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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello my friends and welcome to She's On The Money. I am Victoria Devine and around here we are all about making money a little less overwhelming. We have a community of more than 300,000 people, we have podcasts and blogs, we also have freebies like budgeting tools and investing cheat sheets to help you feel more in control of your financial future.
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Hello and welcome to a very special bonus episode of She's on the Money, where today our good friend Glenn James from Money Money Money and Vince from Retire Right and I got the privilege to dive headfirst into the federal budget ahead of the masses so that you absolutely do not have to read 400 pages of economic jargon and tiny little footnotes pretending to be as excited as we are.
We are currently recording this from inside the budget lockup because the budget hasn't been released to the public yet. yet, which honestly feels like being maybe trapped in a very intense group assignment with Australia's political journalists, economists and people who say the word productivity recreationally. Now, if you've ever watched the budget coverage before and thought, Beautiful.
What does this actually mean for me? My friends, this is the episode for you, because today we are just talking about what has been announced. We're going to break down everything in plain English. We're going to talk about who benefits, who doesn't, and what maybe feels like has been forgotten.
We're also going to talk about whether any of this is genuinely going to make life feel a little bit more affordable for Australians. So this evening, let's unpack what matters, what's political theatre, what's genuinely interesting and what our community actually needs to know. Let's keep this in mind as well, Glenny James.
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Chapter 2: What are the key highlights of the 2026 Federal Budget?
I think it's helpful.
What's everyone's ā honestly, guys, I don't know how we're going to do this chat. We know that Katie's going to be in here soon. We'll have a chat with her. So that's the Assistant Treasurer, Katie Galloway, who's joined us. No, she's the Minister of Finance, Minister of Women and Economic Security. Melina is the Assistant Treasurer. I don't know. I'll throw to VD.
What are your takes, high-level comments on the budget?
So I'm, let's be honest, straight out the gates, I'm really disappointed. I think that we expected a lot when it came to first home buyer support. We expected a lot more when it came to CGT. And for me, I was hoping that there would be a bit more support. for the NDIS and I understand how the budget works, but I just expected there to be a bit more.
I was also a bit disappointed that when we got given the budget, so for those of you who maybe aren't as excited about this, the budget is a physical document for us, but they also this year handed around a USB and we all uploaded it to our computers. And I did a little bit of a control F to see if single
households had been taken into consideration and there's not one mention in the budget of single women, single people and how they're going to be supported. A lot, I suppose, around single parents and Centrelink and what is it? what's the word I'm looking for?
Child support.
Child support. Child support and making sure that that gets paid, which is fantastic. But I think coming into a world where there are lots of single income households and there are lots of people in my community specifically who are actively choosing to remain single, how are we going to do it? I feel like there's not a lot in there.
Yeah. My initial take coming in And what I do, I walk in, first thing I do, open up the speech, have a skim through just to see what they kind of wanting to sell. But probably more so was what we just experienced in Jim's press conference where he's like, this budget is about first home buyers. And one thing I noticed that we talked about in his speech was talking about the 5% deposit scheme.
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Chapter 3: How will negative gearing and CGT changes affect Australians?
But in this instance, what Dan does is in men's health, where, you know, it's not equal for them either. And we're trying to kind of have responses to that. But the women's budget statement is partly because we've been trying to drive equality. It's actually equality across the economy. And at the moment, in those key areas that I outlined, we're not there yet.
And if you take your foot off the accelerator, If you're not dealing with some of these big structural barriers that prevent women from actually reaching equality, government decision-making isn't informed by that. So it's actually about keeping us accountable more than anything, the Women's Budget Statement, to explain what we're doing and how we're tackling some of these big issues for women.
Yeah, yeah. Not a spicy question but more a ā Personal view question. Looking at the budget, what is something in there that you're disappointed with?
Disappointed. Look, I mean, a budget is thousands of, literally thousands of decisions. And we've had to say no to a lot of things in this budget, partly because of the role, you know, how seriously we take some of the inflation challenge in the economy, partly because, you know, other things become more of a priority than others. So dealing with fuel, which sort of came out of left field.
