Episode 161: Dr Chalmers Keynesian budget remedy

Van Badham and Ben Davison journey into the heart of Australia's Federal Budget 2024.

Our hosts dissect Dr Jim’s reintroduction of nation building into macroeconomic management in a discussion that spans the breadth of the budget from fun nuance to big-picture policy decision and rejects the screaming-banana response of the Murdoch media.

Join our hosts as they examine how the media has been conditioned since Howard to expect budgets that are little more than lists of marginal seat give aways and how Jim Chalmers has delivered a truly Keynesian budget that seeks to manage the economy not just tax and spend it for votes.

From tax cuts to cost-of-living relief, education to housing, we unpack complexities and implications of each policy decision on your household, your wallet and the Australian future to come.

Also, the dog barks, cutely.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Budget 2024. Dr. Jim's Keynesian Remedy. This is The Week on Wednesday.
Hello and welcome to The Week on Wednesday. I am your co-host Ben Davison and
joining me as always is the great, the glorious,
the fantabulous, best-selling author of A Fall in Love,

(00:23):
Banging Denmark, which has just ended a run in London, Animal Farm,
which I think is just Just Finishing Up in Oxford.
It's Just Finishing Up in Oxford and Animal Farm opens in London at the Greenwich Theatre in June.
In June. And, of course, The Questions, a musical that you and your good friend
Richard have made, which will be on at the State Theatre in South Australia in July.

(00:49):
July, Benny. Yes, Richard Wise, my composer, my amazing cast,
my incredible director, it's all coming together.
It's very, very exciting. Mithubhutel is directing, Charles Wu is in it,
and Cairo Campo. So amazing.
Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Today we're going to dedicate the entire episode
to talking about the 2024 budget. Ben is so excited.

(01:11):
So even though Ben is not well, as you can tell, he is still recovering from
this mystery ailment which has afflicted him all these months.
He's so excited about the budget that I think if he was hooked up to life support,
we would be doing the podcast. And can we apologise out front for the horrible
jump echo that listeners detected in our last recording?
Somebody was like, did you guys just put this out because it was so hard because Ben was so sick?

(01:34):
And it was like, well, yeah, that's half the story. We didn't know about the
jump echo, but after we discovered it, it was more like we couldn't fix it and
there was like a shallow pool of despair just set over the house.
If you have any idea how we can avoid the jump echo in future,
Chuck, please send your responses to the Facebook page or the Twitter account
or anything. Just tell us, help.

(01:56):
I mean, we think it was a software compatibility problem, and we're hoping that
new software downloading as we speak will fix that problem.
We have moved to a different computer device.
We are at my desk. So half of Ben's slightly grumpy tone is his illness.
The other half is maybe that he's in my gaming chair under a tree.

(02:17):
That's right. All right. So look, Van, budget 2024, Jim Chalmers handed it down
last night. How excited are you?
Look, I'm very excited, and I'm excited for a whole bunch of reasons.
You know, this morning...
Obviously, we watched it. We watched it live. Like dorks. I went through budget
paper number two, which, by the way, if you're like, ah, how do I read the budget?

(02:39):
And you want to just see what the government is spending money on,
the programs, budget paper number two just gives you a list of all the different
programs and how much they're spending.
It's a really easy one to read. budget paper number one
has all that macroeconomic stuff around inflation and
unemployment and wage predictions and all the stuff
that you know technical nerds like myself and you

(03:01):
know economists like but if you just want to see the things the government's
going to buy budget paper number two really easy to read but having done all
that last night as we live tweeted the speech you know it was interesting for
me this morning to see some of the newspaper headlines lines.
And let me tell you, it was quite a dynamic split.

(03:25):
It was a dynamic split. I think the fact it was going to be a dynamic split
was clear because obviously we watched Dr.
Jim's speech and then we watched the commentary afterwards on the ABC.
What a parade of not knowingness, I would describe it as.
We saw David Pocock and Jackie Lambie and Adam Bandt and Angus Taylor and some

(03:51):
total randos, Tory randos, spouting off about the budget.
And it was many different realities, none of which were grounded in the material.
No. And I think.
One of the things that struck me today as I was thinking about it was how Australia
has become disconnected from the purpose of the Commonwealth Budget.

(04:14):
The purpose of the Commonwealth Budget is actually to acquire money for the
purposes of running the Commonwealth.
And it says that, the clerk says that, I mean the clerk did stuff it up last
night a little bit when they first read it out, but they read it out properly
the second time, and is to literally to run the country. And to do that,

(04:35):
they manage the economy.
So what Jim Chalmers has been doing, and this is his third crack at it,
has been handing down budgets that are actually managing the economy.
They're managing the Commonwealth of Australia.
And I think the reason why we're seeing so many Tory economists and the front

(04:56):
page of The Australian and the Murdoch Press slam it.
By the way, I saw the front page of a couple of regional newspapers living where
we do, Ballarat and Geelong, loved the budget, loved it.
You know, there were specific investments in specific productive areas.
It's an interesting noise you're making, Dom. I hope everybody enjoyed that.

(05:17):
Germanicus is on his elephant-shaped cushion, the dog referred to by our friend
Lauren, who's a supporter of the show, as the elephant king is having a bit
of a growl there to his minions.
So you had actually regional newspapers going, well, here are some specific
things that are really going to help us.
Here are some of the general things that are going to help us.
Not really having a partisan line at all.

(05:37):
Whereas you had the Murdoch's press going bananas.
Because what Jim Chalmers has
done is actually used the budget for the purpose that it's designed for.
And by that, I mean, it's going to manage the economy. So, yeah.
You look at the economic state of the nation. We have high levels of employment.

(05:58):
Hooray! Wage growth at about 4.1%. This is a massive improvement.
We have higher wage growth this year than in the 10 years of coalition rule combined.
The Australian Union's put out that tweet today.
Go to australianunions.org.au slash wow. That's where you can join.

(06:20):
You can get information directly from the union about that. unions are winning
wages and the economy is transferring money to wages, which is what it's supposed to be doing.
You have inflation now with a three in front of it.
And with Treasury's estimates, it'll have a two in front of it,
hopefully by Christmas. And what about interest rates?

(06:43):
Interest rates should then be in it. The Reserve Bank, which is separate, right?
The Reserve Bank is an independent body, makes its own decisions.
Government can't tell it what to do.
Yeah. Well, it can, but it's a process and it kind of destroys the entire economic system if it tries.
Right. Good to know. Someone should tell the Greens. Yeah. It's not an easy thing.

(07:04):
If the Treasurer overrules the Reserve Bank, that will create chaos in terms
of the Australian bond price.
And if you follow Stephen Koukoulis, you'll know that he last night- Stephen
Koukoulis is a progressive economist. Yeah. Called the kook online.
And last night and this morning, all he was doing was tweeting out the four-year
and 10-year bond price, because that's the market's reaction.

(07:27):
What are the bonds, Ben? Bonds are how much it costs the government to borrow
money, right? So it borrows money.
At a certain rate, and we'll have to pay it back in four years or 10 years or
whatever it is. At the rate that it's borrowed at. That's correct.
And if the bond price changes, what does that mean? Well, if the bond price
goes up, that generally means the market is demanding more.

