Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been grilled over a “missing” $3bn not revealed in the federal budget, but he says the opposition simply can’t read the papers properly.
Mr Frydenberg unveiled a “prudent” budget on Tuesday night that features cost-of-living relief measures worth billions of dollars in the form of halving the fuel excise, one-off $250 payments to welfare recipients and an extra $420 for low and middle income earners at tax time.
The government, which is due to be dissolved within days ahead of an anticipated mid-May election, will spend big on infrastructure, skills and Defence to keep the unemployment rate at historic lows and balance out the budget’s bottom line.
Mr Frydenberg spent Wednesday morning spruiking the budget but was met with a question by ABC Radio National host Patricia Karvelas he had trouble answering.
“Budget papers include almost $3bn in cuts to payments from 2024, but there are no details regarding what you’ll be cutting. What’s the big secret?” Karvelas asked.
Mr Frydenberg responded: “Well, we’re actually seeing more investment in the essential services, in schools and in hospitals”.
Karvelas cut him off, asking once again about the $3bn.
“I don’t know what you’re actually referring to specifically,” he responded.
Karvelas tried again: “What are they? When do we get to find out?”
“I don’t know which document and which page number you’re referring to Patricia,” he said.
Karvelas asked one final time: “Are you honestly not across the $3bn in cuts from 2024? Will we get to know what this is about before the election?”
“I can tell you that we’re investing more across all the important areas, whether it’s aged care … women’s safety, listing more drugs on the PBS and providing cost-of-living relief,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“As you know the Treasury secretary and the finance secretary put out … PFO once an election is called, that fleshes out all the decisions in the budget that may be ‘decisions taken not yet announced’.
“So everyone does get to see all the numbers.”
The $3bn in “cuts” Mr Frydenberg was asked about refers to the “decisions taken not yet announced” from 2023-24 to 2025-26.
Government sources say the money has been absorbed into programs costed since the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in December, including some that were announced in Tuesday’s budget.
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers had been on the Karvelas’ program earlier and explained why Labor was concerned about the “$3bn in secret cuts”.
“There’s a part of the budget called ‘decisions taken not yet announced’ and what it says this time around is it’s got two years of spending that they haven’t announced yet – so before the election – and then it’s got three years of cuts after the election, secret cuts that they don’t want to tell us about,” he said.
“They add up to at least $3bn, so Josh Frydenberg needs to come clean. What are his $3bn in secret cuts that he doesn’t want to fess up to until after the election? The Australian people deserve to know.
“Is it pensions? Is it Medicare? We shouldn’t be going to the election with those secrets cuts in the budget that will only be unleashed on the Australian people if the Coalition is returned.”
When Mr Chalmers was asked what would happen to the $3bn if Labor was elected, he said it could only “come to a view … if we know what they are”.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said Mr Chalmers’ “can’t even read the budget papers properly” and sought to clear up the matter.
“What they’re peddling around is a reduction in a budget line of decisions taken not yet announced. That’s because those were things that we budgeted for back in the MYEFO that were decisions which we have subsequently announced,” he told Sky News.
“So they move from being in the decisions taken but not announced budget line to actually being reflected in decisions such as, for example, we made provisions for the $1.3bn women’s safety package that we knew were going to invest in.
“It’s a bit of either a complete stupidity from the Labor xjmtzywParty unable to read the budget papers or just being completely misleading in the way they presented it.”
