Anthony Albanese’s government has framed the budget handed down last night as a package to help buoy up Australians struggling with the cost of living crisis, while not stoking inflation.
It includes a $40 a fortnight boost to jobseeker payments, while pensioners and concession card holders will get hundreds of dollars in energy bill relief and rent assistance. It also focuses on housing, expanding access to bulk billing and clean energy measures.
But what did today’s papers make of it all?
For Australians picking up the Courier Mail this morning, the budget was celebrated with the headline “One for the true battlers”. That is, until an eye was cast to the subheading in brackets below: “But that’s probably not your household”.
It claimed millions of middle income Australians would be left to weather inflation and rising interest rates “on their own” as the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, prioritised a “surplus over broader cost-of-living relief”.
The Sydney Morning Herald splashed with the headline “Jim’s war on bills”, leading with the news 11 million Australians will gain from a $5.7b funding boost to Medicare.
The cartoon of Chalmers and the prime minister matched the treasurer’s claim that the government had moved tactfully to strike the right balance between what the government can afford, while taking economic pressures into consideration.
But, as the cartoon depicts, circling the spending is the Aukus project, which will cost between $268bn and $368bn from now to the mid-2050s.
The Australian’s front page was less amenable towards Chalmers’s attempt to provide cost-of-living relief without increasing inflation. The headline read “King of wishful thinking” with a cartoon of the treasurer as King Charles, wearing a crown saying “My surplus” while holding a lit bomb saying “Inflation”.
The Daily Telegraph went for a spin on the popular Jimmy Brings delivery service, but – as the asterisk indicates – this alternate Jimmy Brings service is only applicable to “jobseekers, single mums, pensioners, lower income families and renters”.
The photo showed single mother Ashleigh Jones hugging her child, and for whom, the budget works a “Chalm”.
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The Age depicted the delicate balance Chalmers was trying to strike and ran the headline: “Jim’s high-wire act”.
The cartoon showed Chalmers walking on a tightrope while carrying Albanese on his back. The treasurer was shown balancing the need to source additional tax revenue from gas companies and smokers with the need to help jobseekers survive the cost-of-living crisis and pay for the Aukus project – without falling into the pit of inflation below.
The Herald Sun splashed with the headline “Jim’s Battler Bulk-Up”. And to really drive home the “bulk-up” metaphor, the front page showed Chalmers out for a morning run.
The paper drew divisions between “battlers” and “middle Australia” and ran the following subheads: “Middle Australia left out as Labor splashes cash on lower income earners”, “Two-tier Medicare cuts GP bills for most vulnerable but rest pay” and “Ute can’t be serious: Tradie write off slashed”.
The Daily Mail focused on the budget’s “Winners and losers”, showing pictures of Australians and classifying whether or not they gained from the budget.
The outlet ran “Families abandoned” as a subheading on a photo of a father and his baby and put the subhead “More handouts” on a photo showing people queueing at Centrelink. It also signalled the “rent help” for those on commonwealth rent assistance, the “boost for parents” and the “blow for tradies”.