(07:47):
It thinks the Australian government is taking more risks and has less faith
in the economic management of the government. That's a broad interpretation.
If the bond price goes down, that would mean that the market thinks the government
is doing well, but it's generally also aligned to interest rates, right?
So if people think interest rates are going to go up a lot, then you're going

(08:09):
to get a big jump in market price.
There's been less than a 0.01% change in the bond price, which is negligible.
You get that any day of the week, right? With a sneeze.
You get that with a sneeze. Like somebody sells some, somebody buys some.
There's a bit of fluctuation every day on bond prices. But what the kook has
been saying online is that clearly the markets are very confident in the government's

(08:36):
budget, whatever the Murdoch Papers are saying, because the bond price hasn't changed.
They don't think this is risky. They don't think this is going to blow out inflation.
They don't think there's going to be a wage growth spiral.
You know, these typical economic indicators that would represent economic instability
and risk aren't present.
No, exactly. So the Murdoch Papers are, oh, Ben, what's the word we use to describe

(08:58):
their behaviour? Totally wrong and ideologically bankrupt.
Right. That's a lot of words, but yeah, I'm liking it.
Yeah, well, they're ideologically, well, they're totally wrong because they're
just wrong factually, and they're
ideologically bankrupt because what's happened since the Howard era,
Australians have gotten used to budgets where every child gets a prize,

(09:20):
every interest group gets a prize.
Oh, every critical electorate gets a prize, Ben.
Exactly. I mean, I've been in the non-critical electorates for most of my life.
You know, the Howard government wasn't really sweating over the arts, folks. Right. So-
That has flowed through for years.
Now, people will say, but Ben, we had the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government.

(09:40):
Yes, and the first thing it inherited was the GFC.
So Wayne Swan did an incredible job. Australia was one of the few economies
in the world that didn't go into recession during the GFC.
But he did that not by having a kind of stable approach to economic management.

(10:01):
It did that by having an emergency approach to economic management,
which was great, which was fantastic.
It needed to push money out the door as quickly as it could,
fund a whole bunch of stuff.
It was Keynesian. It was actually Keynesian. And Wayne Swans retweeted some
of my tweets about this being a Keynesian budget because he is a Keynesian. He is. He really is.
All right. But it was Keynesian in the sense of this is an emergency.

(10:23):
We have to keep people employed. It doesn't matter what we spend the money on.
As long as people are in jobs, that will keep the economy going.
Going, that will keep the country functioning. Which is exactly what happened.
Exactly what happened. By the time things settled down, that government was
not in a position to really change the way Australians think about economics.

(10:44):
Couldn't legislate the big vision. Was also in minority government.
Yes. You know, beholden to the whims of crossbenchers, not all of them were
ideologically aligned.
As Ben and I always say, there are only two political parties in Australia,
the Labor Party and everybody else. And you had the return of budgets and policies
that were designed to try and win over electorates.
I think at one point, Kevin Rudd was going to move all of the Navy to Brisbane,

(11:07):
right? Like that was something to try and win over.
And we had, it's that wonderful line, it's not...
When you're drowning, it's not the water that kills you, it's the panic.
Yeah. And infamously, the decision to cut welfare support for single mothers,
for example, which was disastrous, and we all know that was a disastrous,

(11:27):
a terrible decision made in the panic.
Yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, I'm on quite extensive record criticizing everybody.
I thought it was a terrible decision by that particular government,
and Julie Elyde has since apologized.
Yeah. So there was a lot going on there.
But essentially, out of return to the Howard notion of we've got to get votes
through the door, the budget is a mechanism to do that, that worked for Howard

(11:49):
and Costello for over a decade.
And it continued, right? And then you've had the last 10 years of the coalition doing exactly that.
They did that to the point of color-coded spreadsheets, right?
And this whole winners and losers framework of discourse where,
yeah, it's every child gets a prize,
it's like the pretty girls get treats and the ugly girls get nothing is the

(12:10):
kind of attitude towards budgeting we've had in this country for a very, very long time.
And it's reflected in the media, right? Almost every media outlet today will
have run a winners and losers section, right?
And it's, quite frankly, pathetic.
That's not what a budget is for. A budget is not for creating winners and losers.
A budget is for managing the economy, for setting up the mechanisms that will

(12:32):
allow the Commonwealth to grow, allow people to fulfill their potential.
Can I say something really crazy? Sure. What we're actually voting on when we
go to the polls, theoretically.
Is which ideological set of judgments is the most appropriate to govern the

(12:55):
country economically and socially at this point in time.
We are a democracy and the reason, the whole philosophy behind our particular
system of government is for the voter to go,
will policies associated with social democracy and socialism be the right set of judgments?

(13:15):
Will that ideological block of the Labor Party be able to govern the moment
that we're in, or will the ideological block of the centre, right,
the liberals and nationals, the neoliberals and neocons and conservatives,
will they have the set of judgments that will appropriately govern the economy?
With major parties, you get a breadth of ideological views across a spectrum,

(13:38):
meaning that you have theoretically different ideological levers to pull to
make the best economic judgment and social judgment at any particular time.
And never has there been a more clear indication of that than the interview
with the crossbenchers after the budget last night. Oh, my God.
Because, frankly, I've had a gutful of Jackie Lambie's having a gutful.

(14:00):
The lack of economic understanding is extraordinary.
I'm going to look at the $300 energy rebate for a minute. As a case in point.
Yeah, it's a beautiful case study because it is a beautiful piece of Keynesian economics.
One of the big problems we have in this country, inflation going up.

(14:22):
Some of the drivers of inflation in this country are effectively,
if not state mandated, are state regulated.
Things like electricity, childcare, healthcare. care.
These are things that the government does play a role in and can have some pricing
control over without controlling prices.
Which is, of course, prohibited by the constitution.

(14:44):
What it's allowed to do is it's got regulatory levers it can pull.
So what Gin Chalmers has done and what some of the state governments have done
as well, by the way, on top of this.
Everybody wants to live in Queensland at the moment, yes, because they're getting
two sets of energy pay packets.
And they own a lot of their own energy assets as well. Because they didn't privatize them.
And can I just do a big shout out to my comrades from the ETU,

(15:05):
who've been running that Not For Sale campaign to protect electricity assets
in Queensland for years and years and years, and have done so again and again,
which is why Queensland is in such a good position.
What the $300 rebate does is it knocks part of the price off your electricity bill.
Now, your electricity bill is part of the inflationary basket.

(15:29):
It's one of the things that It gets counted towards the inflation number.
Now, the monetary policies, the neoliberals go, oh, well, that's cheating.
That's just mechanical.
It's like the whole thing is cheating. All economics is mechanical.
Yeah, money is not a real thing. Money is an agreement.
Yeah. Like you don't get to say this is how we measure it and then when somebody

(15:53):
comes along and goes, oh, if that's how we measure it, then we're going to do
this, this, this, and this to get a better outcome. and go, no,
no, you can't do that because it's changed the outcome.
It's like, well, but it's still the same measurements, right?
And this is what they're having an absolute fit about because it will result
in a better outcome on inflation, right?
Oh, well, the Reserve Bank will see through that.

