SUBJECT: Federal Budget 2021.

PETER STEFANOVIC, HOST: Welcome back to First Edition and our ongoing coverage of Budget 2021. And we are, of course, live here from the front of Parliament House in Canberra. And joining us live now is the Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, and about seven protesters, eight protesters as a matter of fact. Thanks for having the guts to come down here.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Not a problem, Peter.

STEFANOVIC: Scary, isn't it?

ALBANESE: Well, it's not quite as big as March 4 Justice, but the Prime Minister wouldn't come to that either. So there is a pattern.

STEFANOVIC: Okay. Now onto the Budget now. I mean, a big social spending Budget. Aged care, child care as well, a lot of money in for women's services. Has this taken the wind out of your sails? 

ALBANESE: No. Well, what the Government has done is identify the problems of its own creation. They've created the aged care crisis. It was Scott Morrison who ripped $1.7 billion out of aged care. They've been in Government now for eight long years. Child care costs have been going through the roof. We have the fourth highest child care costs in the world. And the Government last year when we had our Cheaper Child Care policy, they said that there wasn't an issue, they dismissed the idea that it would improve workforce participation. And it just shows how not fair dinkum they are that they've produced a plan that will help one in every four families of those that will be helped by Labor's plan. 

STEFANOVIC: But aged care is not just a problem for this Government, it was a problem for when Labor was in Government as well. So doesn't Labor need to take a share of the blame with what's happened with aged care?

ALBANESE: Labor was putting additional money into aged care. The Government changed and Scott Morrison ripped $1.7 billion out of it. He's presided over a lowering of wages. He's presided over a Royal Commission, which in 2019 brought down an interim report that was titled 'Neglect'. And nothing's happened until this Budget in 2021. And in this plan, he still hasn't responded appropriately to the Royal Commission, which said that there needed to be a nurse present at all times. And that's something you'd expect. You want the nurses to be in nursing homes.

STEFANOVIC: Is this level of spending appropriate? 

ALBANESE: Well, it's a matter of the quality of the spend is what worries me, Peter. Debt will peak in 2025 at 41 per cent of GDP. This Government inherited 15 per cent. They've thrown another $100 billion of new spending, some of which they're not telling us about. There is $3.8 billion in the next financial year in a slush fund, just one of them, and they have 21 different pots of money to splurge during the election campaign for political purposes. And we know there was Sports Rorts and Community Safety Rorts and paying for land deals in Western Sydney, paying $30 million for a block of land that was worth $3 million. We know that they don't value taxpayers' money.  

STEFANOVIC: But the economy overall is in pretty good shape. So doesn't that suggest that the spending which has been put in place was the right move, was the right call?

ALBANESE: Well, during a downturn you have to invest. But they're not investing in the economy. They're investing in their own political fortunes in the short-term. What the Budget indicates, for example, is that there will be a further decline in real wages. We've seen no wages growth over the last eight years that they've been in Government. Now, the pandemic didn't occur eight years ago. They've presided over people really doing it tough. Costs of everything going up, except people's wages not matching it. And I noticed the Prime Minister talking about infrastructure. They make this big $10 billion announcement but $3.3 billion has been cut from the infrastructure budget over the next four years. So it's all smirk and mirrors from this Prime Minister. He says there'll be more money. When you look at the detail in the short-term, there's less. The only thing they provide money for is things that they think are in their political interest to either neutralise issues or for pork barrelling in the lead-up to an election.

STEFANOVIC: The debt, it is at astronomical levels. But the Government does say it's sustainable, talking about a trillion dollars now. But wouldn't it be higher if Labor was in power? Because, for instance, you wanted to keep JobKeeper going.

ALBANESE: No. What we argued for was targeted spending. And there are whole sectors like tourism and the international education sector that are really doing it tough. The fact is that this Government argued against JobKeeper in the beginning. Scott Morrison described wage subsidies as being dangerous. We make no apologies for the fact that we argued for it. We have been constructive during the pandemic, put forward constructive ideas.

STEFANOVIC: How would you pay off this bill?

ALBANESE: Well, for a start, one of the things that we would do is to deal with the pandemic by fixing vaccinations, the rollout that that they've bungled completely.

