JESS NAUNTON:
Last night Federal Labor delivered its first budget in 10 years in the face of skyrocketing inflation and economic pressures. Overnight the budget has been deemed as financially restrained. But if you aren’t a political tragic like me and didn’t watch the budget last night, what’s in it for you? Well, Stephen Jones is the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, and he is here to tell you more. Good morning, Minister.
STEPHEN JONES:
Good morning. Good to be with you.
NAUNTON:
With the cost of living only increasing at the moment, what’s in the budget that will provide some reprieve for everyday Australians?
JONES:
Well, first thing to say is the number one objective of us in this budget is to honour our election commitments, to ensure that we don’t add to the already significant problem that we’ve got with inflation, not just in Australia, right around the world. So, you know, we can’t be pumping millions and billions of dollars into the economy making the inflation situation worse. And, thirdly, our objective is to set the economy up for the future. In the area of cost of living, we’ve got five measures that we’re focused on. The first is cheaper childcare and ensuring that the 40 per cent hike in childcare fees that families have experienced over the last eight years is reversed and child care becomes affordable once again. So significant savings for over 95 per cent of households with kids in care as a result of that. Paid maternity leave, another key part of that. In the area of medicines, slashing the price of medicines on the PBS by $12.50 to bring down that cost, particularly for older people who are relying on those medicines for health care. And then our housing commitments. We know there’s a huge problem particularly in North Queensland, whether you’re trying to rent or whether you’re trying to buy. So, the only answer is building more houses. And that’s where our commitment through the national housing accord to build a million new homes will bring price pressure out in the housing market. Really critical that we get houses built, appropriate houses built, in the areas where people need to work and where workers are needed – nowhere more than North Queensland in the frame for that. Wages, we’ve got to get them moving again. And we’ve made our first instalment with a significant increase for minimum wage workers immediately after we were elected, working with the Fair Work Commission to get a jump in minimum wages worth about $40 a week for some of the lowest‑paid Australians. In the budget measures to get the bargaining system working again. I think employers and unions, everyone agrees it’s broken, so having to get that moving again as well. So, there you go. There’s our five key elements of our cost of living issues.
NAUNTON:
Minister, on the housing, the aspirational target of a million new homes over five years from 2024, there has been some criticism overnight on how this is going to work. Can you shed some light on the mechanics behind the?
JONES:
Been looking at it closely over the last five months since we were elected, and the history of this is the Commonwealth government says, “This is not our responsibility.” The State government blames the Commonwealth for not doing anything, and the local governments blame the State governments for not doing enough. All different, basically all levels of government not working together, and we’ve said that’s not going to work. We want a national accord, all three tiers of government working together, to a clear national objective of building more homes, bringing the private sector into it, so whether it’s the funds, the big institutional funds, superannuation funds and others, and the builders who’ve got the on‑the‑ground knowledge around the table, getting the plans in place to get developments improved, appropriate building standards, housings built, affordable housing in appropriate locations. We think we can do this. And the best time to start it would have been, you know, five years ago. The next best time to start it is right now, and that’s what we’re going to do.
NAUNTON:
Something that also stood out to me last night was the support to help pensioners downsize, should they wish, of course. Can you just share some detail around that?
JONES:
This is about enabling pensioners – sorry, older Australians, not pensioners – older Australians who want to downsize their home, maybe move from the four‑bedroom family home down into a unit. But they want to ensure they do that in the most tax effective way and they can put the contributions of that into their superannuation. At the moment they’re prevented from doing that because of the annual contribution caps of twenty‑seven and a half thousand dollars for superannuation. This initiative will enable people to downsize, put the yield they got from selling their house into their superannuation fund and use that as a part of their retirement savings. It’s a win‑win.
NAUNTON:
Queensland is and will continue to play a key role when it comes to the use and exporting of Australia’s critical minerals. And $2 billion was announced last night in this space as well as $50.5 million to establish the Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub. Why was this clearly an area that the government chose to spend on, particularly when what has been described as a restrained budget?
JONES:
Because we don’t want to be just a quarry. We don’t want Australia to be just a place where we dig stuff up, we don’t improve it, we don’t process it. We just shove it on a boat and we send it somewhere else for other people to make the big bucks out of it. Whether it’s alumina, whether it’s lithium, whether it’s copper, whether it’s any of these products, these are basically the building blocks of where, you know, electronics and where industry is going over the next 100 years. We want to be in there on the ground floor and not just being a quarry that digs up dirt and sends it overseas but a place that does the downstream processing and builds jobs and industry here in Australia. We’re really keen on batteries and battery development. We’ve got all the necessary mineral inputs for that. Let’s see if we can do some downstream processing and value‑add so we get more money out of the mineral bounty that we have here in Australia.
NAUNTON:
The government has copped some criticism overnight, Minister. What do you say to those who are giving you a bit of a serve today on this post‑budget day?
JONES:
Well, look, we’ve delivered a responsible budget. We came into government with a trillion dollars worth of debt hanging over our heads and, you know, some of the biggest budget deficits ever. High expectations that we’ll be able to solve every problem on earth that had accumulated over the last decade. An honest conversation with the Australian people saying, “This is what we can bite off and deal with now. This is what we’ll do within the next budget, but this is the direction we’re going in.” So, bringing down deficits, paying off debt, responsible budget management and making decisions on the basis of the national interest, not political interest. They’ll be the hallmarks of this government. And you’ve got to start as you mean to proceed. Look, there’ll be people who criticise us. Nobody’s going to agree with everything we’re doing. But what, I guess, I want your listeners to understand is there’s a logic and a principle that lies behind the things we’re doing. Responsible budget management, growing the economy, helping households where we can with household expenditure and cost of living, but we can’t fix every problem overnight.
NAUNTON:
Stephen Jones, Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, thank you for sharing a bit of time here in the north in what is a busy week ahead for you, I’m guessing.
JONES:
Yeah, it really is. But always got time to talk to you guys, and I look forward to the opportunity to get up there some time in the next few months.