And, you know, when we started, the budget wasn't a thing and then has become one of the big things in the budget. So it's rather than something specifically, it's the amount, like as finance minister, a lot of my job is saying no, like the budget can't hold it. We can't afford to do that. Not this time, not now, you know, come back and see me in a year, that type of thing.
And there's no shortage of meritorious things. And as Labor people, we like to do things. We like to change things. We like to make the life better for people. And so sort of being in a position where you have to, you know, you're limited. A hundred percent. Yeah.
And I feel like that was noted in the press conference a fair few times. There was a lot of, we inherited a lot of issues and we're trying to fix these issues.
Yeah, but every government says that.
Of course, of course. But I guess worst case scenario for you guys is that Labor is wiped out next election. If you could only reform one social or economic issue between now and then, what would it be?
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Chapter 4: What does the budget mean for housing affordability?
now.
Yeah, so you're talking about aspiration.
Yes.
So the first point I make is, and you're not making this point, but I think it's important to be made, is that this is not generation versus generation.
This is a government sitting down with all the information available to us right now, saying what are the right decisions to take for right now to enable as many people, young people as we can, into housing, along with everything else we're doing on supply. The issue of aspiration, though, is important, too, because you're right. I mean, people want to work hard.
They want to purchase investments if they're able to do so. They want to provide for their children if they have them, all of that. And that's important. What we're doing in this budget is saying that's fine, but you do that on new homes. We've got to decouple homes. what's happening in the kind of established housing.
But the other thing, just quickly, the other thing this budget does, and Jim touched on it before, is we're trying to make rebalance, in a sense, the way we tax income with the way we tax assets to make it a little bit more equal. It's still advantageous in terms of taxing assets and investments, but
But we need to make sure that we're not disincentivizing or having unfair arrangements in relation to income.
On maybe the politics side of it, the Henry Review, Allegra's recent paper, talking about, well, and I've done some analysis with my audience that maybe a discount of 30% or 35% probably would fix a lot of the problems. And CGT. CGT. So the question is, why didn't you go, well, let's just do 30% or 35%?
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Chapter 5: How is women's health funding addressed in the budget?
On the trust, so at the moment, if you've got a discretionary family trust or it's a trading, if you're using it as a business, trusts generally at the moment do not pay tax. However, if you do not distribute from a trust, you'll pay the highest tax rate. So ordinarily people would distribute out of trusts and the beneficiaries or the bucket companies would then pay the tax.
Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep your cash in a trust.
You wouldn't do it. You just wouldn't. You'd be silly. So they're now saying discretionary family trusts, 30% tax.
At a minimum.
Minimum. Off the top. The question I've got is, as a small business, if you've got an operating trust... There's a burnt-in 30% that you'll now have to pay if it gets put to bed. If it was in a company, you would get 25% because you lower turnover and you tick that box. So they're also allowing people to move out of discretionary trust into other entities.
For me, and this is, I guess, my opinion piece, that whole taxing the trust thing was potentially more ideological. Because I'm, I mean, the number, I haven't actually.
Did we think that that's going to operate the same as kind of a franking credit once it is? I didn't dive in.
The distinction though, I know it's getting a bit arcane, but the distinction is that it's not refundable. So if you franking credit for your tax rates less than 30%, like retirees or self-paying super funds or super funds generally, you'd get it back in cash. Whereas these ones are not refundable. So subtle difference.
Another thing. That's why we brought Vince. That's right. Our fact checker in a box. Another thing which I actually thought was interesting, the FBT rate for electric vehicles at 0%.
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Chapter 6: What cost-of-living relief measures are included in the budget?
So if the government runs a surplus, the private sector has to run a deficit, which means you and I are getting poorer. Yeah.
All right, friends, that's all from us tonight. We've got to go edit this podcast.
We'll get it up. And at the end of this, we will put when Jim and Katie came into the lockup earlier.
Perfect. If anyone's interested, stick around.
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It's really not.
What about a five-star review? Yeah.
Yeah, give him a five-star review.
On the podcast platform of your choice. Yeah.
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