STEFANOVIC: They are speeding up, though.

ALBANESE: Speeding up? Peter, they said there'd be four million vaccinated by March. They set these targets. They haven't fixed up quarantine yet. There's nothing in the Budget for fixing quarantine. There's no plan for dealing with that. And they have been critical of state governments when state borders have closed. They've closed their national border until mid-2022 is what they expect, until they get through an election campaign. This is all about politics. And when you look at last year's Budget, of course, you have to look at what they say and then what they deliver and the gap that is there. Last year, they said JobMaker was the centrepiece of the Budget, it would produce 450,000 jobs. It produced just 1000. 

STEFANOVIC: Okay, so if you win the next election, will you raise taxes to pay that bill?

ALBANESE: Look, they're the ones that are dealing with a tax system whereby, I notice Scott Morrison spoke about tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners, they haven't done that at all. What they've done is not implement a tax increase. They've put that off by one year, that refund. But that will happen, of course, just one year later, that tax increase that’s scheduled under this Budget for low- and middle-income earners.

STEFANOVIC: Will you raise taxes, though? Is that something that you're going to have to do? Because the bills are going to have to be paid? 

ALBANESE: We will make all of our revenue and our expenditure announcements at an appropriate time. The Budget was only handed down last night. But I'll say this, we will have a quality of spending, we won't be splashing money around in slush funds like they have, we won't be paying $30 million for a block of land that's worth $3 million dollars, we won't be spending a billion dollars on government advertising, promoting ourselves like this Government have, we won't be spending the billions and billions of dollars that have been spent on consultants. We will value taxpayers' dollars, because we know that you can't just continue to have this Government's approach of being all about short-term political management. You do have to have a plan to grow the economy. Where in this Government's Budget is a plan to take advantage of the opportunities that are there of shifting to a clean energy economy? Last night, they couldn't even get there to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, a pretty fundamental commitment that the rest of the world has adopted. 

STEFANOVIC: Do you support the stage three tax cuts? 

ALBANESE: Look, we'll examine it.

STEFANOVIC: You've had a while to examine it, though.

ALBANESE: Well, we'll examine at the appropriate time. We were quite right when the legislation went through. Remember what we said, Peter, and remember what they said. They said, 'We know everything's going fine, the Budget will be back in black, we can do this'. What we said was that it was a triumph of hope over experience to say you knew what the economy would look like in 2024 in 2019. We were right then to be cautious and to say that it just wasn't prudent to put in place, five years down the track, these permanent tax cuts for the higher income earner bracket. 

STEFANOVIC: You come from public housing, is there going to be anything in your Budget Reply about public housing? Is that something that you're going to be taking to the next election as well?

ALBANESE: Well, one of the things that economists have said is that if you're looking at an economic downturn, a really smart way to invest is in social housing, whether it be maintenance or new social housing. And I think that, in terms of my view of the world, what I want to do is to make sure that any spending leaves a lasting legacy. And that's my problem with this Government's approach. There's no lasting legacy on infrastructure. Can you think of one big project that they've advanced during this pandemic in the last two budgets? There has been nothing.

STEFANOVIC: Just finally on borders, you brought that up before, the fact that international borders are not going to open up in a significant way until the middle of next year. When would you like to see borders open? Do you think that's fair enough, or would you like for it to go beyond that?

ALBANESE: Well, they bungled the vaccination rollout and they've bungled quarantine. Why don't they fix quarantine? You've had Howard Springs, that they say is an appropriate facility, and it is. It's been half empty since last year for most of the time. They took such a long time.

STEFANOVIC: But as for borders, when would you like to see the borders open?

ALBANESE: But that's what you need to fix. You need to be able to open borders safely. This Government needs to get its act together on vaccinations, on the rollout. We've said we'll use our National Reconstruction Fund to support the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines, for example. That's an example, our National Reconstruction Fund, of how we need to build back better. Not just aimed to get back to where we were before, but with higher debt. That's the problem with this Government. They want to just return to what was there before, but with a much higher debt burden.

STEFANOVIC: Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, appreciate your time as always.

ALBANESE: Thanks, Peter.

STEFANOVIC: Good to chat. Talk to you soon.

ENDS