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Delivering Tax Cuts, Not Taxes

This session is with Treasury’s Fiscal Group, the division tasked with delivering federal budgets, analysing fiscal policy, and ensuring efficient public spending. The group’s core duties span three main areas: budget production, managing financial arrangements and payments between the Commonwealth and States and Territories, and providing spending advice.

In this advisory role, the group guides portfolio ministers on government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas, including health, education, labour markets, infrastructure, and defence.

Coming from a business background, I always look for ways to streamline and reduce major costs, especially while everyday Australians are facing a cost-of-living crisis. With that in mind, I asked for a complete accounting of the Albanese Labor Government’s net zero policies and measures, including departmental costs, grants, co-investments, spending to date, projections across forward estimates, and contingent or “off-the-books” liabilities (which reports suggest could reach a trillion dollars).

Mr White noted this was a massive query not fully covered by Budget Paper No. 1, so I asked Treasury to take it on notice.

I also asked for the costs since 1 July 2022 (plus forward estimates) of federal agencies or departments duplicating services where constitutional authority rests with the states, particularly in areas like health, education and the environment.

Despite concerns raised by Treasury and Minister Gallagher regarding the scope of the requests and the distinction between federal and state roles, I reiterated that reducing government waste is vital. Given the cost-of-living pressure on Australian households, the focus should be on delivering tax cuts and cutting expenditure rather than raising taxes.

In business, identifying and then cutting unnecessary duplication is a huge opportunity to reduce spending and ease the burden on taxpayers.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here tonight. I asked these questions of the previous group, the Markets Group, and they recommended that I ask you. Could I just check, please, because it seems like you’re perfect for it, that the Fiscal Group is a core division within the Australian Treasury responsible for delivering government budgets, analysing fiscal policy and ensuring efficient public spending.  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: It works to achieve sound fiscal outcomes through structural policy advice, coordinating the federal budget and managing financial transfers to states and territories—correct?  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: Key responsibilities—three of them—are budget production; Commonwealth-state relations, managing the timely and accurate payments and financial arrangements between the federal government and the states and territories; and spending advice. It advises portfolio ministers on whole-of-economy government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas like health, education, labour market, infrastructure and defence—correct?  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m used to being in business—companies, small business and large corporations— where we look at our costs, especially our bigger costs, and try to work out ways to improve them, so that’s what I’d like to ask you about. There are two big costs. Could you tell me, please, what are the full costs across the breadth of the Albanese Labor government of net zero measures, net zero policies, including departmental costs, co-investments and grants. Also include a figure for contingent liabilities, including off-the-books matters, which I’ve seen referenced in mainstream media as potentially a trillion-dollar liability. Could you please include spending to date as well as projections across forward estimates. Are you the people?  

Mr White: That’s a very large question.  

Senator ROBERTS: It is a very large cost, in fact.  

Mr White: We don’t have that in front of us. Budget Paper No. 1, page 121, has an appendix B that goes to this, but not in the way you’re asking the question. It has some information about net zero transformation and net zero spending measures, but they’re really new measures, not the whole of the government. Answering that question would take quite some time.  

Senator ROBERTS: Could you take it on notice?  

Mr White: We can.  

Ms P Brown: I might just point you towards paragraph 1 on page 124, which provides similar information that is there for this budget but gives the figures in previous budgets, so you can look at those numbers and see the impact over time.  

Mr White: Yes. If we took it on notice, we’d have to work out what we can do. It might not be an easy thing to pull together in that way, but we could look.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Take it on notice. Second, you’re involved in allocating money to the states. Could you please provide the costs since 1 July 2022 of any Commonwealth department or agency which duplicates agencies existing in the territories and the states and for which the constitutional mandate for that power vests with the states, not the Commonwealth. Could you please include data through forward estimates.  

Mr White: That’s possibly an even bigger question than the first one.  

Ms P Brown: I don’t know how we would do it.  

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a huge opportunity.  

Ms P Brown: What are you specifically after? Is it whether there are similar functions being done at the Commonwealth level as at the state level?  

Senator ROBERTS: The states have responsibility for certain services, and the Commonwealth is duplicating them.  

