Treasurer says to brace for cost-of-living impact of floods
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is speaking in Canberra. He begins by thanking those who have been helping flood efforts around the country.
This is a human tragedy first and foremost, but it has obvious consequences as well for the economy and for the budget. I think we need to brace ourselves for the impact of these natural disasters on the cost of living, we’re talking here about some of the best growing and producing country in Australia, and it has been seriously impacted whether it’s the destruction of crops or the inability to access some of this farmland, whether it’s livestock, and other consequences.
Australians do need to brace for a cost-of-living impact from these floods. These are likely to push up the cost of living when Australians are already under the pump. It will have obvious consequences for the budget. We’ll be there for Australians in the usual way. I had a good conversation with Murray Watt about that this morning and no doubt more conversations about that, and with states and territories as well. As we get our heads around the scale, the magnitude and the destruction brought by these natural disasters.
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Albanese urges Australians to follow the advice being given by authorities:
Too many people are not accepting the advice when they’re told to evacuate, they’re saying, no, we’ll be right, what that results in is them having to be rescued, with much greater resources and much greater risk, not just for themselves but the emergency service personnel who are providing that support on the ground.
Yesterday when I was in the chopper over Rochester, with the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, we watched with just – just incredulous two cars going through what was clearly a flooded road up to the window level. That makes no sense. Do not take a risk. If it’s flooded, forget it. As simple as that.
And please, for your own sake, for the sake of your family and friends, it’s just not worth the risk. Because you don’t know, it might look OK, it might look as though the waters are only a metre deep. But, you don’t know if the road has just disappeared under where you can’t see. And those risks simply aren’t worth it.
‘We’re living in very dangerous times’: PM
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has begun to speak in Forbes, where thousands have been affected by flooding.
He says the government is prepared to provider “whatever support is requested” from state and local government.
This community of course has been heavily impacted by this event. Not just in terms of people having flooding of their houses, but also the ongoing impact that it will have. It will have an impact on infrastructure including local roads, it will have an impact as well on the farming community. This is a great agricultural region.
One of the tragedies confirmed yesterday when I was in Victoria is that we’re expecting bumper crops. And many of those have been devastated and ruined by the flooding event we’re seeing.
I do want to say we’re living in very dangerous times in the days and weeks ahead. What we have is a potential of further rain events here in western New South Wales, further rain events in Victoria, and in Tasmania. All of them combining and having an impact. Because you essentially have a single drop of rain has nowhere else to go but stay on the surface because of the flooding that has occurred over a period of time.
And that’s why my government stands ready to provide whatever support is requested in cooperation with state and local government and in co-operation with local communities as well. To build resilience and to build support. I do want to also, though, to give people a reminder, to follow the advice that comes from the experts.
Budget will contain flood recovery provisions, treasurer says
A reporter asks Chalmers, “will the government be budgeting money for flood recovery from the current disasters in the budget or will it have to wait until later?”
When it comes to the cost of the floods, part of the commitments are automatic. And part of them are discretionary. We’ll obviously have conversations with Murray Watt, the prime minister, myself, finance minister, and others, to make sure that we are there for people as they rebuild from yet another round of natural disasters.
There will be an element of that in the budget. We’ll make sensible provisions where we can. We’re in the process of putting the finishing touches on the budget this week. We’re in the process of putting the finishing touches on the budget this week, to the extent we were incorporate events as they unfold, we’ll try our best to do that.
More to be done to tackle rorts which ‘thieved’ from people who need it most, treasurer says
Chalmers is asked about the revelations that Medicare rorts cost the government $8bn a year. Will this be addressed as part of the government’s waste and rorts audit?
If these numbers are true, it’s absolutely atrocious. Every dollar rorted, whether it’s Medicare or the NDIS, is a dollar thieved from people who need and deserve good healthcare. And so, the health minister will have more to say about this.
Bill Shorten has been talking about this in the context of the NDIS as well. We do need to do more work here. To make sure that our defences against people who want to rort and thieve from government programs a cracked down on. We’ll do that work.
Very concerning reports, very troubling revelations. And something that we will get to the bottom of, because we don’t want to see a single dollar rorted or thieved from the system when it could go to helping people who are vulnerable, help them with their healthcare or their care.
Aim of budget is to make Australia more resilient, treasurer says
Reporters ask Chalmers about whether he’s changed his mind about Australia being able to avoid a recession, as he said before he left for the US. Does he still believe that?
