Interview with Natalie Barr, Sunrise
15 May 2024
NATALIE BARR: Returning to our top story, the Treasurer has announced relief for every Australian household in last night's Budget through an energy rebate of $300. Jim Chalmers will spend $3.5 billion to help people with their electricity bills, but says the spending won't put further pressure on inflation. One million small businesses will also receive a credit of $325 as part of the support package. Joining me now is Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume and Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie. Good morning to both of you. Jane, let's start with you. $300 a rebate for every Australian household. That sounds good, doesn't it?
JANE HUME: Well, I'm sure Australians that are doing it tough right now will be thrilled to hear that there's something in this Budget for them. But quite frankly, this has been a very typical Labor Budget. Big tax, big spend and a bit of a con job. The Reserve Bank aren't stupid you know; they're going to be able to see through the big cash spend that this Budget provides. There's an additional $315 billion that's been spent since Labor came to power. That is $4 spent for every $1 saved and of course, that's going to mean that interest rates stay higher for longer. It's going to drag out the pain for thousands of Australian households. So while they might get that immediate sugar hit from the energy relief, it's going to mean that times are going to stay tough for much longer, and the Budget says so. Economic growth is down, unemployment is going up. There's some pretty bleak news in there.
NATALIE BARR: Jacqui, 300 bucks for everyone. It's not means-tested. What's your view on that?
JACQUI LAMBIE: Oh Nat, the people that are getting the best sugar are the politicians up here and the ones that have got money already. The $4500 tax relief, you know, the $300 energy relief, which was not targeted. It's nearly like going back to COVID days where we've seen where we wasted all this money. Giving all this money to businesses that didn't actually need it. So for me, I find it quite shameful. But what I find even more shameful is that, right now, we have kids out there with massive mental health problems and there is a lot of them. I think it's four in every 10 who have mental health problems across Australia that are under 18. We have youth crime that's going out there, not one cent towards youth crime. If you want to do something about domestic violence, which by the way, you haven't even, that's not even been sugar coated, you have not given that enough to deal with. You have to start with that next generation down, which means their mental health needs to be at a good par, you know, and we need to be able to control these kids because that is the next generation coming through. They've done nothing about that. You are never going to break the cycle of domestic violence unless you put money into the next generation and teach them about all this stuff properly and put ahead the facilities and services that they need, let alone the drug and alcohol facilities that they need. I don't know if Labor knows this, but this is a wake up call for you. When our kids go into a mental health facility, into a public one, they are usually mixed with adults and they've got to bring in extra nurses, so they are separated from those adults and that is what's happening in Tasmania and other places. This is no way to do this. We should have state of the art facilities for these kids so we can get them up and make them decent adults.
NATALIE BARR: Jane, do you feel an election coming on? Do you think that's what this expenditure is doing?
JANE HUME: Certainly, it does feel that way, doesn't it? There's, as I said, those little sugar hits in there, but the one I think that was really surprising was the $13.7 billion for billionaires, for people that are running companies that are into critical minerals and hydrogen. That just seems a very strange use of taxpayers money. Wouldn't it be better if instead of providing billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for these companies, we simply got out of their way by making sure our industrial relations system was simple and that there was more energy in the system to bring prices down sustainably. We want to get down all those approval times. We want critical minerals. We want hydrogen, but we don't want to subsidize it with taxpayer money, particularly in a cost of living crisis.
NATALIE BARR: Also in Canberra today, the Government has put forward potential amendments to the anti-siphoning laws which could jeopardize access to free sport for millions of Aussies. Now the current legislation prevents streaming services from buying exclusive broadcast rights to major sporting events, including the AFL and cricket. But the Government is considering a new bill that would only guarantee free sport to Aussies who have a TV aerial. Jacqui, do you think these laws need to change?
JACQUI LAMBIE: Absolutely and those TV aerials, those devices are getting less and less. They are pushing people out there for pay TV even now isn't a perfect example. The international cricket Amazon has that if you want to watch that. You're going to have to go and pay for that service and I'll tell you what, if you think that you're, here we go with the young kids again. If you think that you'll be able to watch Bluey for free, you are kidding yourselves. You know, the first thing you're gonna, you're gonna have to go searching for free TV and unless you have subscriptions to things out there a lot of it is not, you're not going to be able to watch it. So that's really wrong. So now they're coming after our toddlers. They've done nothing for a youth and now you're coming after the toddlers and taking Bluey away from them.
NATALIE BARR: So do you think the Government really understands this though? What can you do about it?
JACQUI LAMBIE: I don't think the Government understands much at all. We've seen the chicken feed Budget with a bit of money here and here. It's a band-aid Budget that is going to deflate very quickly and if they're not going into election in November, they're going to lose very badly by May next year. I think especially with interest rates going up and going over and the other thing is that I think there's only one in every 10 Australians in the last six months because things are so tight have bought one of these new TVs that are actually able to do this properly. So that's rough but seriously, taking free TV away from people. It's just disgusting. I think they're completely out of touch.
NATALIE BARR: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Thank you very much for joining us. Happy Budget Day everyone. Enjoy the day.