Mr White: Yes, it’s an interesting question. Essentially, ever since Federation started, there have been certain things where Commonwealth and state governments have done things in similar areas, and we have a lot of that now. We have a whole budget paper, Budget Paper No. 3, federal financial relations, which has $200 billion a year we give to the states. The question of duplication versus cooperation and doing things in different areas for the same sorts of things is an interesting question. Is us giving money to the states to run hospitals duplication or not is kind of a tricky question.  

Senator ROBERTS: I don’t think giving money to the states as part of grants and things like that is a duplication. It’s where you’re doing the same services. It seems to be rife in health, education, environment.  

Senator Gallagher: We have slightly different responsibilities, though. In health, states primarily run the hospital system, but we have responsibility in primary care—GPs, Medicare, aged care, those kinds of things. In education it’s more universities, early education and care; states have public schools. So there are differences. I’m just not sure how we would provide an answer to that on notice in a way that would not take a lot of effort.  

Senator ROBERTS: Well, how much is a lot of effort compared to the benefits once we work them out? Australians are in a cost-of-living crisis. The government’s increasing taxes, so why not look at cutting the need for taxes?  

Senator Gallagher: We’re cutting taxes as well. There’s tax reform, which includes tax cuts. But fundamentally, we probably have a disagreement that the Commonwealth duplicates functions of the states. I think the Federation and its roles and responsibilities are pretty well understood, and the architecture of the Commonwealth Public Service reflects that, just as the states’ reflect theirs.  

Senator ROBERTS: I think it’s a huge opportunity to at least have a look at it and investigate it.  

Senator Gallagher: We’re always looking at ways to streamline. We genuinely are. We have no appetite to be in places that the Commonwealth shouldn’t be involved because we have enough in the areas of our responsibility. But I’ll see if there is anything useful that Treasury can provide.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. 

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The Creeping Threat of Socialism

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The Albanese government’s reckless May budget is an anchor on our economy, overtaxing productive Australians to fund a woke, bloated public sector and wasteful infrastructure like Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop.

Slapping new taxes on small scale investors, such as Crypto, punishing business owners and fuelling inflation through overspending is stifling wealth creation, driving record small business bankruptcies and pricing young Australians out of the housing market.

To fix this mess, One Nation will rebuild Australia’s real productivity through a clear, common-sense model:

➤ Invest $30 billion annually, backed heavily by eager private finance, into cheap, reliable Australian energy, high-speed regional rail, roads, ports, and fuel security.

➤ Slash petty red tape alongside UN-driven green and blue tape to restore the freedom to take risks and keep what you earn.

➤ Respect private enterprise to generate real, non-taxpayer-funded jobs, while expanding funding to the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal to protect worker rights and maintain fair competition.

One Nation will build real wealth and opportunity for every business and worker across Australia.

Polls confirm what we already know: working Australians trust One Nation to deliver.

Transcript

Taxation is an anchor on productivity growth, reducing wealth creation for all Australians. The Treasurer has produced a budget that overtaxes and undersupports productivity. The social alliance—the Labor Party, the Greens and teals—have never seen a dollar they don’t think belongs to the government to finance their woke UN social agenda. The Treasurer learnt, from the weight of public opinion, that his new capital gains tax threatened future productivity within the business sector and the investment market. He fails to understand that when you take too much of people’s wealth, they stop creating new wealth. 

One example is young people using small-dollar investments in things like crypto to grow their home deposit faster and get into the housing market before they get too old to pay off a 30-year loan, which is what most young people said they intend to do with their capital gains. Because of these new taxes, young people will purchase fewer homes. It’s one example of stifling economic growth in favour of short-term tax grabs. 

The government has disincentivised productive risk-takers: investors. Business owners are punished, and overtaxed workers are conditioned to blame their employers for economic hardship. This sets workers against workers—more division from a divisive government. Instead, the true culprit is government’s acute failure to contain inflation and tighten its own belt. In fact, the Treasurer is still spending money he doesn’t have on things this country does not need, such as $3.8 billion for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop—billions that, like the billions before, will disappear into the pockets of organised crime and eventually produce a railway from nowhere to nowhere that nobody wants, and, according to Victoria’s Parliamentary Budget Office, will cost over $200 billion. That cost is in addition to the fraud and corruption in Big Build projects. The Commonwealth government is just getting started shovelling money into the Allan government’s black hole. 

