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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

This week, the way the government chooses to spend money was put into sharp focus.

On Monday it announced a bold new plan for military spending, but soon after, it found itself besieged by calls to raise the rate of JobSeeker – for Australians struggling with poverty.

So, why can we afford to spend money on one, but not the other? And is that a question that voters will start to ask?

Today, columnist for The Saturday Paper, Chris Wallace, on the question that is turning up the heat on Anthony Albanese ahead of the budget.

It’s Friday, April 28.

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RUBY:

So, Chris, this week the federal government was accused of throwing money at very expensive military upgrades while ignoring the most vulnerable Australians. And that accusation was made by the leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, at the National Press Club. Tell me about what he said.

CHRIS:

Yes, Ruby, Adam Bandt is really hitting a raw nerve for a lot of Labor people, in fact, who are used to hearing their own party address these concerns in the way Adam Bandt did at the Press Club.

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

“But I'm just furious that the Government says that this quarter of a trilliom for stage three tax cuts and $368 billion for nuclear submarines, but they can't commit to lifting single parents and job seekers and people with a disability out of poverty, right?”

CHRIS:

It was a cracking speech. He's basically hitting the Albanese government where it hurts, which is that space between its ability to spend money and what needs to be done. And Bandt very effectively contrasted the Albanese Government's announcement earlier in the week through its Defence strategic review release that it intends to increase Australia's defence spend as a proportion of GDP.

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

The Prime Minister has spent the last three days dressing himself in khaki and talking about tax cuts for the wealthy while people live in poverty. In my electorate there are people living in tents because they can't afford a place to live. I am trying to find houses for pregnant women who are couch surfing.

CHRIS:

Bandt contrasted this with the fate of Australians on the ground who are, you know, on multiple fronts, living in pretty terrible circumstances if they're unemployed or on benefits, for example, the sole parent benefit, which is particularly minimal at the minute. If you're looking for a house to rent, if you are indeed homeless. And these are problems that historically might have affected a relatively small number of people, and they're now affecting an exponentially larger number of people. And Greens leader Adam Bandt has pretty much made himself and his party the vocal champions of, especially renters, but people generally who need government assistance.

Archival tape – Adam Bandt:

And meanwhile the Prime Minister goes and talks about missiles. I want to hear less talk from the Prime Minister about missiles, and more about funding a rent freeze, and lifting people out of poverty.

CHRIS:

And of course, Labor's budget's ahead on Tuesday week, we won't know, in fact, how Labor will address those issues until we see the budget. But meantime, Adam Bandt and the Greens are applying maximum pressure, along with a lot of other people who are traditionally, Labor Party fellow travellers, who are all joining in and saying more's got to be done, more's got to be spent on people's needs in Australia right now, rather than just on missiles for the future.

RUBY:

And Chris, let's go back and unpick exactly how Anthony Albanese found himself facing this criticism, because the Government began this week endorsing this plan to transform Australia's military. So what is that plan about, and what kind of money did the Government commit to it?

CHRIS:

Well, the Defence Strategic Review was commissioned by Defence Minister Richard Marles when the Albanese government was elected.

Archival tape – Richard Marles:

“The defence posture that we have had for the last few decades has served our nation well. But in the circumstances that we now face, that defensive posture is no longer fit for purpose.”

CHRIS:

The Defence strategic review is essentially making the point that anyone who knows anything about defence policy is known for a long time, and that is, under the Coalition, pretty much, our arse has been hanging out naked in the region, increasingly as we've had a really bad defence materiel program not even barely attached to a coherent strategic policy approach.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“It demonstrates that in a world where challenges to our national security are always evolving, we cannot fall back on old assumptions. We must build and strengthen our security by seeking to shape the future rather than waiting for the future to shape us.”

CHRIS:

So Labor's proposed, essentially, to refocus the way the army works, and make it more of a long range impact army rather than, you know, fighting with tanks in the desert, on the ground in Australia, kind of army. Reoriented more in a marines direction, combined with, of course, the notorious nuclear subs purchased through AUKUS and several other elements.

Archival tape – Richard Marles:

“This review, and the Government's response to it, does provide for a reshaping of the Australian Army, but in a way which gives a much greater strike capability, and a much longer range strike capability, but also a much greater ability to operate in a literal environment…”

CHRIS:

Overall, it was a fairly sensible package, probably extremely necessary given how lax the Coalition has been in terms of its defence approach. But the controversial part of it in the context you’re raising Ruby, is that the Defence strategic review announced about $19 billion in extra spending over four years, so it's been contrast with the Government's apparent reluctance to do anything about raising the rate of JobSeeker, of doing something about fixing the sole parent's benefit, and other needs, particularly housing. And of course, this is what Adam Bandt is so effectively zeroing in on politically now.