(16:15):
Well, the Reserve Bank, if the Reserve Bank acts inappropriately,
let's say inflation gets down to 2.8, right? That's within the band.
The acceptable band. What we would say would be- Well, the Reserve Bank's acceptable
band, by the way. Not just everybody's acceptable band.
The Reserve Bank's stated acceptable band of 2% to 3%.

(16:36):
They would be then breaking their own rules and measurements.
What Jim Chalmers is doing is he's saying we can influence some of the price
pressures by doing things like investing.
So this $300 a year, months off for everybody, is designed, yes, it will help people.

(17:00):
It will help the lowest income households.
Many of whom are struggling. There's no question about that.
It will genuinely help them.
But it's not designed to help high-income households.
It's designed, that part of it, is designed to leverage high-income households
into bringing down inflation.

(17:22):
Because high-income households aren't going to get the 300 bucks and go,
great, I'm going to go and spend it on on ice cream or beer or a new top,
right? They're not going to go.
And firstly, it's a rebate off your power bill. So it's not cash,
right? So it's not like you can just take it and do that anyway.
You'd have to get the rebate and go, well, now I've saved the $300, I'm going to spend $300.

(17:45):
What it's designed to do is to use high-income households as a means of reducing inflation, right?
Because high-income households, believe it or not, have quite high power bills.
Bills, because they can leave all their lights on and they have lots of lights
because they have big houses and all these sorts of reasons why they use a lot of electricity.
So it's not designed to help them with their bill. It's designed for them to

(18:08):
help the nation reduce inflation so that the Reserve Bank doesn't have to pull
interest rate lever every time.
So all these arguments, and I've seen Peter Dutton, who just comes across like
a total little economic moron, say, well, I don't need the $300.
It's like, you're right, Peter, you don't need the $300. But two weeks ago,

(18:31):
you were arguing for an extra $5,000 or $10,000 in tax cuts for yourself and your mates,
which, by the way, would have been inflationary. But now.
You don't want the $300 because you think that we somehow or another,
those people don't deserve it.
It's amazing because I heard Jackie Lambie and Adam Band say exactly the same thing.

(18:54):
In fact, what was particularly revealing yesterday was Adam Band talking about
he used exactly the same terminology that Angus Taylor used,
which was Band-Aid. Oh, it's just a Band-Aid. It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound
or something ridiculous.
And Angus Taylor said the same thing. And it was like a year.
I know. Are you using the same chatbot?

(19:17):
And Jackie Lambie... Do you know you can do this, by the way?
Ben and I play this game where we put labour policy into chat GPT and say,
hey, pretend to be a Tory and tell us what your problems are with this.
And it's right all the time. So I can only guess that the data set that it's drawing on is expert.
But, you know, Jackie Lambie goes, well, I don't need the $300 and there are
other people who need more.

(19:37):
Well, that's why we changed the stationary tax cuts so people will get more.
That's why the increased rent assistance, so people who need that will get more.
By the way, you can always pay more tax. Do people know this? You can actually pay.
If you want to pay more tax, you can do that. You can make donations to consolidated revenue.
But that's the thing that gets me here as well. David Pocock saying,

(20:00):
well, I don't need the money.
The money needs to go to people who need it. Well, money is going to people
who need it. There's money in rent assistance.
There's the energy supplement. They'll get that as well. Well, there's free TAFE.
Caps on the cost of medicines. Caps on the cost of medicines.
There's changes to higher education, which will make university education more accessible.

(20:23):
And paid placements for students who have to do placements in health.
It's nursing, social work and teaching.
So there's lots of targeted, specific programs in this budget.
And again, keep in mind, this is a Keynesian budget.
So it thinks about, well, where are we in the world?

(20:46):
We're in a world where we have high levels of employment. We're getting good wage growth.
Inflation is hanging around. So what else can we do?
Well, there was a lot of talk about putting out unemployment benefits, right?
And when you've got high levels of employment, you

(21:06):
don't put up unemployment benefits that's that's
a kensian that's actually a kensian principle right you
do targeted programs like this budget is done so
you do things like rent assistance you do things like make
TAFE easier to get into by reducing fees you find other ways to reduce the cost

(21:27):
of living right rather than hand out cash because the economy is in a position
where it can't really handle that. It needs...
People to be in work, right? You want to encourage people to be able to get into employment.
And also, because a number of policy priorities for the entire Australian community,

(21:49):
I think it would be very hard pressed to find any Australian who wouldn't identify
housing as a challenge. Absolutely.
You know, we're all there. And of course, everybody knows that we need to build more houses.
Well, we have a small structural roadblock there that we don't have enough builders to build them.
And so one of the budget announcements yesterday was looking at targeted investment
in free TAFE, particularly around

(22:11):
construction to train people to be builders so we can build housing.
Yeah. And there's a $9 billion program to build more houses as well.
And another big shout out to the Greens in that, can you just build more houses?
And it's like, supply the builders.
Yeah. And I'd love to be that out of touch. I would love to be so out of touch.
I could just make a political demand without actually considering that somebody has to deliver it.

(22:35):
And if anybody is listening who is unemployed or knows someone who's unemployed.
You know, the budget is a good guide for where the government thinks the jobs
of tomorrow will be, right? They think they'll be in construction.
They think they'll be in renewable energy. They think they'll be in electricity through renewables.
You know, they're worth studying. They're worth getting qualified in.

(22:57):
Project management is going to be a big one as the infrastructure for
all those things ramp up you know so if you're thinking oh
but i'm you know i come of an age or i've got
a condition which means i can't lift and carry things well look at project management
look at you know maybe architecture maybe even you know just drafts draftsmanship
but these are all things you can start to think and i think this identifies

(23:18):
like even having this conversation seems weird because Because it's been so
long since we talked about big picture government planning.
Yeah. You know, that just hasn't been, that has not been a feature of our lived
political experience since the end of the Hawke-Keating government.
And Kos Samaras, who's our friend, was making this point yesterday that the
last time we had, you know, coordinated, integrated, big picture government.

(23:43):
The infrastructure policy was under hawk and, you know, building universities,
you know, expanding industrial capacity.
Made in Australia. Made in Australia. All of these huge campaigns that require
an intersection of different government departments and a policy framework that
says, where are we going?
What are we doing? What are the threats and challenges?

(24:04):
Well, obviously, and it was like entering a parallel universe.
I haven't been on Twitter as much recently because it's awful and run by that
fascist person, and I refuse to pay for it.
But seeing the sort of conversation like, what about the environment?
And it's like there's a $22 billion spend on a future made in Australia,

(24:26):
which is about clean energy technology and shortening supply chains.
Now, in case people haven't picked this up, supply chains are one of the worst
sources of emissions in the world. Did you know that shipping is equal to air
travel in terms of it's 3% of all global emissions just come from shipping.
So the less shipping you do, oh my God, guys, meeting emissions reductions targets,

(24:50):
you know, getting products to people and actually looking at,
they talk about the education, the making Australian energy super,
clean energy superpower.
Like they're quite serious about that. And that means the targeted training
and skills development to train people to work on transmission infrastructure.
And these are all the different levers you pull.