It’s our hope that Australia can avoid a recession. We have low unemployment, we’ve got relatively solid growth, relatively solid demand. We’ve got a good prices for people – that people are paying for our commodities around the world with a positive impact of that on the budget. But we won’t be completely spared another global downturn. So the job of this budget is to make sure that the budget and the economy is as resilient as it can be. Australians are paying a really hefty price for this wasted decade which has given us stagnant wages and skills shortages and chaos in energy markets and a crisis in aged care and made us more vulnerable to these global shocks than we should be. So the budget begins the hard task of making us more resilient.
Budget will have ‘responsible cost-of-living relief’, treasurer says
Chalmers moves onto the budget, and he’s reminding Australians the background against which he’s releasing the budget is pretty dire.
It’s also a reminder of the backdrop for this budget, which I will hand down in this building in eight days’ time. High and rising inflation, a consequence now of natural disasters, but also of global factors, the war in Ukraine, issues with our own supply chains here at home, secondly, the persistent structural spending pressures we have spoken about quite a lot, including skyrocketing borrowing costs on the debt we inherited in the budget, and thirdly, of course, the deteriorating global economy.
He speaks about his recent trip to the US where he participated in high level talks with other global leaders about the global economic outlook.
I just got back yesterday, early yesterday morning, from Washington DC, after really valuable opportunity to meet with my counterparts from the US, the UK, Canada, India, Korea, New Zealand, and Ukraine. The council of economic advisors to President Biden, BHP Paribas, JP Morgan, the head of the IMF and European central bank as well. The key take-out is the world is tip toeing a narrowing and more perilous path when it comes to the prospect of another global down turn.
That’s why the budget next week will downgrade the forecast for growth in our majoring trading partners. The US already had two negative quarters and treasury has downgraded the forecast for next year from 2.25% to 1% in the US. It’s likely the UK is in recession already. Euro down graded from 2.25 to 0.5% and China has slowed considerably as well. Our best defences around uncertainty around the world is a responsible budget at home. And that’s what I’ll be happening down next week.
It will be focused on responsibility cost-of-living relief with an economic dividend, it will have targeted investments in a stronger and more resilient economy, and it will be beginning to unwind the legacy of wasteful spending which has given us a trillion dollars of debt and deficits as far as the eye can see. It will be a sensible solid budget and suited to the difficult times that we confront.
Treasurer says to brace for cost-of-living impact of floods
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is speaking in Canberra. He begins by thanking those who have been helping flood efforts around the country.
This is a human tragedy first and foremost, but it has obvious consequences as well for the economy and for the budget. I think we need to brace ourselves for the impact of these natural disasters on the cost of living, we’re talking here about some of the best growing and producing country in Australia, and it has been seriously impacted whether it’s the destruction of crops or the inability to access some of this farmland, whether it’s livestock, and other consequences.
Australians do need to brace for a cost-of-living impact from these floods. These are likely to push up the cost of living when Australians are already under the pump. It will have obvious consequences for the budget. We’ll be there for Australians in the usual way. I had a good conversation with Murray Watt about that this morning and no doubt more conversations about that, and with states and territories as well. As we get our heads around the scale, the magnitude and the destruction brought by these natural disasters.
Josh Butler
Floods will have inflationary impact on budget, Albanese says
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has conceded the devastating floods swamping much of the eastern seaboard will lead to food prices spiking and have an “inflationary impact” on the federal budget.
Albanese warned of a “very difficult period ahead” for parts of Victoria, and noted that flood waters would eventually make their way down river to parts of South Australia in coming weeks:
More rain is expected later this week … Shepparton and Echuca face difficult days ahead.
The PM is in Forbes, in central New South Wales, to survey damage there. In an ABC Melbourne radio interview this morning, he thanked volunteers and those working on the emergency response, and said he would be meeting the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, today. Albanese said the federal government was working with the NSW, Victorian and Tasmanian governments to respond to their emergency needs:
The scale of this is enormous and it requires a commensurate response from governments.
The agriculture minister, Murray Watt, had earlier flagged more support coming for farmers who had lost crops or livestock, and warned this may have an effect on grocery prices. Neither Watt nor Albanese immediately confirmed what help for producers would come, or when but the PM admitted consumers would feel a hit. He told ABC:
Tragically there had been such a good harvest anticipated in wheat, fruit and vegetables, so many products … areas like poultry will be affected as well.