Meanwhile, businesses are collapsing at record rates, and small business bankruptcies are at record levels. The public sector is bloating; two thirds of full-time equivalent jobs that the Albanese government conjured since 2022 are taxpayer funded through some arm of government, notably the NDIS. For years I’ve said that for every job created in solar and wind—so-called renewables—two jobs are lost in the productive economy. Data now verifies this. That’s not sustainable. No wonder the government refused to support my motion to implement indexation of tax brackets to stop bracket creep. This government needs higher taxes to pay for this level of public service growth. Private enterprise can no longer provide the jobs needed to grow the economy and create new wealth for our huge number of new arrivals. 

At some point, this Ponzi scheme will come crashing down and a One Nation government will have to clean up the mess. This is how we’ll do it. Real productivity comes from cheap, reliable, Australian sourced energy. It’s good roads connecting regions with cities. It’s high-speed rail lines and Australian controlled ports. It’s fuel refineries guaranteeing supply when the world is in crisis. It’s a competitive construction industry. It’s cutting petty, unnecessary red tape, and green and blue tape from the UN and foreign agencies. It’s high-speed, reliable internet everywhere, including along highways and in regional areas. It’s the freedom to take risks and earn a reward. It’s a reliable nation of stable economic rules to encourage investment. This will be life under a One Nation government; real, breadwinner jobs and the freedom to keep more of your own money to enjoy life. 

Our policies detail how One Nation will invest $30 billion a year in Australia’s infrastructure to drive productivity and increase wealth for everyday Australians without having to work harder. Everyday Australians are working hard enough. Polls show One Nation is the most popular party amongst working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us. A lot of this infrastructure is private finance, not taxpayers. In working with companies promoting new infrastructure projects, I’m amazed to see how much finance is available for these projects. Merchant banks and investors are jack of so-called solar and wind renewables. They want bricks and mortar investments again. We’ll give it to them. 

One Nation knows private sector productivity requires placing trust and respect in businesses, freeing them of unnecessary cost burdens to hire staff, reward the hardest workers and voluntarily pay above the minimum wage. To ensure this does not turn into a corporate free-for-all, we have a system of industrial relations tribunals and competition protections. Our policy is to grow the economy, to create wealth and opportunity for all—businesses and workers. This is why our policy is to expand funding for the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal, to protect workers rights. Polls show, as I said, One Nation is the most popular party among working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us. 

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Budget Reply: One Nation’s Blueprint to Put Australians First

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In our Budget Reply, we had so much to say about saving this country that Senator Hanson ran out of time to deliver it all.

One Nation is offering a fundamentally different direction for Australia — one rooted in proven, common-sense economic principles.

➡️ Cheap, Reliable Energy: Ditching the “green” agenda to invest in coal and nuclear.

➡️ Real Wealth: Backing the local industries that actually build this nation.

➡️ Lower Taxes: Putting money back into the pockets of hard-working Australian families.

➡️Less Bureaucracy: Listening to engineers and physicists, not climate bureaucrats.

Transcript

For all the talk about this budget, many issues are all too familiar. Revenue is up from $773 billion to $815 billion. Expenses are up from $812 billion to $833 billion. Gross interest payments are at $27 billion, rising to $40 billion over the forward estimates. Budget deficits are forecast to balloon by another $100 billion over the next four years. Interest-bearing debt will climb another $300 billion to $1.3 trillion. Businesses are collapsing at record rates—almost 50,000 insolvencies since Labor took office. Productivity is stuck at six-decade lows. Eight out of 10 new jobs are now created by government because the private sector has become so disillusioned. Business confidence and domestic investment have fallen to 1990s recession lows. Our inflation remains the highest in the developed world.

Australian families have endured 15 interest rate hikes, pushing more than one million households into extreme mortgage stress. GDP per capita has fallen in 10 of the last 13 quarters, and 337,000 households can no longer pay their energy bills—double the level of five years ago—as power prices continue to surge.