(25:12):
And it's this strange discourse of people who I can only presume grew up with
servants who made sure their rooms were clean and never had to clean them themselves.
You know, who think that just magical pixies come and do everything just because
you want them to do it. and it doesn't actually require resourcing or planning
or employment or recruitment or training.

(25:34):
It's so weird. What are they going to do for the environment?
It's like, I don't know, save it.
Essentially, the Climate Council
put out a press release saying how happy they were with the budget.
And, you know, it's interesting too that Dutton is against the Made in Australia.
What is it called? Future Made in Australia. Future Made in Australia program
because he doesn't want to pick winners.

(25:55):
I mean, the gall, the nerve of the coalition government that gave away billions
and billions and billions of dollars.
Two billion to Qantas, no strings attached. Just. Free money for Qantas.
Just. And, like, that's the tip of the iceberg, right? We can go all the way
down to personal protective equipment companies that didn't exist.

(26:19):
We can go to offshore detention security firms that operated out of a shack
on Kangaroo Island and had two employees.
Like they gave away and peter dutton
by the way was a minister signing off on billions of
dollars billions of dollars of money
being shoveled out the door under the coalition government on quote-unquote

(26:43):
winners what labor is doing is it's saying there are industries we want to support
it's not saying we want to pick that company like there will be some companies
that get picked in an an industry, right?
And there will be entrepreneurs who recognize opportunity and pursue it as well.
Let's be really clear about this too.
The stock market today opened higher and it opened higher on a whole bunch of

(27:09):
stocks, not just one stock that's going to get picked, but whole sections, whole industries,
whole parts of the market went
up because people are going, the government's going to invest in this.
The government is going to support these sectors in order to get the future

(27:31):
made in Australia up and running.
Now, it's an incredibly different approach.
I just want to quote Amanda McKenzie, who's the CEO of the Climate Council.
The budget 2024 includes billions for clean industry, no new money for gas.
This federal budget is a decisive turn towards Australia's clean energy future.

(27:53):
There is far more to do, but this is the right direction.
And as Ben and I talk about, it's about momentum. It's about bringing the people with you.
Where environmental action fails is where the people are not brought into the
discussion about their communities, about their jobs, about their sustainability.
And when communities don't have an understanding of the change that's taking

(28:15):
place around them, For the CEO of the Climate Council to come out and support
this budget is an extraordinary sign.
And I watched her get trolled by lunatics on the internet who were like,
you don't care about the environment, the planet's on fire.
And it's like maybe you should check BioLove. What do you reckon?
It's a sad thing that that happens. It's a very sad thing that that happens.

(28:36):
And, you know, budget night has changed, fundamentally changed.
It's gone from the treasurer standing up and reading out a list of projects.
And I remember, I can distinctly remember Josh Frydenberg literally reading
out a list of infrastructure projects, one after another.

(28:57):
Roadway here, this much money. Railway here, this much money.
And a commuter car park here, this much money. Car park?
Gun club here, this much. Like it
was just reading out. A bit of a Bridget McKenzie special, the gun club.
Just reading out a list of pet projects for different MPs and different seats
that they thought they had to win.

(29:19):
What Jim Chalmers did last night was he lifted the economic debate and he did
it in such a way that the Murdoch media media,
the Kerry Stokes backed media are losing their minds, right?
Peter Dutton has to support $300 because what's he going to do?

(29:39):
Is he going to say to those low income people, no, you can't have it because
a millionaire is going to get it as well?
No. He might try and amend it. Then of course, he's going to run into the inflation problem.
All this talk about this is a budget that will increase inflation.
Well, treasury says it won't.
There are many economists- The bond markets say it won't. No.
Bond markets say it won't.

(30:00):
There are many economists who say it won't. The only people who are saying they
will write for Murdoch-owned newspapers.
And quite frankly, they and their mates in the coalition presided over the worst
inflation we've had in over 30 years.
They presided over the lowest wage growth we've had in 40 years.

(30:22):
They gave us a billion dollars to condescend those drinks a tap. And they...
Quite frankly, left Australia as one of the least diverse economies,
one of the most fossil fuel dependent economies, and have nothing to say.
There's just no reason to listen to anything they say.

(30:43):
There's also some really great analysis about the changed geopolitical environment
that we find ourselves in and the
role of the budget in thinking about the reality of the world as it is.
So obviously there are numerous international threats that Australia is subject to.
And Jim Chalmers acknowledged the war in Ukraine has had an effect on inflation.

(31:06):
Like Ukraine is a major supplier of food throughout the world.
Yeah, grain. And restriction of grain supply causes prices for grain to go up everywhere.
And while Russia continues to shell Ukraine, that supply is a problem.
And let me just be clear about this, Van, because some people might know Russia
was allowing some grain to be exported out of Ukraine as part of a humanitarian

(31:31):
package. It's cut that off.
So before, people were writing in and go, but they were letting it in.
Yep, they were doing that. That's been cut off. That's why your bread prices
have gone up in the last couple of weeks.
Also timber, by the way. A lot
of Australian building timber supply was coming out of Ukraine as well.
Look, and this is the reality that we live in. I've seen people online going

(31:51):
absolutely bananas about defence spending, like $50 billion.
And it's like, well, yeah, one of our allies is at war.
We are supplying bushmasters to our allies in Ukraine to repel the Russians
so we can restore some normalcy to the global trading system of which we are
a part in terms of that dependent on grain and timber thing.

(32:15):
Like, it is extraordinary to me that there would be Australians who are not
computing that an Australian ally, an important ally,
you know, literally the bulwark of defence for NATO against a Russian invasion
of Europe, this requires investment.

(32:37):
And it changes the investment we need to make in defence strategy about the
world that we live in. One of the really interesting things about this budget,
there was an announcement about investment in quantum computing.
And this is obviously we've seen in the United States of America policy initiatives
from the Biden administration like the CHIPS Act about making microchips.
This is to stop China, which, by the way, is a major ally of Russia who...

(33:01):
Bombing Ukraine into the Stone Age. Yeah, but also our largest trading partner.
But also our largest trading partner.
Well, we're completely dependent on trade with China.
And China has monopoly control of a number of tech industries,
which are crucial to running economies and societies.
And research into quantum computing locally, the shorting of supply chains,

(33:24):
weaning ourselves off dependence on China so our trade arrangements can be multilateral,
not monodirectional, that actually makes us safer.
Absolutely. That means that we're not compromised by trading relationships because
we're in a trade relationship with a monopoly economic power.
Like all of these are considerations. And this is what I just found,

(33:46):
like understanding this, doing the reading around the complex issues involved in actual management,
you know, which is more than just a soundbite a soundbite about threatening
to shirt front Vladimir Putin, which was one of the more infamous quotes of the Abbott era. Yeah.
I just, I see this discourse of, oh, yeah, well, you know, just like Labor have just got to go.

(34:11):
We should have a like government. We should have like more crossbenchers and
Teals and Greens and Independents.
And I'm like, do you know who the foreign affairs spokesperson is for the Greens?
Do you know? I don't actually. It's Jordan Steele-John. Right.
Right. who I'm sure is a lovely person. His parents like him very, very much.
But the choice, there is no choice between him and Penny Wong. I'm sorry.

