The cost of running the Federal Government is an important issue for One Nation. We believe that a smaller government is better and strongly advocate for reducing its size to align with the constitution.
I’m an avid reader of the budget volume that lists out the cost of Government. This year, the figures don’t add up. The budget appears to be assuming there will be no increase in the cost of Government for the next four years.
In a period of high inflation, which will be at least 13% over forward estimates, an assumption that the Federal Government administration cost (wages, office expenses, etc.) will not go up in those four years is, at best, improbable and at worst, dishonest.
I asked the Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher to “please explain”. Aside from small savings from reducing the use of contract labour, there are no explanations for the figures presented in the budget. The outcome is that the deficit over the forward estimates is more than likely understated by as much as $50 billion.
Transcript
My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Gallagher, and will reference Budget Paper No. 4: Agency resourcing, page 186, department expenses table. The government has been conducting a program of reducing spending on external providers—contractors; consultants—and hiring employees directly instead, to perform those duties, and One Nation supports that. These conversions, from external providers to employees, save taxpayers money, being the difference between paying a public servant to do that work and paying a consultant, partly balanced out by the increased costs of office expenses, travel and so on. Minister, how much has this program saved in 2023-24, and how much will it save over forward estimates? I note that, as I understand, the budget papers have another 2,502 conversions projected.
Senator GALLAGHER: Thank you for asking me a question about Budget Paper No. 4. That is the budget paper that Finance has responsibility for. We have worked hard to make conversions, as you say, and to reinvest and put increased capability into the Public Service. What we did find out from the audit on employment was that the real size of the APS when we came to government was much larger than had been publicly reported, so we are taking steps to rebalance it and to put public servants into jobs that labour hire had done.
In the last budget, I think the savings were in the order of $800 million in terms of the conversions that were being made. In this budget we’re finding a further billion dollars in reductions to agencies’ departmental expenses because of the investments we’re making in the Public Service. Obviously, we are making additional investments in the Public Service for additional responsibilities that they have, but what we’re doing is painting a very honest picture of the price of delivering improved services.
Those opposite, I know, are going to do what they always do and say they want a smaller Public Service, but they should then explain why 41,000 veterans who didn’t have their claims allocated now have their claims allocated and now are getting access to pensions. It’s a direct result of our investment in the Australian federal Public Service. We weren’t seeing those results, whether it was in Immigration, DFAT, Services Australia or Veterans’ Affairs. We see that on the payments side now because veterans are getting access because they are being dealt with. Because they’ve got public servants dealing with their claims, they are getting access to the money that they deserve.
So it’s a piece of ongoing work, Senator Roberts. If there’s further information I can provide to you, I will. But we are finding savings from the program at the same time that we’re making additional investments.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The table shows many departments costing less to run in 2027-28 than they do today, despite ongoing inflation, and rents, electricity and expenses far exceeding the savings from operations. The department of infrastructure is down from $554 million in this budget to $452 million in 2027-28; Health and Aged Care, $1.6 billion down to $1.1 billion; and Services Australia, $5.7 billion down to $4.5 billion. Minister, please explain from where these huge claimed projected savings will come.
Senator GALLAGHER: In terms of the savings that we’ve applied through this budget, it’s an extra billion dollars onto the $3 billion that we had built into the budget, so that gives you a total of $4 billion. There are additional savings that come through the conversions of expensive labour hire into permanent Public Service work, and so that is part of it. I think it’s probably a question we can go through at estimates, as well, because I don’t have that page in front of me. But there are savings, and we take that money from departments; they don’t get that funding. So that is a saving that is realised at the time that that budget decision is taken.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The $155 billion provided in the budget as departmental expenses in 2024-25 is projected to grow to $169 billion in 2027-28 almost entirely from increases in defence and the NDIS. How could your forward projections show flat or reduced costs for, in effect, the entire government except the NDIS and defence, when the budget puts inflation over that period at 13 per cent? Does your budget dramatically understate projected deficits?
Senator GALLAGHER: No. The budget papers, as they’re released—Budget Paper No.1, which goes to providing the UCB, is based on all of the information that runs through all of the budget books, and that would include departmental expenses. There is extra investment going into defence and into the NDIS. As you would expect, they are two of the five fastest growing areas of the budget. The NDIS is the second and I think defence would be the third or fourth, and so they would be seeing increases. But the budget UCB takes into account all of those decisions. It may be reported slightly differently in different tables, based on different accounting standards, but the UCB is an honest reflection of the state of the Commonwealth’s finances.
