PM, good morning to you.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: G’day, Karl
STEFANOVIC: How do you explain how Jenny from the block in Yorkeys Knob gets the same power rebate as Gina from Noosa?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I’m not aware of who Jenny and Gina are, but I’m sure they’re fine Australians. And you know what? They deserve support. I’m sure they’re taxpayers and they’ll get a tax cut, and they’re householders, so they’ll get an energy bill relief. We want to make sure that every Australian gets support during what is cost of living pressures, which everyone is feeling. So we have in this, at the centre of this Budget, a tax cut for every taxpayer, energy bill relief for every household, we have strengthening Medicare for every community and more homes in every part of Australia. And we’ve done all that, Karl, while producing a second Budget surplus. This one predicted to be $9.3 billion on top of the $22 billion surplus last year. We inherited a $78 billion deficit. But what we’ve been doing is getting inflation moderating at the same time as wages are increasing, dealing with those cost of living pressures, dealing with business, productivity is improving, business investment is going forward as well. We want to make sure that we get those economic settings right. And the task of this Budget was to provide cost of living support for people without putting pressure on inflation. And that’s what we’ve done.
STEFANOVIC: Ok, so let me spell it out for you. Gina is Gina Rinehart. Does she need help with her power bill?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Gina Rinehart is close to some people in politics, of course, in this building, as you know, Karl. I haven’t met Gina, but what we have done is make sure that every single Australian gets support. And we’ve done that because that is –
STEFANOVIC: But Gina doesn’t need support, PM, is the reality is that there are a bunch of Australians who just don’t need the $300.
PRIME MINISTER: This is the most effective way to deliver support across the board. Gina, if she pays income tax, will also get a tax cut. As will every Australian. Every single one of your viewers will get a tax cut on July 1. And that is because right throughout the income scales, there are pressures on. But as well we’ve got targeted support, Karl, where it’s appropriate. Things like the rental support of 10 per cent increase on top of the 15 per cent increase last year. The first time you’ve ever seen back to back increases by any government in rental support. We have additional measures as well, the social housing support that we have is aimed at targeted support there. The billion dollars I announced on Saturday for additional housing to be available for emergency purposes for women and children escaping domestic violence. There’s a range of measures in this Budget that are targeted, but there are some measures which are broad because that is the simplest, most efficient way to deliver it.
STEFANOVIC: All right, we’ll leave the argument about Gina for another day. But does someone who has multiple homes get multiple discounts if they’re with multiple power companies?
PRIME MINISTER: Well this is household bill relief of $300 for every household. Every household gets it. That’s important and –
STEFANOVIC: So, if you’ve got a holiday house, or you’ve got a rental, you get it at each household?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what that will do is put downward pressure on inflation. It’s expected that our cost of living measures will reduce inflation by half a per cent in the coming year, three quarters of a per cent in this current year. We know with energy price relief, the plan that we put in place last year has flowed through, has been effective. We are seeing inflation moderating. It peaked at 2.1 per cent before the election in just one quarter, just one quarter Karl.
STEFANOVIC: I know. It may well be that it’s too early for you to answer the question, but if you’ve got multiple homes, do you get multiple discounts in each household?
PRIME MINISTER: Every household will benefit from our energy price relief plan.
STEFANOVIC: Okay, so that’s a yes.
PRIME MINISTER: And what we’re doing, what we’re doing is making sure that we provide support across the board in a broad way, Karl. So that every single one of your viewers, just as they’ll get a tax cut, will get energy price relief.
STEFANOVIC: I know, but it’s not going to sit well with some people that old mate up the road, or let’s raise Gina again, who’s got maybe 10 houses. She gets 10 lots of it.
PRIME MINISTER: Karl, I remember talking with a few people about our tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer at this stage in the cycle, the day after we announced it. And some people said, indeed our opponents said, you might recall, that they would reverse it. They said we should call an election on it. We make no apologies for having broad support across the board in some of the measures that we’ve put forward. In other measures, they’re very targeted. But what we’ve done, Karl, is deliver a second budget surplus. So we’ve been responsible in the way that we have acted here. Something that you recall the other side having mugs, treating people like mugs, frankly, because they never got a budget surplus. We’ve delivered two – last year and this year, and that is making sure that fiscal policy works with monetary policy.
STEFANOVIC: Okay, so categorically, inflation will be within the target range by December?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we know is from this Budget, the Treasury forecasts are there. They know, and we worked very hard through the Expenditure Review Committee process with Treasury and Finance to make sure that we designed any support for households, which is necessary, to make that positive difference. Measures not just in the broad, but measures like Fee Free TAFE make it cheaper for people to do TAFE to get skills, but they also help the Australian economy. And that’s the other thing that we’ve done here, Karl, immediate measures to deal with the challenge of inflation and the challenges of cost of living pressures, whilst always having our eye on the big picture. On what does future economic growth look like? How do we make more things here in Australia? How do we support jobs? How do we increase living standards in the future and set ourselves up to take advantage of the opportunities which are there.
STEFANOVIC: Look, you’ve got to run, but one final question and quickly. Are we going to an early election?
PRIME MINISTER: Karl, I’m focused on getting the economic settings right. I’ll leave the political focus to our opponents, who are obsessed by that. We have just three-year terms in Australia, they’re pretty short.
STEFANOVIC: All right.
PRIME MINISTER: I’ve made my position very clear on that for a long period of time.
STEFANOVIC: Good to talk to you, PM. Thank you, appreciate it.