(34:33):
And watching Jackie Lambie's outrageous performance, look, I like Jackie.
Yeah, yeah. You know, like she's a likeable person.
But is she in a position to run an economy? Could she make the choice?
Does she have the judgment?
Well, she didn't have the capacity to keep a party of two together.
You know, as we all know, Tamitara quit the Jackie Lambie network.

(34:55):
I think it was just before Christmas. Yeah, literally lost half her caucus.
A party of two people the centre could not hold.
Yeah. And Jackie was just screaming on television. I couldn't even work out
what she was angry about.
She was angry about something about Launceston needs young people off the street. Oh, yeah.
Why is there nothing about youth crime? It's like because that's a state government issue. Yeah.

(35:15):
Actually, Jackie, and I think you'll find, isn't her party backing in the Liberals
who have been in power for 10 years? Yeah, they've done a deal with them, yeah.
So they've done a deal with the government that hasn't done anything thing about
the youth crime problem that she has a problem with, but she's blaming Jim Chalmers
for it, even though it's okay. Sure, Jackie. No.
And watching people insist that this crossbench should have more power is genuinely terrifying.

(35:39):
I don't want Jordan Steele-John making decisions about industry policy around
resilience to do with that mono-directional trade technology of relationships.
I certainly don't want Nick McKim who wanted to Uberize childcare in charge of anything.
Not just childcare. the entire labour market. Yeah. Yes, he wanted Uber to apply.
That was his maiden speech in Parliament. You can look it up.

(36:00):
We're not making this up.
What about Peter Walsh Wilson who described penalty rates as an Anglo-Saxon
tradition we've long outgrown? Well, that's interesting.
Well, I find it interesting too because the other thing this government,
this budget has done is it has restored the concept of government as a regulator, right?
So there is money in the NDIA, the National Disability Insurance Agency,

(36:23):
for potentially regulating that sector properly.
There is a whole raft of agencies that will get more staff to regulate properly,
including the ATO, proper crackdowns on tax evasion.
In fact, when I was reading one of the quote-unquote winners and losers sections,

(36:43):
the first loser was tax evaders.
The second loser- Oh, no, bad day for tax evaders. Yeah. The second one was NDIS Fraudsters.
The third one was scammers. I'm glad they're all losing. I'm like,
okay, this is a loser list I can get behind.
I love that loser list. Those people should lose more often.

(37:04):
I think, you know, the mafia interest of running NDIS scams,
I think there should be less of them. And let's be clear, right?
We know that well-regulated economies.
When you look at places like Norway, Sweden, Germany, where workers have a seat
at the table, where the government is focused on building up the capacity of

(37:26):
the government to manage the economy,
right? It's not central planning.
It's not capital control. It's not command and control.
It's about saying this is where we have some natural advantage.
And we do have some. We get a lot of sunlight in this country.
We got a lot of wind, particularly around the coastlines.
You know, we got a lot of people who are very capable. We've got a lot of really

(37:51):
world-class educational institutions.
We have capacities that will drive our economy into higher standards of living,
lower rates of inflation.
And shared prosperity. And that's the whole point of what the Chalmers was delivering last night.
I thought it was a fantastic budget. And part of the reason you can tell it's

(38:15):
a fantastic budget is because nobody got everything they wanted.
Nobody got everything they wanted. There's not one interest group that came
away going, well, we got everything we wanted, right?
Whereas when they are in the old system, in the kind of neoliberal system.
Yeah, the neoliberal winners and losers era. Right? There would be groups of

(38:38):
people. Picking winners era.
There'd be groups of people, interest groups, who got everything they wanted
and then people who got nothing, right?
Now, I know that there are people who are really struggling,
who didn't get everything they wanted, and who wanted more. And I get that.
But you've got to look at what's there, because there are things there.

(38:59):
You've got to look beyond just the headline. And there are some really incredible opportunities.
For example, and I mean, I just find this, as a person who spent 18 months of
their life caring for my mother, the carer's allowance, which,
full disclosure, I was not on, because I was able to work from home and the rest of it.
But, I mean, obviously I met a lot of people who were in the same situation I was.

(39:20):
They've lifted the threshold so you can work 100 hours a month and still get
caring support from welfare.
Now, that's transformational for people because, and it's just one example of
really good policy, because one of the things that's really hard to deal with
as a carer is not only the emotional labor of caring, but if you're caring for someone who's dying,

(39:42):
when they die, your world changes.
So maintaining connection to society beyond and to institutions and social groups
beyond just the caring relationship is really important.
And there are so many other things in the budget, like there's an allowance to supply.
And this sounds, I just can't, I'm just so thrilled to live in Australia that has come to this point.

(40:06):
There's funding around support for women with endometriosis.
There's funding around maternal care. there's funding around like menopause
care, which is amazing. And there are even...
Provisions made for things like period-proof underpants.
Yeah. Like there's a budget line item that will help women in marginalised circumstances

(40:26):
access free sanitary products, including menstrual cups and period-proof underpants.
And, you know, this is what happens when you have women in the room.
Yeah. And we, of course, we have the first, Jed Carney, Assistant Health Minister,
of course, former nurse.
Yeah, yeah. You know, these are the kind of policies that you get when you have

(40:50):
diversity in the policy process.
We know that the government is majority women, the first time in Australian history.
And that's why we're able to get the nuance and the insight to actually support
people in extremely marginalized situations.
And it's interesting because I've seen some people come out and say the budget
doesn't do enough for women, right?
And the reality is going to be no single budget is ever going to do enough for

(41:14):
any particular interest group.
And if it does, it's a bad budget because it means it's sacrificing a lot to do a very, very little.
Now, a budget that's $2.7 trillion goes a long way and you can get a lot out of it.
There were some things I was disappointed about, right? Me too.

(41:36):
As people know, we're big supporters of the For Every Child public education campaign.
No announcements about that. last night at all.
Enraging. Nothing about that. Absolutely enraging. Now, the Commonwealth is
going through a process of having discussions with the states about the funding for public schools.

(41:57):
And I do note, people may not know about this in the budget,
there's always a line item in the budget that says, decisions taken but not
yet announced, right? Right.
And this one adds up to about $6 billion overall across the forward estimates,
so over the course of four years.
Now, that line item is usually for things the government wants to isolate.

(42:22):
So, you know, budget night, there's a lot of things going on.
Obviously, they had a big focus on controlling inflation and targeted cost of
living and, you know, all those things. That was their message.
So you would hope, I hope, that that line item includes at least some money
to lift the 98% of public schools that are currently not funded to the minimum

(42:45):
standard, to the minimum standard.
If you can afford to overfund private schools, you can afford to fund state
schools to the minimum resource standard.
And hopefully that line item of decisions taken but not yet announced is where
that money is sitting and it'll be announced at some point when the states,

(43:07):
and we've seen Victoria,
we've seen New South Wales come out very strongly and say, we're not going to accept bad deals.
We are going to demand full funding because we need it. We absolutely deserve it. Our kids deserve it.
And a shout out to the AEU who are campaigning on this.
We love you, AEU, comma. moment. Karina Haythorpe was standing up at the budget

(43:28):
last night. She was cutting sick today on TV, let me tell you.
Because it is absolutely vital.
Like we've talked about TAFE, we've talked about university,
we've talked about all those changes there, we've talked about planning for the future.
Well, you've got to get kids ready for that stuff and to get them ready for
that stuff, you need the funding to give them the education and the support.
By supporting their teachers. So teacher burnout ceases to be a thing.

