersection of the housing market and the tax system continue to lock out so many people from getting a toehold in the housing market, particularly young people.
Now, I acknowledge that this is a controversial change, and I acknowledge that this is a government coming to a different view to the view that we held 12 months ago. And my view is that when a government comes to a different view, as we have, and when it’s for the right, justifiable reasons, the onus is on the government to explain why. And we’re explaining why, and the reason is it would have been easy but wrong for a government like ours to see the way that the housing market is developing, to see the way that pressures on young people are intensifying, and to leave some of these structures unattended to.
Now, I know people will have a view about that and people who want to defend the status quo, people who would rather that we didn’t touch the arrangements as they stand, they will try and make it about that rather than about the substance of the issue. And we’d rather focus on the substance of the issue. Of course, it involves and invites an element of political risk when a government comes to a different view. But we’re explaining why we have. We’ve done that for the best reasons, which is we can’t see these tax arrangements lock more and more people out of the housing market as the pressures on young people, in particular the pressures in the economy more broadly, intensify. We’ll go Jess, then Paul, and then Mark, and then Matt and then one more after that.
Journalist:
On the housing tax reforms, what will be the new rate of house‑price growth under these reforms? And in order to get those, I think it was 75,000 extra new homeowners into the market, does house price growth need to be either below inflation or CPI inflation or the wage price index?
Chalmers:
Yeah. So, the Treasury modelling that we have provided to you makes it clear that we’re not targeting a particular price. But what we expect to see as a consequence of these sensible changes is that house prices will continue to grow, but about 2 per cent slower. So, if you apply that to the median house price, I think it’s something like $19,000 or so. But we’re not targeting a specific price, we’re not targeting a specific price outcome. We’re trying to make it easier for more people to find more affordable options.
And that’s really what drives a lot of our sort of supply policies when it comes to providing more affordable options, but also helping on the demand side as well with the 5 per cent deposits and now with these commonsense changes to the tax system. And so we’ve provided that modelling around prices, not because we are targeting a particular price, but because we want there to be more affordable options in the market. Those 75,000 additional Australians who will become owner occupiers are a really important part of our motivations here. This Budget is for first‑home buyers and it’s for workers, it’s for small businesses and it’s for future generations. And that’s because we recognise by making this change, this commonsense change, we can give more people more access to a market which has shut them out for too long. Paul?
Journalist:
Taxes and spending both remain quite high as a proportion of GDP over the forwards. The tax cuts are relatively small in relation to how much you’re going to increase revenue by over the next 4 and 10 years. Do you acknowledge that we’re effectively locked into a high‑tax‑and‑spend economy, or do you see a way out of that?
Chalmers:
Well, spending as a share of the economy comes down quite substantially by the end of the forward estimates. It gets down from close to 27 per cent of our economy to quite near 26 per cent of our economy. And tax to GDP doesn’t go near the highs that we saw during the Howard government. So, tax as a share of the economy lower than what we saw under Howard and Costello, and spending is a share of the economy lower at the end of the forward estimates than it is at the beginning of the forward estimates.
Some of that all recognises the pressures on the budget in areas like ageing. Some of it recognises the extra investments we’re making in hospitals or defence, early childhood education. But we’re also making very substantial progress, as Katy outlined, in areas like the NDIS and including with our spending restraint when it comes to the interest on our debt as well. And so there are pressures on our budget, but still, despite those pressures, we’re getting spending as a share of the economy down over the forward estimates. And we’re not seeing tax to GDP reach the kind of levels that we saw under Howard and Costello.
Now, when it comes to the tax cuts, we provide as much tax relief as we can afford to. And what this package does is it returns the revenue from some of these controversial changes, returns it to workers and businesses. That’s deliberate. It means the heavy lifting on budget repair’s being done by savings not by tax changes over the forward estimates, but also, don’t forget we’re cutting taxes for workers 5 different ways now. And the benefit of that, I think cumulatively, if you average it out weekly, it’s about $54 a week. So, I acknowledge that individually, each of those 5 constituent parts are relatively modest. We can only do what we can afford to do, what it’s responsible to do, but it adds up. And that’s because we’re enthusiastic about returning bracket creep when we can afford to do so. Mark.
Journalist:
Treasurer, there’s been a line of argument that government spending has been a factor in monetary policy, in interest rates going up. Do you say this Budget does anything? Does that put that argument to bed or what’s your argument there in relation to that?
Chalmers:
Well, the Budget is much tighter in May than it was in December, and I’m not going to give free advice to the independent Reserve Bank, but we take the inflation challenge incredibly seriously. We’ve got a responsibility here and we’re making our contribution here to the effort by getting the deficits down, by real spending growth being a fraction of what we’ve seen in the past, by getting the debt down, by getting spending as a share of the economy down over time.
These are all of the different ways that we demonstrate that we are playing a helpful rather than a harmful role in the fight against inflation. And this inflation challenge is made worse by war on the other side of the world, but there have been inflationary pressures in our economy. We’ve taken them seriously throughout and I think you can see the fruits of our efforts in these Budget papers. I think I said Matt next, and then we’ll go to Karen and then we’re done. Sorry, I said Matt, then Karen, then we’re done.
Journalist:
This Matt?
Chalmers:
That Matt then that Matt, then Karen, then we’re done.
Journalist:
Treasurer, your capital gains tax changes apply to all asset classes as I understand it. Can you explain how that is not a disincentive to businesses, particularly new businesses and startups?