In trying to please everyone, the Treasurer’s third budget will please nobody.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ third budget fails to deliver affordable houses, cheaper power bills and groceries, and any hope for the future. That’s what a good budget should deliver.
A better way is putting Australians first and using our natural resources to drive wealth, abundance and opportunity for all.
Transcript
Cheap houses, cheap power bills, cheaper groceries and hope for the future—that’s what a good budget should deliver. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s third budget fails to deliver on all of these issues. Once his short-term coupons expire, inflation will fire up. Handouts and subsidies don’t bring inflation down; they just hide it temporarily. The Treasurer even admitted as much in his budget speech last night. He said:
Electricity prices would have risen 15 per cent in the last year if not for our efforts—
the Treasurer means his handouts—
instead, they rose two per cent.
Has there ever been a greater admission of failure of the net zero pipe dream? With the most wind, solar, batteries and green schemes on the grid in our history, actual power prices rose 15 per cent in just 12 months. When the last budget’s power relief ran out, Australians would have faced that entire price rise in one hit. That’s right: Treasurer Chalmers has been forced to extend another round of power bill relief. Australians would have rejected what the net zero lunacy has done to our once cheap power. Cheaper houses—with 2.3 million visa holders needing housing in the country right now, Australia is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis. Good working families, Australian families, are sleeping in tents, in cars and under bridges. Treasurer Chalmers tells us to prepare for another 280,000 migrants. Given his track record on immigration predictions, we should prepare for more. With no hope of building enough homes to house those new arrivals, rent, house prices and homelessness will only get worse.
How about hope for the future? There is little hope. The Treasurer tells us to expect crippling, worse deficits for the next 10 years, starting with this year. A better way is possible with One Nation, by putting Australians first and using our natural resources to our advantage. Then we can again become the best in the world.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/3w4hd_-2evU/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-29 07:45:212024-05-29 07:45:26Labor Fiddles Around the Edges With its Election Budget
The Treasurer handed down his third budget tonight (14/05/2024). These were my predictions earlier today in the Senate. What do you think of what he has handed down?
Transcript
As Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his third budget tonight, many Australians simply don’t care. All the talk about surpluses, deficits, subsidies and balance of payments is very low in the average Australian’s priorities today. The biggest budget concern across dinner tables is skyrocketing mortgage costs, rents, grocery bills, insurance premiums and power bills. Australians don’t need Treasurer Chalmers to tell them times are tough; they’re living through tough times. Unfortunately, this budget shows the government isn’t coming to help; in fact, to compensate for its poor decisions it’s going to have to have its hand deeper in your pocket, taxing more of your salary for years to come.
Let’s step through the budget and what it means for Australians. Firstly, the big headline: Labor wants everyone to know the budget is in surplus—$9.8 billion. It sounds good, doesn’t it? Anyone who’s ever had their bills laid out on the dining room table knows a good budget needs more money coming in than going out. Unfortunately, this budget surplus is terrifyingly small, given that fairies have kissed Treasurer Chalmers with good luck.
The government has won the biggest lottery prize we could ever have hoped for, yet it has just a tiny surplus. It would be like a family winning division 1 of Powerball and having $100 left over at the end of the year—and calling it a win! There should be rivers of gold flowing into the budget. Instead we have a miserable trickle because Labor doesn’t resist spending every bit of its lottery winnings.
Commodity prices for our exports like oil, gas, coal, metal minerals and agricultural produce have all been near or at record highs over the previous few years. That means huge amounts of extra money flowed into Treasurer Chalmers’s budget. ‘Oil’, ‘gas’ and ‘coal’ are all dirty words to this Labor government and the Greens, and they’re too embarrassed to admit they have, in large part, saved the budget.
The second lottery win is the Australian workers. They’re working more jobs, longer hours and harder than ever. All of the extra work is reflected by the record-low unemployment rate. That means more taxes from hardworking Australians are going into the budget coffers than ever before—a record. That’s the story of this budget: three years of some of the largest tax intakes government has ever recorded, yet Labor can only squeak out the tiniest of surpluses.
Despite Australians working multiple jobs for more hours, they’re still going backwards because of inflation. Inflation is the secret debilitating stealth tax on all Australians. It’s the reason Australia had the largest collapse of disposable income in the OECD. If you feel like you’re going backwards, it’s because you are.