(43:51):
Yeah, so there's enough teachers, so there's enough support staff,
so there's enough resources in the schools.
Requirement. Now, as I say, there's money there, $6 billion across four years.
Still not enough, right? But
if that all goes to funding public schools- Which educate the majority.
The overwhelming conclusive majority of Australians send their children to public schools.

(44:17):
Correct, over 60. So I can't think of anything more democratic than to actually
direct the funding to the majority of the people.
Now, I should be clear, That line item in the budget is also used to fund things
that the government doesn't necessarily want people to know it's funding, right?

(44:40):
So, for example, sometimes there are- Do I have a quizzical look on my face?
You do have a quizzical look on your face. You're looking at me like,
why would the government not want us to know?
Well, sometimes there are defence projects, for example. Like information resilience,
because we're being, we're targeted by a Russian disinformation war.

(45:05):
So, in the past, that line item has been used for some elements of defence.
This budget looks like actually we're kind of being really loud and proud about
what we're doing in defence. $50 billion, baby.
And looks like what we're trying to do is actually put a flag in the sand and
say, hey, when we're not a soft touch, don't come near us, we're geared up, all the rest of it.

(45:27):
So my hope is that that money is for that.
It may be some other bits and pieces in there as well.
I would say to you, if you want public schools to be funded to at least the minimum standard,
go to foreverychild.au, get involved in that campaign, because let me tell you,
the Australian Education Union, the teachers, the parents, the principals,

(45:51):
many of the students are campaigning. They are campaigning today.
I saw them with flyers in all parts of the country online, and they'll be doing
this now, I think, right up until the election.
Because if the Commonwealth can't come to an agreement with Labor states,
if the Labor Commonwealth government can't come to an agreement with Labor states

(46:13):
about properly funding public schools, then there's a serious, serious problem.
And it's a long-term economic problem. Yeah. And for a government that recognises
the value of big vision long-term planning,
I would be shocked and dismayed if they didn't recognise the crucial importance
of a public school school system funded to minimum educational standards.

(46:36):
Like, I want to believe that that money is there for that project so it can
be a standalone announceable and to put the actual, tangible future vision on the policy suite.
That just punched my mug. Fortunately, coffee did not spill, which is good.
But, you know, when we talk about the future, when we talk about,

(46:57):
you know, the polemics and rhetoric of the future and the idea of a policy vision
worth connecting to, Ben and I have talked about this before,
about a future made in Australia is, I think, a great slogan about the industry suite.
But it should also be about an education suite that's not just about tertiary training.
And the government have said they want 80% of Australians minimum to hold a

(47:20):
tertiary qualification.
Well, to get to that, little Johnny, little Janie, little Ahmed,
little India, they've all got to do maths and they've all got to do a bit of
English and a bit of science and they've got to maybe do a bit of arts. A bit of arts, imagine.
Imagine encouraging creativity in children. Maybe do a bit of sport. Lord.

(47:41):
And it is crucial.
But this is the thing. Like if we're talking about future, do you know what sells the future?
Supporting children. Yeah, absolutely. Tangible, visible policy that supports
opportunities for children is the most tangible branding around a future vision you can do.
And that's just speaking as a campaigner and comms person. You know,

(48:03):
if you don't have children associated
with your project, no one really believes it's about the future.
Yeah, and look, the budget included a whole raft of things around early childhood
education, so increasing funding for early childhood educators.
And congratulations to our comrades in URU, the United Workers Union,
who have been relentless in the Big Steps Early Childhood Campaign for years

(48:27):
and years and years. You know, these are, these are things that,
You know, you can't have this gap. You can't say early childhood is going to be important.
Taifun University. Taifun University is going to be important.
But there's 12 years in the middle where 60% plus of the population will just be underfunded,

(48:48):
under-resourced, but somehow or another magically matriculate into a higher degree.
That's not going to happen. That's just not going to happen.
What will happen is those people will get to a point where they are not able
to take up those opportunities to go to university and potentially not even go to TAFE.

(49:11):
So hopefully that funding is there. And I agree with you, Van.
I think it's a great standalone announcement. I think having Jason Clare and
Anthony Albanese, you know, the Prime Minister has such a story of struggle
from his own background.
And I know he went to a Catholic school at a time when state governments weren't

(49:32):
investing in public schools and federal governments weren't investing in public schools.
Yeah, and not to mention generationally, and I speak from the experience of
my own family, like they didn't build public schools where Catholics live.
There was a bit of structural discrimination against the Catholic populations
in this country for a long time.
So I get that, but imagine Anthony Albanese, Jay Sinclair, the Australian Education Union, teachers.

(49:58):
Parents, principals, students, standing up at the beginning of term three or
the beginning of term four this year and going in 2025,
there's an extra $1 billion that's going to go into public education in this country,
and that's going to be followed up by another 1.5 or 4.5 or whatever the amounts

(50:21):
are that are needed to get every student the education they need so that they
can become the 8 out of 10 that go to university.
I want to, or Tav, I want the announcement to be that.
People ask us to explain a future made in Australia. Well, Ahmed and Janie and

(50:43):
Johnny and India are the future made in Australia.
They are. That's what we're talking about.
You know, kids who have limitless opportunity because there are industries for
them to enter and training for them to get and teachers who can support them,
you know, and NDIS that can find opportunities for them to participate equally in society.

(51:03):
Society no matter, you know, who they are or what has happened to them or anything else.
Like these are the big picture visions that we've got to connect to because
the budget speaks to that language of inclusion and planning and social vision.
Like it's so crucial and this is the last. I'm hoping, I'm hoping,

(51:25):
I'm hoping this is like when you buy a crockery set or your nana's fancy crockery
set and you have all your cups and you have all your sauces and your plates
But there's a big platter.
You've got to have your big platter, otherwise it's not really a set.
This is how I think about things.
You know, I mean, there are some other fun things in the budget.
I obviously get unnaturally excited about shipping announcements.