We have to work with farmers and the sector, they have done it tough in recent years and we’re very hopeful but there’s no doubt there will be an impact on this and the impact will feed into higher prices, most unfortunately at a time when inflation has already been rising.
Just a week out from the federal budget, Albanese said rising costs and vital government assistance would have an impact on the economy:
There’s no doubt this will have an inflationary impact as well as another hit to the budget but these are costs that are necessary in order to provide support for people.
Family violence a national disgrace, social services minister says
The government has today released its national plan to end family, domestic and sexual violence in one generation. Minister for social services Amanda Rishworth spoke to the ABC’s Nour Haydar:
Violence against women and children including sexual violence is just not acceptable and so our commitment is to say that we don’t want our children and our children’s children to be dealing with the same issues.
So while I’m not going to give a specific number of years, it is a clear commitment that we need it to end to draw a line in the sand and really have a very clear goal on what we’re working towards.
How does Rishworth define a generation?
The national plan is a 10-year plan, obviously what that indicates is we will need sustained effort after this national plan. It is one of states and territories as well as the whole of society, the whole of community, so we want to be driving change. But I think the key message here is we don’t want our children and our children’s children to be still dealing with this in the future.
The previous national plan (in place for 12 years) failed to achieve its key goal of reducing violence against women and children. What will this plan do differently?
Well, look, this plan, I think, has a lot of learnings from the first plan. It builds on some of the positive things that occurred as a result of the first plan. But it also looks at how we need to do things differently. Importantly, it provides a blueprint for states and territories, the commonwealth, but also wider society on how we pull together and work in the same direction.
The level of violence that still exists in Australia and the impact that is has on women, children and their families is a national disgrace and we commit to taking action.
— Amanda Rishworth MP (@AmandaRishworth) October 16, 2022
The Commonwealth, states and territories – along with victim-survivors, experts, frontline services and other stakeholders – contributed to the plan and committed to realise a nation where all people feel safe.
— Amanda Rishworth MP (@AmandaRishworth) October 16, 2022
Albanese arrives in Parkes
Prime minister Anthony Albanese has arrived in central western NSW where he will be visiting the town of Forbes, where thousands of residents have been affected by flooding. Some were evacuated before the Lachlan River peaked on Friday night and parts of the central business district are still inundated.
Caitlin Cassidy
ADF in Shepparton as city prepares for flooding
Shepparton residents bracing for the Goulburn River to swell to 12.2 metres early this morning woke to some minor good news.
The river had swelled just shy of expectations, sitting at 12.05m and steady at 8am, with the possibility of reaching 12.1m later in the morning.
Of concern were properties around Shepparton’s Victoria Park Lake, nearby Kialla and parts of Shepparton North, where flood waters were already pooling yesterday afternoon and had shut off major roads.
The Victoria State Emergency Service said more than 7,300 homes and businesses in the Shepparton area could be affected by the rising waters, with inundation possible in about 2,500 of those.
Yesterday evening hundreds of volunteers joined ADF staff at the city’s showgrounds, shovelling sand and distributing sandbags for long lines of cars. Women changed children’s nappies at the nearby evacuation centre, where dozens sheltered in lines of tents or inside the hall.
The ADF, who arrived in droves on yesterday, were stationed in the showground’s animal pavilion. A volunteer said:
It probably still smells like cow shit.
Food supply and prices will be affected, minister says
Many of the regions being affected by flooding, including Shepparton, are big areas for agricultural production.
Murray Watt, who is also the agriculture minister, says crops being wiped out and power going down, taking out big refrigeration plants, will be “an enormous issue”:
Whether we’re talking about northern Victoria, or western New South Wales, where I was last week, and I’ll be visiting again with the prime minister today, these are some of our key agricultural districts right across the country.
I met farmers in the last couple of days who were getting very close to bringing in bumper crops of canola, and other crops like that. There’s dairy farmers who have been affected and have been having trouble milking their cows. There’s massive impacts there.
We’re starting to work through what sort of support will be needed to assist those farmers. But I think we’ve seen already in the floods we had in Queensland and New South Wales earlier in the year, that can have very dramatic effects on food supply and prices. This will be a serious longer-term consequence of these floods.
