Jim Chalmers will try to ‘buy votes’ by offering energy bill subsidies

While Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ budget may not be the “cash-splash” the green left want, it will hardly make Australia’s economy more dynamic or productive either, Sky News host Peta Credlin says. “My instinct is that at least in this budget, Chalmers will largely resist calls to increase welfare and instead try and buy votes by offering people energy bill subsidies – or handouts – even though it's his own government's policy that's putting your power bill through the roof,” she said. Ms Credlin thinks the Treasurer will “almost certainly” increase taxes on superannuation balances over a certain amount, and there will be no “meaningful reform” to the NDIS. “What the Treasurer will do though in his budget speech is boast about achieving a lower deficit – even though that won't have been achieved by expenditure restraint it will come about by higher tax receipts, due, in the most part, to sky-high commodity prices.”