(51:47):
So there's training in shipping and there's expanding capacity in shipbuilding,
which is, of course, crucial to reducing emissions that come from shipping,
as I was talking about before.
That's really great. And a shout-out to our comrades at the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union,
union the australian workers union and of course the maritime union of
australia they're so mighty pushing for this for for
years to say we are an island nation how do

(52:09):
we not have more investment in shipping yeah i have australian flag ships yeah
and not to mention there just might be and this is crazy like a very useful
defense capacity when it comes to naval technology i mean the more people you
train in shipbuilding the more you know about ships the more you can do i mean
these are the local industries, we want to encourage.
These are good jobs and they're necessary and they're intersectional jobs in

(52:32):
terms of facing risk and managing challenges in the future.
But there's another piece of news that is obviously very important to you and
I, which is the restoration of universal enfranchisement in student unions, which is so exciting.
So obviously the anti-union liberal governments brought in voluntary student

(52:53):
unionism many years ago, which wasn't voluntary.
It was a destructuralization of the tradition of student unionism,
which has been absolutely integral to the university model, building community, giving students.
Extracurricular opportunities to develop their democratic understanding capacity
and their ability to organize through representative organizations on campus

(53:17):
that facilitate student control of student affairs.
Ben and I are both products of student politics. Obviously, I didn't pursue a political career.
Whatever the rumors on the internet might be, I'm actually rather interested
in being a journalist and writer.
But I had the most extraordinary experience in student politics because I was

(53:38):
fascinated by how it worked and the mechanics of representation and election.
And those skills and insights are crucial to applying your education to an understanding
of the role that your education plays in a democratic society.
And for student unionism to be restored on campuses, for students to have the

(53:58):
opportunity to organise, to run an election, you know, to run proper organisations.
I think they were the making of you and I. Oh, absolutely.
And it's interesting, right, because there is a slight age gap between us.
And so the first time I was president of the Deakin University...
I mean, it's not slight, but okay.
Yeah, that's very flattering. The first time I was president of Deakin University

(54:20):
Student Association, we did have compulsory student unionism,
or we did have universal student unionism.
And the student union ran the bookshop and we ran a restaurant and we ran all
sorts of student services and we did huge amount. We were a multi-million dollar organization.

(54:40):
Yes, we did stuff like get involved in protests and yes, we did campaign for
things on campus and off campus.
So there was a political side to it as well, but it was a multi-million dollar
organization, which as president, I was executive chair of and we had a general
manager and staff and all the rest of it. So that was my first go around as president.
Then, of course, everything changed and the Howard government disassembled the

(55:07):
universal enfranchisement model and said, but don't worry, people can,
students can choose to join, can choose to join.
So I was then doing a law degree, which I never finished because I'm very lazy, as everybody knows.
Yes, infamously not workaholic Ben Davison. And I was asked by a group of students
to come and be president again because the organization,

(55:30):
the student union, was losing money, huge amounts of money, couldn't function
anymore, had all these staff and no money coming in from students.
And what was it going to do? And eventually it would run out of reserves.
And I said, well, we've got to be organized. We've got to be a union,
right? Because all these student unions and student associations around the
country were not necessarily being unions.

(55:53):
They were trying to get people to make donations or they were trying to get
people to buy merchandise.
Service models. Service models, pay for your support, your advocacy, whatever.
And I said, no, no, no. We got to have a core group of people here who are going
to go out and talk to people and get them to sign up and see the value of being

(56:15):
a student in an organized body of students that can stand up against the university,
stand up against the government, and have a voice and have a say.
And yeah, we'll throw in discounts for trips and tours and whatever else we
do, but fundamentally, we've got to be organizers. We're going to be a union.
And one of the things that I'm proud of, I don't talk a lot about it, is the fact that.

(56:39):
In a declining market, if you like, became the third largest student union in the country,
because students went out and talked to students about the importance of being
organized, about the importance of union.
Now, whether they said union or not, look, I'll admit, I think there's probably
some people at the Burwood campus who didn't use the word union,

(57:01):
but just said it's really good for us to stand together. I'm happy with that.
To see now that students are going to to be able to have that universal enfranchisement,
that universal opportunity to come together and learn from each other without
having to go through the barriers of those conversations.
Well, be dependent on getting money from the university to provide services

(57:23):
when it's usually the university that you're trying to campaign against.
Absolutely. I mean, I did a teaching session at what was then the University
of Western Sydney, which is now Western Sydney University, a few years ago,
where an old friend of mine from student in politics brought me in to do media
training because my experience of student unions was I was the chick who booked the bands.
Like I was literally that chick in the Nirvana t-shirt and the,

(57:46):
you know, cut-off army pants from the supply store.
It was like, yeah, man, that'd be awesome. We can totally get you hard.
And, yeah, it was an interesting time in my life.
And then I got into student media and was editor of the student newspaper and
then I went off to NUS. But I got brought in as a student media person to teach
student media skills to students who were interested, and they were totally

(58:09):
beholden to the university.
The things that we did as students, exposing university scandals and calling
people out and turning the vice chancellor into a villain.
We once did a Margaret Thatcher tribute poster for one of the DVCs and that
kind of stuff. They didn't have the capacity to do that.
And it was extraordinary to the amount of skills and knowledge that had been lost.
Because you're only, you know, the university experience is a butterfly life,

(58:32):
you know, that it only took a couple of years of VSU for people to pass out
of the system who'd ever had the experience of universal student unionism.
Hence why they brought back old hacks like us. Yeah, hence why they brought
back old hacks like us to do training and things like that.
But, you know, if you're a young person or if you know some young people,
like get involved, Be part of it, pick up the skills, you know,

(58:55):
because I came, you know, Ben and I came from working class families.
We were the first in family to go to university. I was. Yeah.
And, you know, nobody had ever given me the opportunity to edit a magazine before.
Like these things were extraordinary. It's funny we were both editors of the
magazine. It is. It's cute though, right?

(59:15):
Yeah, it's like, yeah. But those kind of experiences and me being involved in
the U.S. and meeting people from other campuses, I mean, this is,
a lot of people wonder how I ended up at the Guardian because I'm this crazy theatre person.
Well, I started writing columns for them and it became apparent very quickly
that I knew everybody who was making political decisions in this country because

(59:36):
I'd been in student politics with them.
Shout-out to Adam Bandt and shout-out to Terry Buller and shout-out to Andrew
Giles, Minister of Immigration, and shout out to Chris Byrne and shout out to
former President of the Senate, Scott Ryan, who was in the Australian Liberal
Students Federation, had numerous firing mats as many as you can imagine.
And that's where you meet the people who will go on to make the decisions because

(59:57):
the people who learn the mechanics of power.
I mean, it's not all of them. Yeah, but a lot of them. Take all kinds of different routes.
But, you know, those people turn up all the time in public life.
And if you listen to our podcast because you're interested in how politics works
in Australia and how political community is built and who gets to lean,
who gets to comment and all of those things. Well, we're telling you.

(01:00:21):
And obviously one of the reasons why the Liberal Party was so enthusiastic about
shutting down the student unions was to keep progressive,
organised people like Ben and myself from working-class backgrounds who had
lived experience of the effects of negative social policy.
Into public life.

(01:00:41):
And it's one of the reasons as well that unionism is so important,
right? Because not everybody's going to go to university.
They might go to TAFE. The student structures there are different again.
You might do an apprenticeship. The student structures are different there again.
But in your union, you're going to be exposed to people from abroad, right?
Particularly given the way unions now cover lots of different industries often. You're going to be.

(01:01:05):
There's going to be lots of discussion about how politics works,
about how decisions are made, about how power works.
And I always encourage people, join your union.
If you care about what happens in your community, join your union because that's
a mechanism that you can actively participate in, that you can actively have

(01:01:27):
a say in to influence the future of your community.
Get your boots on the ground, get the pamphlets in your hand and talk to people,
talk to people, talk to people. You know, whether you're standing in a train
station or on the phone, whatever it is you're going to do, you might be doing
actions online. There's lots of stuff.
The Forever Child campaign is a great example. They're doing everything.
There's one last thing that we do, Van, before we go and congratulate our cadre

(01:01:50):
and Extend the Reach supporters.
That was a clue to me to get the list. that I want to touch on because it's
a fantastic example of why this is such a good budget and it also doesn't give
everybody what they want.