RUBY:

Yeah, because a few days after that announcement on Wednesday, everything was put into sharp contrast. There was this pretty interesting coalition of people who came together to make the case for raising the rate of JobSeeker, as well as other support payments. So tell me about who it is that's coming together to make this case to the government.

CHRIS:

Yes, Wednesday was kind of the raise the rate festival in Canberra. It was a semi-coordinated action to really draw attention to the fact that JobKeeper is at a ridiculously low level, and does need to be raised.

Archival tape – David Pocock:

“Payments are so inadequate that it's actually preventing people from getting back into the workforce, which is the whole point of the payments. So it is really urgent and the government has an opportunity at this budget to start to address that.”

CHRIS:

At Parliament House, there's a joint press conference between Canberra's independent Senator, David Pocock, Cassandra Goldie, the CEO of ACOSS, Michele O'Neil, the President of the ACTU, of course the teals were there.

Archival tape – David Pocock:

“Should it really take independence to negotiate a deal for a government to look after Australians? It's frankly ridiculous.”

CHRIS:

And fascinatingly, Ruby, six Labor backbenchers have themselves spoken out and called on their own government to raise the rate. Four of them in public by signing a letter, a public letter, that's been signed by other Labor luminaries like former Social Services Minister Jenny Macklin, and Brian Howe, you know, really significant historical Labor figures.

Archival tape – Andrew Clennell:

“The MPs concerned Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Alisha Payne, Louise Miller-Frost from South Australia, and Kate Thwaites. They all signed on to this letter which says, and I quote, 'We urge you to adopt the priority recommendation of the Economic Inclusion Committee, and raise the rate of income support in the budget'."

CHRIS:

And Ruby, particularly significant, was former Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry. You know, you got to understand this guy's super credible in Canberra, particularly in Labor ranks. This was to the Treasury Secretary under Treasurer Wayne Swan during the Rudd Government, which managed to uniquely steer Australia through the global financial crisis without going into recession. Uniquely amongst all industrialised countries. And he wrote in The Guardian on Wednesday that the rate should be increased, that the idea that it would be inflationary was not credible, and that this was something that the Albanese Government just could and should do. So when Ken Henry comes out and says that whatever the official advice going to Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has to be set against that. And you know, it gives the Government more room I think, to defy its own Treasury advisors if it wants to, and just, you know, just do it.

RUBY:

Is that likely to happen? What kind of response would we see from the Treasurer, from Jim Chalmers?

CHRIS:

Well, of course the Government is doing what all governments do in the run up to budgets and that is not disclosing its hand. And that's completely correct, understandable, and politically, as per normal. It's hard to make last minute changes in budgets, particularly big ones, not least because of the fact that at some point they've got to go to the printer. But you'd certainly say that the developing climate is going to make it easier for Jim Chalmers to argue internally that whatever modest increase might have been factored in could in fact go a little bit further. And you just get the feeling that this campaign is not going to stop. So Labor might as well bite the bullet sooner rather than later on it I think.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Chris, if we could go back to this criticism that Adam Bandt made this week, accusing Anthony Albanese of ignoring vulnerable Australians while spending money on defence, how justified do you think the comparison is of those costs? Is this something that we need to have a bigger public debate about, or are those two lines in the budget just too different to compare? Is it not really fair to make that comparison?

CHRIS:

There are two levels on which to respond to that very important question. The first one is, Labor is leaving Adam Bandt and the Greens a very big opportunity by not more full-bloodedly addressing and focusing on the bread and butter issues people are concerned about right now. It's just easy pickings for the Greens to build support on these issues. But the second, and much more important thing, is the substantive response, and that is this whole juxtaposition flows from a false binary that it's, you know, guns or butter. It's not. Underlying all of this is a very big revenue problem in the Australian tax base. Now, the government is not even a year old yet. They have not got themselves into a situation where they can address those longer term revenue issues. But the government came in on a no new taxes promise. So if it's going to raise additional revenue so it can do things like raise the rate properly and deal with the homelessness problem, deal with the rental problem, etc., it's got to have more revenue. And given that promise, it's really got to look to things like getting rid of tax expenditures, that is, subsidies and rebates given to, for example, business, to claw back that extra revenue to help them do that. So Labor will eventually deal with this, I expect, by trying to properly repair the revenue base of the Australian taxation system, so that they can spend more on guns and more on butter. But until then, it's going to get caught in this political squeeze, and it's a matter of time before it addresses it more fundamentally. But you'd have to say after looking at politics this week, it needs to move faster than it has been so far.