Labor will introduce the working Australians tax offset. It’s less than $5 a week in relief and doesn’t kick in until next year, an election year. The government wants you to be grateful for 68c a day off your tax. That tax offset will be completely rubbed out by bracket creep. Bracket creep means working Australians will pay more in tax because of inflation. The government profits from higher inflation. It’s a stealth tax, a trap for the next election and an advertising slogan for 2028. They used the same trap in their election advertising in 2022. If anyone dares to refuse passing a useless, less than $5 tax cut, they will be accused of not supporting tax cuts. While Australians will receive just $2.6 billion back in the one-off WATO, they’ll pay tens of billions more in taxes because of bracket creep.

One Nation tried to end bracket creep by indexing income tax thresholds to inflation, ending the stealthy tax increases. Labor, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens refused to support it. Instead of the measly $250, ending bracket creep would put thousands of dollars a year back in working Australians’ pockets. We don’t need Labor to protect Australians; we need to protect Australians from Labor.

The tax changes in this budget, including on discretionary trusts, will suppress investor appetite and speculative capital, forcing these businesses to set up in jurisdictions with no impediments. Capital will always, always follow to where it is most loved.

This budget reveals a political culture that relies evermore heavily on centralised bureaucracy, dependency on the state and short-term intervention. That is the Labor way. Forget the spin about intergenerational equity; it’s being used as an excuse to break election promises. True equity does not punish those who worked hard, took risks, built businesses and paid their taxes. It does not resent aspiration or success. Real intergenerational equity means giving young Australians the same opportunities their parents had—the chance to own a home, raise a family, start a business and get ahead through hard work. Young people are not struggling because older generations succeeded. They are falling behind because governments have chosen subsidies and wealth redistribution over allowing free enterprise to flourish.

On the forward estimates, our total liabilities will exceed $1.9 trillion—a burden to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. That is not equity. That is hypocrisy. Changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax will further dampen economic activity, push rents higher and reduce housing supply. As a self-proclaimed scholar of Paul Keating, the Treasurer might have reflected on what happened in 1985 when these same policies were tried and had to be reversed two years later.

Housing is a national crisis only since Labor took office, and I say ‘crisis’. More than 40 per cent of the cost of building a new home is government taxes and unnecessary compliance costs. One Nation will take a different approach. We will slash the GST to zero on building materials for homes up to a value of $1 million for the next five years. Rapid population growth without matching supply is a recipe for declining living standards. This is not about blaming migrants. It’s about recognising limits. But this government has no interest in reducing migration, for all the talk. It expects to increase visa application fees from $4.7 billion today to $7.1 billion by 2029-30. Elevated migration is a money spinner. Canada cut migration sharply from 2024 and has now enjoyed 18 straight months of falling rents and easing house prices, something we have strongly advocated for.

We will introduce income splitting for every family with at least one dependent child. A single earner on $120,000 with a stay-at-home partner would be around $9½ thousand a year better off. We will exempt insurance from the GST, and we urge the states to drop stamp duty on it as well. Affordable insurance ultimately reduces burdens on taxpayers. We will allow aged pensioners and veterans to work as much as they want without losing any of their pensions or health card benefits.

For more than a decade, One Nation has consistently argued that Australia must strengthen domestic resilience, including strategic fuel reserves, reliable energy systems, food and water security, and sovereign industrial capabilities supported by true nation-building infrastructure. The current liquid fuel crisis has not only exposed our domestic unpreparedness but signalled to adversaries how vulnerable we would be in a conflict. Building a strategic reserve is a step in the right direction, but it is still not enough to build resilience and liquid fuel independence. The total cost of not having sufficient supplies will always outweigh the net cost of having them in a crisis.

One Nation will cut the red, green and black tape that is strangling projects and fast-track major approvals, especially energy, to a maximum of six months. We will ditch net zero, exit the Paris Agreement and axe the climate change department, saving $30 billion in the process. We will back coal and gas and support bringing nuclear power to bring down prices, restore reliability and guarantee national energy security. Next week, I will introduce a bold new gas policy that underwrites our vast sovereign resource assets for decades to come. It will provide real equity investment and genuine skin in the game, where our healthy dividend will help pay down the debt racked up by successive governments.