The only way to get ourselves out of this infrastructure mess is by spending on productive assets that allow Australia to make more here. We need to raise our productive capacity. We need more dams so that Australians can have more food and exports. But don’t expect to see any dams in Labor’s budget. We need cheaper electricity so that small businesses can thrive and hire people in their local communities. Instead, Labor will continue to throw us down the path of the net zero pipedream, which is guaranteed to bring higher energy prices, whether Australians pay for it on their power bill or with more taxes.
Unfortunately, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Labor-Greens are a uniparty on net zero—all united in their commitment to kill our electricity grid. We need nation-building projects like the Iron Boomerang project to make millions of tonnes of the world’s best quality steel right here in our country.
One thing I can guarantee is that there won’t be enough action on immigration in this budget. The Prime Minister has leaked that they expect net overseas migration to come in at 300,000 next year—300,000! This is a horrifyingly large number. It’s excessive. Prior to COVID there were 1.9 million visa holders likely to require housing in the country. There are now 2.3 million plus 400,000 tourists. That’s causing the terrible rental and housing crisis. Now the government wants to make that 300,000 people worse again. Where will these people sleep, Prime Minister?
That sums up what we can expect from this Labor budget: more Australians sleeping in cars, under bridges, in tents and in caravans; first home buyers destroyed by their mortgage repayments, while inflation runs out of control; small businesses being strangled by power prices. Does this sound good? This is hopeless. There are many more shocking stories of how the Australian dream has been ruined by decades of the Liberals-Nationals-Labor-Greens uniparty, acting together to implement the agenda of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
A better way is possible. A much better way is possible, and One Nation will reveal how in our response to the budget this week.
What happened to having vision for the future in this country?
You won’t get it from the Liberal and Labor Uni-party whilst they’re beholden to their donors.
Check out One Nation’s breakdown of the budget and how we would return Australia to leading the world.
Transcript
This is One Nation’s response to Labor’s Budget.
My comments will be in two parts.
Firstly, an analysis of what Treasurer Jim Chalmers has put into and left out of the budget.
Secondly, what a One Nation budget would look like to return Australia into a prosperous country again.
Starting with the measures in Labor’s budget for next year, 2024/25.
Treasurer Chalmers wants everyone to know about his surplus for THIS year 2023/24.
Yet his budget released two days ago for this coming year starting in less than two months aims to be a DEFICIT for 2024/25
Many Australians might not even know what a surplus is.
A surplus simply means that within a given year the Government is spending less than it’s income. It spends less than what it takes off Australians.
Usually that’s a good thing.
Like any Australian household, government shouldn’t be spending more than it has – that’s a deficit.
Treasurer Chalmer’s surplus of $9.3 billion isn’t a happy story, though.
It sounds like a big number until you compare it to the total budget spend: $683 billion dollars.
Unfortunately, given Treasurer Chalmers’ amazing run of good luck this budget surplus is terrifyingly small.
It would be like a family winning division 1 of Powerball and having $100 left over at the end of the year—and calling it a win!
There should be rivers of gold flowing into the budget.
Instead, we have a miserable trickle because Labor can’t resist spending every bit of its lottery winnings.
Commodity prices for our exports like oil, gas, coal, metal minerals and agricultural produce have all been near or at record highs over the recent few years.
That means huge amounts of extra money flowed into Treasurer Chalmers’s budget.
‘Oil’, ‘gas’ and ‘coal’ are all dirty words to this Labor government and its Greens partners. And they’re too embarrassed to admit mining and agriculture have, largely, saved the budget.
The second lottery win for the government is Australian workers.
They’re working more jobs, longer hours and harder than ever.
All of the extra work shows up in the record-low unemployment rate.
That means more taxes from hardworking Australians are going into the budget coffers than ever before—a record. RECORD tax taken from Australians.
That’s the story of this budget: three years of some of the largest tax intakes government has ever recorded, yet Labor can only squeak out the tiniest of surpluses.
From this year on the deficits return. Tens and tens of billions of dollars in the red each year as far as we can see. Going deeper into debt.
The Federal Government’s debt is due to reach nearly 700 billion dollars in coming years.
At the rate this government is going our children’s children will not repay it.
Despite working multiple jobs for more hours helping the government’s bottom line, Australians are still going backwards because of inflation.
Inflation is the secret debilitating stealth tax on all Australians.
It’s the reason Australia had the largest collapse of disposable income in the OECD.
If you feel like you’re going backwards, it’s because you are.
Inflation is leading to tax bracket creep.
That means you’re earning more while your money is worth less yet you’re paying more tax overall.
As your income rises with inflation, it takes you into a higher tax rate bracket.
The government takes more money from you through bracket creep because of inflation.