Chalmers:
Yeah, a couple of things about that. First of all, if you think about the huge distortion that was put in the system in ’99. It led to a big decoupling of incomes and house prices. But it also, I think, distorted the investment decisions made in our economy for a period of time, for a quarter of a century. And obviously the CGT impact depends on different kinds of investments. But if you look at a 20 year period in between ‘99 and now, there’s a 2 decade period there where we had a look at it, on average what the CGT discount did was it overcompensated people for ploughing money into established housing and it undercompensated people for investing in shares or units. So, it was a huge distortion introduced in the system and we’re trying to rectify that and address that, because the signals that the ‘99 changes made are a big part of the problem we’re dealing with in the housing market.
Now, when it comes to the specifics of startups and venture capital and the newer, more dynamic parts of our economy, this Budget is about encouraging innovation and startups, venture capital, these dynamic parts of our economy. A big part of the motivation behind the $3.5 billion in tax relief for businesses is supporting that part of the economy. Now, when it comes to the CGT discount, we have acknowledged privately before today and publicly today to the sector that there are specific issues at play there when it comes to the the calculation of their tax base. We’ve communicated that already and we want to work with the sector and consult with the sector to make sure that we get to the best arrangement which recognises their concerns and recognises our policy priorities and objectives.
So, we’ve made that really clear. But overwhelmingly, this change is about trying to deal with the distortion which was introduced in 1999, which has locked too many people out of the housing market. And so a big motivation here is to try and get investment flowing where it can do the most good, where it can serve its most productive purpose. Matt and Karen.
Journalist:
Treasurer, has the government modelled any of the tax changes and the impact on productivity? And if so, what were the findings? And just for the Finance Minister, how does an economy ravaged by the war end up delivering $31 billion in higher than expected receipts for the government this financial year and next financial year?
Chalmers:
So, on the first part of your question, all of the expected impacts are factored into our forecasts. We did some separate modelling on the tax reform package on housing because we knew that would be of particular interest. But the impact of other parts of our policy agenda had factored in, in the usual way, to the forecasts. The productivity package more broadly will save more than $10 billion a year in compliance costs, $13 billion in uplift from national competition policy. But the impacts of the tax cuts for business are folded into our forecasts in the usual way.
Before I throw to Katy and I hope it’s okay that I have a crack at the receipts question, our gross savings is $64 billion. The upward revision to revenue when you take out GST that we don’t see a cent of is more like $34, 35 billion, the upward revision to revenue. So, our savings effort’s bigger than the upward revision to revenue. In one year we get a downward revision to revenue.
The reason why I think it’s a very welcome question is because we can’t find another instance in history where our government, in 2 consecutive Budget updates, has returned every dollar of the upward revision to revenue. We did it in December and we’re doing it in May. We don’t think that’s happened before. And that’s because we take our fiscal strategy very seriously. We take the inflationary environment very seriously. And so to bank every dollar of upward revision to revenue 2 updates in a row is something that we’re very proud of because we think it’s very important.
Journalist:
[indistinct]
Chalmers:
Well, if you look at the financial years, you’ve got a very substantial improvement in, if you look at ‘26‑27, you’ve got deficit is down, debt is down compared to MYEFO payments as a share of GDP is lower compared to MYEFO, real spending growth in ‘26‑27 is 1.3 per cent, a quarter of what it averaged under the coalition, less than a third of what we expect in ‘25‑26. And so you can see in ‘26‑27, like all of the other years in the forward estimates, we’ve taken this challenge very seriously. Karen, to wrap us up.
Journalist:
So your forecasts are based on a US oil price of $100, but you’ve had Treasury provide what I think you call a severe scenario version with 200 US dollars. That version has a lot of minuses in front of the growth figures. And yet I think in your speech you say even under that scenario we will stay out of recession. I appreciate how difficult it must be in this environment to make forecasts at all, but how can you give that undertaking given the uncertainties? Isn’t the truth you just can’t guarantee that we will stay out of recession?
Chalmers:
Well, the Budget speech refers to a forecast rather than an undertaking. What I’ve tried to do is to give you the Treasury’s central case scenario that’s baked into the Budget in the usual way and presented in the usual way. But because there’s more than the usual amount of uncertainty, I’ve tried to give you a sense of the kind of scenarios that we grapple with most days, whether it’s in the National Security Committee of Cabinet or the Expenditure Review Committee of Cabinet.
We’re grappling with these scenarios and coming up with contingencies all of the time. And so the impacts of the war in the Middle East are already serious. There is still a risk that they become quite severe. And so we’ve tried to give you a sense of that severity in that downside forecast. Now, what the speech refers to and what the forecast point to is even under that more severe scenario, Treasury’s best estimation is that we would get a negative quarter, but not 2.
You’re right to acknowledge that there’s more than the usual amount of difficulty when it comes to forecasting the economy right now. We’re hostage to developments in lots of ways. And to come back to really, a central theme of the Budget is we’re doing our best to deal with this extreme, extraordinary global volatility. We’re trying our best with the near‑term measures around fuel security, the longer‑term measures around resilience, the cost‑of‑living help to help people through a difficult period at the same time as we recognise that what’s happening overseas makes the reform task more urgent, not less.
And again, what I’m especially proud of in this Budget, I know that it will invite the usual strong views. I know that there will be scare campaigns and lies told about the tax changes that we are proposing tonight. But the reason that we are doing them is because what we’re seeing overseas makes it more important that we act decisively and urgently on some of these challenges which have been neglected for too long. Thanks very much.