We have listened extensively, and we will work with industry, not against it, in genuine partnership. We will bring back our mining and resources industries, the bedrock that funds schools, hospitals, roads and defence. A strong nation leverages its natural advantages. It does not demonise them. One Nation will swiftly move to get rid of impediments in an increasingly competitive global environment and restore our status as a nation that rolls out the red carpet in resources rather than roll it up. We are backing the Capricorn steel project, to connect coal in Queensland’s Bowen Basin to iron ore in Western Australia’s Pilbara region with a rail line that will open northern Australia to development. The project is strongly backed by Australian investors and is aimed at making Australia a major global supplier of high-quality steel. It will require the Inland Rail project, now abandoned by Labor, to be completed and extended to the more suitable Port of Gladstone, in Queensland. It will be the foundation for a national rail circuit that effectively circumnavigates the Australian continent, providing freight efficiencies and improved defence logistics. These are no longer abstract debates. They are national security imperatives.

In agriculture, we will ban the further sale of controlling interests in freehold farmland to foreign investors and limit the sale of leasehold farmland to a maximum of 25 years. We will ban foreign ownership of water and return balance to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. One Nation strongly supports the modern hybrid Bradfield scheme to improve water security, open new areas to farming and improve food security and exports. We will build new dams and water infrastructure, reintroduce drought payments and re-establish a federal government backed rural lending fund to protect farmers through other natural disasters.

Importantly, we will restore accountability. Australians work hard for their money, and they deserve a government that shows the same discipline. Successive governments have failed to tackle a culture where people in charge of creating multiple white elephants pay no price for their commercial illiteracy. Snowy 2.0, which has blown out 21 times—to $42 billion—is but one egregious example. One Nation will ensure past, present and emerging failures will no longer be transaction free for those responsible.

We will abolish divisive cultural departments and race based programs that divide Australians by skin colour or ancestry. Every Australian will be treated as equal under one flag and one culture. Help will be given on the basis of genuine need, not race. No more special privileges—equal rights for all, and special rights for none. There will be no more taxpayer-funded welcome to country rituals. Unity builds strength; division destroys it.

Our Defence Force must focus on operational readiness, capability and deterrence, not morale-sapping identity politics. One Nation will restore pride in wearing the uniform and give them the latest equipment to carry out their duties. We won’t sell off our historic sites of symbolic significance to cover irresponsible spending.

Australians are not asking for miracles. They are simply asking for a country that works again. One Nation continues to attract practical Australians with real world experience—people from finance, investment, trade, engineering, farming, small business, building, energy, manufacturing and defence. These are men and women who have built things, employed people and delivered results outside the Canberra bubble. Australia does not need more career politicians serving vested interests. One Nation believes the government is there to serve you. This budget only goes to prove yet again that this government believes you are there to serve it.

In closing, Australia stands at a crossroads. For too long, Labor’s failed experiment of reckless spending, crippling regulation, net zero ideology and wealth redistribution has driven businesses to the wall. It’s crushed living standards, saddled our children with debt and stolen the Australian dream from an entire generation. A nation loses hope when it loses vision. Australia now has near a trillion dollars in debt and nothing to show for it. One Nation will break the green, red and black tape that has tied us down. We will work with the natural strengths of the assets on our balance sheet. We have iron ore, coal, gas, cattle, rain, cotton, gold, copper, oil and so much more. Australia should be a powerhouse, but the major parties lack the management skills for us reach our potential. It is perverse that a government and an opposition believe they can change the weather, and are prepared to waste ultimately hundreds of billions to do it, while they mock the idea of a version of the Bradfield scheme that would open the massive potential for irrigation of the rich but dry soils of the western districts. It is perverse that a government and an opposition that came up with the biggest construction fiasco on earth, the $42 billion Snowy Hydro 2.0, cannot complete the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane, which would open up the intermodal efficiencies and commercial potential of the inland corridor.

We are covering the land with windmills and solar panels and, in turn, delivering— (Time expired)

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson, are you seeking the call?

Senator Hanson: I seek leave to finish my speech.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Is leave granted? Leave has not been granted, Senator Hanson.

Senator Hanson: I seek leave to table my speech.

Leave granted.

“We are covering our land with windmills and solar panels and in turn delivering the dearest and most precarious electricity grid our nation has ever had, when we had the cheapest coal fired power and sitting on one of the greatest coal resources in the globe.

One Nation does not care about major party sneers. We care about handing our children a better opportunity than was handed to us by our parents, currently it is the other way around.

