Nightly current affairs 7.30 ll Federal budget aftermath

• Report rights infringement
• published: 04 May 2016
• views: 3

Transcript LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are accusing each other of being "out of touch". The Government's continuing its Budget sales pitch and tomorrow is shaping up as the last sitting day of Parliament before the Prime Minister visits the Governor-General to trigger an election. The reaction to the Budget is mixed, as you might expect. Some interest groups are praising its new spending policies and plan to cut tax rates, but some long-time Coalition allies are slamming the Treasurer for what they call a "typical Labor budget". Here's political correspondent Sabra Lane. BILL SHORTEN, OPPOSITION LEADER: Guess it's never been a more exciting time to be a millionaire, Scotty. SCOTT MORRISON, TREASURER: Well you'd know all about that, Bill! ... ... You stalking me, Bill? BILL SHORTEN: Yeah, well actually I'm here first, so that'd be you stalking me. But still, good luck. SCOTT MORRISON: Never gonna happen. Cheers. CHRIS BOWEN, SHADOW TREASURER: I'm the OHS inspector. SABRA LANE, REPORTER: The Coalition's economic leadership team was careful to avoid any banana skins as they strolled the carpets and lawns of Parliament in their morning-after-the-Budget hard sell. JOURNALIST: You think it's the manifesto that'll win you the election? SCOTT MORRISON: Well that's for others to decide. What I know it is is a national economic plan for jobs and growth for a stronger new economy. SABRA LANE: But the slip-up came during a radio interview on the Budget and a question about housing affordability, with the young being locked out of buying their first homes. MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER (ABC Radio 774): What, are your kids locked out of the housing market, Jon? JON FAINE, RADIO PRESENTER: Yes. MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well you should shell out for them. You should support them, wealthy man like you. JON FAINE: (Laughs) That's what they say! MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yeah, exactly. Well there you go. You see? You've got the solution in your own hands. BILL SHORTEN: Is that really the Prime Minister's advice for young Australians struggling to buy their first home: have rich parents? MALCOLM TURNBULL: Housing affordability is a very serious issue and - and it is very regrettable that the Labor Party is seeking to mislead young Australians about what their policy will do. BILL SHORTEN: Can the Prime Minister confirm that in the past two weeks his advice to young Australians struggling to buy their first home is to have rich parents or to have parents who buy you a home when you turn one? Prime Minister, just how out of touch are you? MALCOLM TURNBULL: There has never been an opposition that has surrendered so totally to a budget as this one. Here we are, the day after the Budget, the day after the Budget, and not yet one question on the Budget itself. Mr Speaker, they talk about being out of touch. They are so out of touch. The Labor Party's sneering at the aspirations of parents, sneering at the hardworking Australians who seek to make something for their children and they dare to talk to us about being out of touch. Mr Speaker, this is a - this is a war, a political war they want to commence against aspiration, against ambition, against enterprise. SABRA LANE: A sentiment echoed earlier during the Treasurer's National Press Club address. SCOTT MORRISON: Australians are over this class warfare thing. They're over the us-and-them. They're over it. They're not interested in our petty arguments. They're interested in our plan. And what we've put in this budget is our plan and I believe they'll back our plan. SABRA LANE: Labor's given the Budget a tick for cutting the corporate tax rate for small business by one cent from July 1st - the day before the election. PETER STRONG, CEO, COUNCIL OF SMALL BUSINESS OF AUST.: Small business budget number two - it's like a sequel to last year and it's a good sequel. It's a better sequel. SABRA LANE: The Government's also broadened the definition of what qualifies as a small business from an enterprise with a turnover under $2 million to $10 million. Labor disagrees, but small business loves it. PETER STRONG: Well it picks up 90,000 businesses, so it's not this awful thing that picks up huge multinationals or anything like that. The $2 million threshold has been there for 20 years or so - probably even longer and I know that Peter Costello formalised it in 2007, but everybody I've spoken to said, "Well, it's been there forever at $2 million." So it should be indexed, so it's not a problem. It's not going to do any damage by doing this; it's only going to be good things happening. SABRA LANE: On the Budget's centrepiece, a 10-year plan to lower the corporate tax rate from 30 to 25 cents in the dollar, Labor's again opposed, saying it's unaffordable and unfunded. Small business says it's a good idea, and more broadly, that the Coalition's ahead of Labor on policy. ...