RUBY:

And Chris, this political squeeze Labor is in – I suppose the interesting thing is that it doesn’t seem likely to benefit the opposition at all. Because the gap Anthony Albanese has against Peter Dutton in the polls is actually growing, isn’t it Chris? So how unusual is this situation, for the pressure on the government not actually to be coming from the opposition?

CHRIS:

You're absolutely right. Anthony Albanese and his Government are riding high in the polls. Newspoll, that came out Sunday night, showed the Government increasing its two party preferred lead over the Coalition to 56%, compared to the Coalition's 44%. I mean that is a phenomenal lead. I think Anthony Albanese's preferred prime minister rating is nearly double Dutton's. Albanese's net approval rating lead over Dutton has spread to 35 points. It is enormous, and you really just don't know if Dutton — if any opposition leader in fact — could come back from numbers as bad as Dutton has now. And here's the problem, Ruby. There's a vacuum. You know, you expect an opposition to critique government actions and provide constructive alternatives. And pretty much, except for, you know, Dutton on culture war issues like the Voice, where he's extremely active, he's kind of completely vacated the field of policy where people really are concerned that the Albanese government do better. So, you know, this action on Wednesday, pretty much, the Liberal Party and the National Party are not in the public discourse on these key issues. So effectively on Wednesday we saw this kind of de facto opposition develop amongst independents, some Labor people, the leaders of, you know, institutions like ACOSS and the ACTU, effectively providing the kind of counter pressure on policy you'd normally expect and hope for from an opposition. And it's kind of politically mad, because if Peter Dutton ever wants to aspire, in reality, to becoming Prime Minister, he needs to get involved in bread and butter issues like whether people have a roof over their head, whether they can pay their rent, whether they've got enough, you know, in the way of benefits to eat. But instead he's concentrating on the, you know, throwing red meat to the base kind of issues. As a result, the Coalition's polling is disastrous, and they're really not proper plays in the democratic game at the minute. And it's a great pity, because governments perform better when they get pressure from decent and constructive oppositions, and there's just no sign of this opposition even vaguely approaching that kind of mentality.

RUBY:

And Chris, this all sets up some pretty interesting political stakes ahead of the budget. We've got the Albanese Government facing some pressure, some expectations, but I think if they disappoint on that, it's unclear how damaging that actually would be for them. And it certainly seems unlikely that any perceived failures on their behalf will actually benefit Peter Dutton's opposition at this point. So how do you think that the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers will be weighing all of this up as they put together the May Budget?

CHRIS:

Labor's argument will be that it's doing as much as it can consistent with being economically responsible. Now that's a pretty elastic position to be in. You can do a lot more or a lot less within that rhetorical umbrella. But, you know, you've got to question whether dissatisfaction, if it does develop with Labor's approach and shows up in the polls, whether it will go to the Coalition or not, because, Ruby, the way things are developing, Labor is pretty much occupying the centre ground of Australian politics. The Greens are occupying the left and the Coalition is looking more and more like a shrinking and pretty irrelevant right wing rump. We take it for granted that big parties go on forever and ever, but it's just not true. People forget, for example, that while the Labor Party pre-existed Federation, and has existed continuously since Federation. On the right wing side of politics, the Liberal Party is the fifth iteration of the main Conservative party in Australian politics. It's regularly kind of collapsed and reinvented itself. Phoenixed, if you like. And this version of the Liberal Party only dates back to 1945 substantively. And who knows, maybe we're seeing the end run of this particular institutional form of right wing politics in Australia, because they're not very relevant in the way they position themselves to the needs of most Australians. So I think some pressure needs to be applied to Peter Dutton to really lift his and the Coalition's game. Otherwise they’ll just be political bludgers until the next election.

RUBY:

Chris, thank you so much for your time.

CHRIS:

Pleasure.

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RUBY:

Also in the news…
Former US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has been revealed to have taken a lucrative advisory contract with our Department of Defence, along with a dozen other high ranking former US officials.

Documents disclosed by the Pentagon show that Australia pays these officials upwards of seven and a half thousand dollars per day to help shape intelligence and defence policy.

And,

There will be no inquest into the death of the unnamed woman who accused former attorney general Christian Porter of sexual assault - charges Porter strenuously denies.

The woman took her own life in 2020, months after reporting the allegations to New South Wales police.

The coroner said they decided against a full inquest in accordance with the wishes of her family.

7am is a daily show from The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

It’s produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, Zoltan Fecso, Cheyne Anderson, and James Milsom.

Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow. Our editor is Scott Mitchell.

Sarah McVeigh is our head of audio. Erik Jensen is our editor-in-chief.

Mixing by Andy Elston, Travis Evans, and Atticus Bastow.

Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

I’m Ruby Jones, see you next week.

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