No wonder they voted against my amendment that would have removed bracket creep. My amendment would have removed the stealth tax.
The government is fudging the inflation numbers, making it appear better than the price increases you’re actually paying in the real world.
When they hand out energy and rent relief, it artificially lowers the inflation figures.
This is just papering over the inflation. It does nothing to actually fix it.
Economists across the country have slammed Treasurer Chalmers trickery on this.
Without rent assistance the CPI for rents would haver increased 9.5% in the 12 months to March.
Instead because of Treasurer Chalmers’ trickery it was recorded as just 7.8%.
The cost of electricity has gone up 15% in just a year. The bill relief is papering over that, showing up in the CPI as just 2%.
This is a clear, huge admission of failure of the net zero pipe-dream
With the most amount of wind, solar and batteries on the grid than ever before in history, Treasurer Chalmers must hand out another round of power bill relief – because prices are too expensive.
The inflation fight isn’t over for Australians who are still going backwards.
This budget will pour more fuel on the inflation fire.
There are only a few ways to genuinely reduce inflation:
First, never repeat the mistake of printing $500 billion out of thin air over COVID.
That created much of the inflation we’re fighting – as the former head of the Reserve Bank agreed to me.
Second, reduce the cost of energy: Abandoning the net-zero pipe dream.
While net-zero is pushing up power prices we’ll never get rid of inflation.
Thirdly, cut the amount of visa holders in the country now driving huge demand.
That’s not just a cut to the rate of immigration as this budget proposes, it needs to be negative, and people need to leave. As I’ll explain later.
Finally, make investments in productive infrastructure to increase the productive capacity of our country. Assets like dams, power infrastructure, ports and rail lines.
That’s called supply side economics. Improve productivity.
That’s how inflation can be cut. Not with trickery. Improving real productivity.
The next feature item of the Labor Budget is their Future Made In Australia plan.
This is a vague, unclear collection of weird policy ideas like a billion dollar computer and outright scams for a total of $22.7 billion dollars.
This will supposedly turn Australia into what they call a Green Superpower for wind, solar, so-called green hydrogen and other scams.
The government will use that money to pick losers that have failed to attract any investment from anyone with common sense in the real world.
This is a “Disaster made in Australia” Plan.
China manufactures and tightly controls more than 90% of all of the critical parts of wind and solar power.
Wind and solar make us completely reliant on China for our energy needs, Labor’s Future Made in Australia will only make that reliance worse.
There’s no reason to become reliant on wind and solar due to our abundance of oil, gas, coal and uranium in this country.
We’re the most resource rich country in the world.
Why would we spend tens of billions ignoring that and handing over control to China?
The Future Made in Australia plan is really a Future Made in China plan.
This effectively sets up an unsustainable model of business practice which relies on taxpayer subsidies for any meagre profit.
What a waste of Australian taxes.
Next the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the NDIS.
If left unchecked, the NDIS is going to eat this entire country alive.
Originally budgeted to only cost $25 billion a year, it will reach $90 billion a year within a decade.
Minister Bill Shorten says he can cap the growth at 8% a year. Yet it’s been growing at 14%.
Providers often charge NDIS double or even triple the price for the exact same services.
This draws carers to NDIS and drives huge worker shortages in aged care and childcare.
The huge NDIS money sink has certainly contributed to this.
The NDIS program has been a national shame with unconscionable budget blowouts, widespread rorting, use of taxpayer money for prostitutes and cruises and other scandals, And causes neglect of genuine disability cases.
At some point it’s time for Australia to agree this scheme can’t be fixed and it’s time to start fresh. Send it back to the states to enable competitive federalism that is proven to drive efficiency and accountability.
Let’s move on to the Future Drought Fund – $519 million dollars. Again seems a great headline. Just don’t read the detail.
That money will be split over 8 years meaning just a tiny $65 million for an industry worth more than $90 billion a year to Australia.
There’s only one real form of drought relief: WATER.
There’s not a drop of money in this budget towards a real dam.
To get cheaper groceries, we have to grow more of them.
We have some of the best farmers, in combination with the best soils and climate in the world.
Add water, and Australians won’t have to worry about grocery bills again.
A vital part of this budget is the forecasts for net overseas immigration.
That’s how many new people the government expects to take into the country.
Australia’s net overseas migration was 528,000 in the 2022 to 2023 financial year, a historic record, nearly double the previous record. Double.
That’s like adding a new Canberra to Australia, in one go. Without the political swamp.
That’s almost one and a half (1.3) Sunshine Coasts imported into Australia in just 12 months.
