Paul Bongiorno

Her agenda on workplace relations, on hiring and firing people, on who should be paid what, was basically a revisiting of John Howard's work choices on steroids, where the employer has all the cards and the employee cops the hindmost.

Well, Wayne Swan and the Labor Party jumped on this.

They sent out a fundraising letter to their supporters and they pointed out that this is part of One Nation's agenda.

And furthermore, it's being bankrolled by billionaires.

And the plea was, look, Labor has to get busy.

We have to be fighting fit on the ground now because the only time to begin holding on to power is now, not when an election is called.

So the other point to make, too, is that the budget, without a doubt, has cost Labor politically.

But I was talking to a cabinet minister during the week yesterday.

who said, look, the political design of this budget is once it has passed, once it is no longer creating the headlines, people say, well, what was that all about?

Because they've grandfathered most of it and some of it doesn't come in for a couple of years.

And anyway, it won't directly affect millions in the way in which, you know, which the naysayers are pointing out.

you'd have to say that the Australian and the Murdoch tabloids have become basically propaganda sheets, if not of the Liberals, certainly of the opponents of the Labor government, and make very little attempt to any sort of balanced approach to it.

I mean, we just see acres of negative stories digging up the most extreme examples as reasons why this budget is such a failure.

I was told in a group meeting with the Prime Minister about three or four weeks ago that the people at The Australian warned him that if you do touch negative gearing or capital gains tax, then we will go in hard on the broken promises.

So Albanese was given forewarning that this sort of approach would happen.

The government, however, says, look,

We're at the stage where we could not just sit back and do nothing for the next two years without addressing the core, the radical causes of what is a genuine housing crisis.

Well, it's making us look like a client state.

And I'd have to say to you, Daniel, that's exactly what we are.

It's what we've come to.