One Nation will reallocate the resources from the fool’s errand of Australia changing the weather to invest in coal fired power, nuclear, irrigation, freight, rail, ports and roads. We will work with businesses as partners in these projects.

One Nation will listen to civil engineers, nuclear physicists, and research scientists in medicine instead of climate change bureaucrats. These assets on our nations balance sheet allows us to pay for expenses on the Profit and Loss. These assets build a nation that can repay its debts. One Nation is offering a fundamentally different direction -one rooted in proven, common sense economic principles. We’ll lower taxes on working families, slash regulation that strangles enterprise, deliver abundant and affordable energy, and back the industries that actually create real wealth and opportunity.

We will never pretend we know better than you how to run your own lives. That is why we are determined to hand power back to the Australian people where it belongs.

We will reward hard work and aspiration, restore fiscal discipline, and put Australian families and businesses first once again.

One Nation’s word is our bond – and we have three decades of unwavering policy consistency to prove it.

We hope to earn your trust to implement the bold change Australia desperately needs.

Thank you.”

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Band-Aids Won’t Fix Broken Budgets

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This week’s budget from Treasurer Chalmers, on behalf of the Labor-Greens government, could not be further from the Labor Party’s original support base of working Australians. A simple question: what in this budget will ease the challenges everyday Australians are facing, challenges the Labor government have created themselves? Under Prime Minister Albanese, inflation is 4.6 per cent and 13 per cent across his government’s four years. Don’t blame Iran or Ukraine! It’s the government itself which is the leading cause of inflation. 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics tracks increases in government services on a like-for-like basis. In the 12 months to March this year, government property rates and charges went up six per cent, water and sewerage went up seven per cent, postal services went up eight per cent, secondary education went up seven per cent, preschool and primary education went up five per cent. All of these government charges have increased faster than the overall inflation rate. Wages have gone backwards. Average wage increases in the last 12 months were only 3.7 per cent in the private sector and 3.9 per cent in the government sector—less than inflation. 

Under the Albanese Labor government, if it feels like you’re going backwards while working harder, it’s because you are. That’s why 56 per cent of the public in a recent Freshwater poll think the country is going in the wrong direction. It’s no wonder the ANZ-Roy Morgan index of consumer confidence fell 4.3 points last week to 58.8 against the long-term average of 110. This is the lowest consumer confidence reading since records began in 1973. 

The tax cuts in the budget are an insult and will be wiped out from inflation before they start next July. We need infrastructure spending, smaller government, an end to net zero madness and waste, and balanced budgets. And stop flooding this country with more people than we can build homes for. It’s driving the prices of houses beyond affordability. These are all One Nation policies which will help. One Nation is now the party for workers. 

Transcript

This week’s budget from Treasurer Chalmers, on behalf of the Labor-Greens government, could not be further from the Labor Party’s original support base of working Australians. A simple question: what in this budget will ease the challenges everyday Australians are facing, challenges the Labor government have created themselves? Under Prime Minister Albanese, inflation is 4.6 per cent and 13 per cent across his government’s four years. Don’t blame Iran or Ukraine! It’s the government itself which is the leading cause of inflation. 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics tracks increases in government services on a like-for-like basis. In the 12 months to March this year, government property rates and charges went up six per cent, water and sewerage went up seven per cent, postal services went up eight per cent, secondary education went up seven per cent, preschool and primary education went up five per cent. All of these government charges have increased faster than the overall inflation rate. Wages have gone backwards. Average wage increases in the last 12 months were only 3.7 per cent in the private sector and 3.9 per cent in the government sector—less than inflation. 

Under the Albanese Labor government, if it feels like you’re going backwards while working harder, it’s because you are. That’s why 56 per cent of the public in a recent Freshwater poll think the country is going in the wrong direction. It’s no wonder the ANZ-Roy Morgan index of consumer confidence fell 4.3 points last week to 58.8 against the long-term average of 110. This is the lowest consumer confidence reading since records began in 1973. 

The tax cuts in the budget are an insult and will be wiped out from inflation before they start next July. We need infrastructure spending, smaller government, an end to net zero madness and waste, and balanced budgets. And stop flooding this country with more people than we can build homes for. It’s driving the prices of houses beyond affordability. These are all One Nation policies which will help. One Nation is now the party for workers. 

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