(01:02:12):
Murray Watt gave a speech today, I think it was at the National Press Club.
And, of course, labor is committed to ending the export of live sheep.
And this comes after years of scandals, mistreatment of the animals,
just the whole industry getting dragged into scandal after scandal after scandal.

(01:02:33):
And not just here, by the way, but also in the destination countries.
We've all seen, well, many of us have seen the footage of sheep being crammed
into the boot of cars, of being inhumanely slaughtered. Some of it is really
just totally unacceptable in modern society.
And of course, the other side of the coin is that meat processing is actually

(01:02:55):
a better paid job and results in a higher amount of value being created here in Australia.
Now, some farmers, particularly in WA as it turned out, don't like this.
And, you know, Murray got up there and he talked about the billions of dollars
that the government has committed in this budget to helping farmers be more drought resistant.

(01:03:21):
Climate mitigation strategies. Climate mitigation strategies.
Can't have climate mitigation strategies without farmers.
To opening new markets, to assisting with any transition for the industries,
particularly around live sheep export.
And some of the farmers got up and they walked out. Now, that's their right
to do that. And Mario Watts said, that's fine.
Not everybody's going to be happy about this, but it's a decision in the national interest.

(01:03:44):
It's higher value, better wages, and it meets our values as a government and as a society.
So unfortunately, some people will be unhappy about that, but we're doing it
because it's the right thing to do.
And I think that kind of sums up for me.
As someone who grew up in the regions, as someone who spent his childhood on

(01:04:04):
sheep stations, you know running around chasing bloody sheep trying to get them
in the paddock trying to get them in the shearing sheds that,
That little symbol of those five or six disgruntled pastoralists,
and that's what they are.
If you've got the money to fly from WA, Canberra, and sit there in the National

(01:04:25):
Press Club and listen to the minister speak. And walk out. And walk out.
You're not a struggling small farmer, let me tell you.
You're shipping hundreds if not thousands of animals overseas in inhumane conditions.
And quite frankly, you're probably getting more help in transition than you deserve.

(01:04:45):
But for the rest of the farming industry, it's so good to see there's going
to be help for climate mitigation and drought resistance.
It's very, very needed. But look, we've talked for over an hour about one subject today.
It is the good news. The budget is the good news.
And when people say, oh, but in the future, there's going to be deficits.

(01:05:07):
Yeah, you know what? I don't buy that because the way treasury prices commodities
is so conservative that they get it wrong so much.
And all we need is one of our commodities, either iron ore or coal or nickel
or whatever to beat the expectation and those deficits will disappear.

(01:05:27):
So I'm not worried about that. If you're worried about the deficits in two,
three, four years time, trust me, people are going to be buying more stuff from
us at a higher price than treasury anticipates because they've gotten that wrong
for the last 40 years. So don't worry about that.
Focus on the fact that this is a... Benny says relax. This is a new way.
Relax. A better way of building budgets that build our common wealth and our

(01:05:53):
common standard of living.
But of course, this podcast will continue to be free and available to everyone, and it happens...
Despite what it costs us and trying to get software and ads to work and whatever else.
We're so sorry about the jump echo last week. That was just awful. It was embarrassing.
It was an awful, awful experience where everybody was like, is there something

(01:06:14):
wrong with my headphones?
And it's like when you hear that once, you're like, oh, could something be wrong?
And then you hear it numerous times and then you check the audio and then you just get sad.
And if this one doesn't work, then I'm going to quit as a sound engineer,
which is not something I studied.
So there you go. Maybe I should have. but you know it's our
bucket he's the one with the journalism degree it's our bucket
week supporters it's our it's our

(01:06:37):
extend the reach who chip in 10 bucks a month and our cadre chip
in 20 bucks a month who who allow us
to get this message out to as many people as we do that make this consistently
you know top 100 news podcast a top 20 top 10 politics podcast sometimes even
a Top 20 News podcast when we don't have a terrible jump echo in our recording.

(01:07:01):
So Van will read out the names of those supporters as a way of us saying congratulations and thank you.
And I apologize in advance for the pauses because they've changed the system
and I have to keep refreshing it. It's terrible.
Okay. Michael Lewis, Elizabeth Walsh, Karina Haythorpe, Brittany Slab,
Riley C, Sue Slesinger, Jessica Davy, 26, Someone, Jason Paris,

(01:07:21):
Mega Ichisaurus. Next. Texts.
Mattresses, Murray Bradwell, Ms. Deanne Weir, Shamila Likhal,
Labor Academy Victoria, Anne Coleman, Jeremy Moe, Ross Kenner 888,
Bronwyn Calkins and Terry Butler,
Gail Ferguson, Rosie Elliott, Lara, Rebecca Fanning for Longman,
Joe Lockery, Ali Vance, Mary M. Blagoia, Sanj Kelly, Love Your Work.

(01:07:44):
I hate these pauses. Oh my God. Pretend I'm telling jokes.
Yeet Yeti, Claire, Donald Vaughan, Damien Marley, Jason Dallas,
Camille, Steffo, Cameron Hello, Comrade Kramer.

(01:08:21):
Erica Pizzuti, Kylie Phillips, Graham Oxley, Tracy Lucas, someone,
Leanne Shingles and Gail Best,
Greg Martin, Amy Fawcett, Nord on Twitter, Sarah, at Kerry Nash,
20, Elian, Andrew, Billy, 3, McCabe, Ivor Spillett, Joe Lopino, Nerissa Simon,
Peter AC, Keir Patterson, Rachel Fitzpatrick, Laura Nash and Banjo,
Bunkum Basher, Narungga Man, Stuart Mums, Katie Ward, Sandy Boehm, Gart Utnut, Sandy B,

(01:08:42):
John Sharpe and Peter Bath, Louise Watson at Red, White and Blue Lou. Thank you, everyone.
Yes, it's fantastic, Fantastic that you're able to support us.
If you can't make a financial contribution, that's okay. Like,
share, refer to others, leave a review.
Five stars is always welcome.

(01:09:03):
Four stars is okay. Anything below that, maybe don't bother.
But certainly... I've taught him a lot about the theatre. Never publicise failure.
Never publicise failure.
But hopefully you found this episode on the budget informative.
And, of course, if you have any questions, you can send them across to us.
You can check out our Buy Me A Coffee page, which is where all those supporters

(01:09:26):
went to become supporters.
It's www.buymeacoffee.com slash week on Wednesday.
If you do have questions, send them to me there, and hopefully we can answer them for you.
And thank you to everyone who supported both of us since Ben's been sick.
As you can tell, his treatment is making improvements, and he's much better

(01:09:47):
than he was, but it's still a day-by-day thing.
And we really appreciate how kind and patient everyone has been we really do
so until we're next able to make an episode love you van i love you too bye.