The Labor government claims this figure will decrease to 260,000 a year in 2025-2026, still far too much.
It’s a prediction, and like any Labor prediction, don’t bet your house on it.
Back in October 2022, 4 months into the 12 months they were predicting, the government said net overseas migration would be 235,000.
Just 8 months later, the 528,000 figure blew their forecasts out of the water.
Way more than double. Was it supreme incompetence? Or a lie?
We’ll wait and see if their prediction of 395,000, an entire Sunshine Coast added to the population, for this financial year turns out to be true.
If it’s not clear, no Australian should trust what a government says when it comes to immigration numbers.
It’s claimed that the country is ‘just catching up’ after a slow down in immigration. That’s a lie.
It’s a lie that’s causing a housing crisis, making Australians homeless and feeding inflation.
Prior to COVID, there were 1.9 million foreign temporary visa holders in the country likely to require housing.
Today, there are 2.3 million. That’s 400,000 more people in the country that are fighting Australians for a roof over their head and groceries at the supermarket.
Why? To inflate GDP to get out of the per-capita recession. To look good not do good. Labor doesn’t care about the homeless its causing.
That’s driven the massive crisis in the rental vacancy rate and huge increases in rents.
This Labor government wants to keep adding to that, another 395,000 predicted this financial year, plus 260,000 the following.
We don’t have enough houses to put these people in.
We don’t have enough houses to put Australians in.
We don’t have enough tradies to build enough houses to keep up with this many arrivals.
We need to start deporting some visa holders.
Net immigration needs to go negative until Australians have got an affordable roof over their head.
Perhaps the most important item is something that’s completely missing from this budget.
There’s not a single dollar allocated for a Royal Commission into the COVID response.
Millions of Australians were forced to lock down in their homes. Forced to take an experimental medical product. Businesses were ruined. Children’s educations ruined.
What’s the Labor government’s response? Silence.
One Nation will continue to fight for a COVID Royal Commission and for perpetrators of human rights abuses to be thrown in jail.
That covers some of the things that are in, and aren’t in, Labor’s budget.
Now I want to talk about a better way, what Australia could look like as a prosperous nation under a One Nation budget.
Here are things you won’t hear from anyone in a budget, except One Nation – because we’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking.
Firstly, guarantee affordable power: turn the coal fired power stations back on. Build more of them and remove solar and wind subsidies.
It’s the only thing that can save us right now.
Cheap power is a matter of life and death for Australians as many of them are facing the wall in this cost of living crisis.
Nuclear should be on the table and we should simply let the cheapest power win – no handouts or subsidies.
$500 billion dollars was concocted out of nowhere during the COVID response.
That’s a major cause of the inflation we’re still fighting today.
The Former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Phillip Lowe, the culprit behind that money printing, even agreed with me on that.
Thirdly, we’ll guarantee cheaper houses, cheaper rents, and get young people into their first home.
Don’t just cut net overseas migration – start deporting some visa holders.
Prior to COVID there were 1.9 million visa holders who needed housing, fighting Australians for a roof over their head.
That’s now increased to 2.3 million today, plus 400,000 tourists and others.
And, we’ll ban foreigners from buying Australian property. They’re currently snapping up nearly 1 in 10 new Aussie homes.
We’ll convert the Labor government’s designed-to-fail Housing Future Fund and turn it into the People’s Mortgage Fund, issuing fixed rate 5% mortgages.
Fourthly, get cheaper groceries: build dams and help farmers produce tonnes of fresh, healthy produce for Australians.
Give farmers water and the right to use their land – we’ll never have to worry about grocery bills again.
Fifthly, use all of our natural resources we have right here for Australians first.
There’s no need to become a green superpower, and we never will.
We’re already an oil, gas, coal and uranium superpower.
Government won’t do this because some foreign unelected organisation in Zurich will claim we’re not ‘complying with our international obligations’.
Governments of both sides have forgotten that their first obligation is to AUSTRALIANS. No one else.
One Nation knows this.
Finally, we must have comprehensive tax reform.
The current system is highly destructive to our country and wholesale change must be made.
We’ll put our trust in Australia’s people, release them from the nanny state that tells them everything they can and can’t do, and enable people to abound and flourish.
That’s our promise of what would be a One Nation budget:
Putting truth, Australia, and Australians first to ensure prosperity like we’ve never seen.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/otIbhjj4iLk/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-05-23 16:36:002024-05-24 08:18:06This is What an Actual Vision for Australia Looks Like
