Chris Spyrou

It feels better.

Look, and that brings us to the instant deduction that he mentioned there.

From next year, you can claim up to $1,000 worth of work-related deductions without needing to keep receipts.

So these are things like home internet, stationery, work-related subscriptions, and travel between workplaces.

It used to be $300 that you didn't have to take to your account, you know, like your box of receipts.

But, you know, now that's been lifted to $1,000 and Treasury reckons about one in four workers or 6.2 million of us will benefit from this new change.

Like you heard, Australia's fuel security is also a massive focus, and it was a massive focus last night, with the centrepiece of that $14.8 billion plan, seeing the government drop $10 billion into making sure we don't run out of it.

Obviously, this is a direct response to the war in the Middle East and the risk of global supply lines being cut.

And the big announcement here is that the government is building its own emergency reserve.

So around $3.7 billion will go towards that, and it'll hold around a billion litres of emergency diesel and jet fuel as a permanent backup.

Yeah, and Jim Chalmers, obviously, he kept on referencing it, but I was watching one of the networks, I can't even remember which one it was, but he was asked about, you know, had Donald Trump not started this war, had the US not, you know, gone into Iran and bombed Iran, would you have carved out this much for fuel?

And he said, no, like, there would have been billions and billions of dollars that up until a few weeks ago, we had allocated or we had thought we would be allocating elsewhere.

So yeah, very interesting to hear that line from him coming out last night as well.

Moving now to defence, there's a little something in there that old Donnie in the White House might get a kick out of learning if news of our budget reaches him, which I don't think it will.

Labor will spend an extra $53 billion on defence over the next decade.

Now, we did already know this, but, you know, to see it in the budget papers means it's concrete.

Locked in.

Locked in.

Australia has been under serious pressure from the Trump administration to lift our defence spend and the government plans to increase it to 3% of our GDP by 2033.

Now, look, that lift to 3% of GDP does fall short of what Donald Trump wants, which is 3.5%.