Budget 2022 live updates: federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg delivers budget speech with cash payments and tax relief – latest news

In lockup, we got a late delivery of the defence media statement, hand-delivered.

Why the delay? It might have something to do with veterans’ affairs and defence personnel minister, Andrew Gee, declaring he would quit cabinet if the backlog of veterans’ claims wasn’t cleared.

There he is, in the release, listing a bunch of things to be done for veterans, including:

An initial $22.8m will fund 90 extra Department of Veterans’ Affairs staff to cut the backlog of unprocessed claims, and this will be followed by a further $73.2m for additional staff and other measures to further improve the veteran claims processing system and reduce waiting times.

Just a small note on that: the budget itself only includes the initial $22.8m over two years from 2022-23. The follow-up money is more of a public pledge by the government rather than a budgeted line item.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s whole speech is here, for those who are hanging on every word. Katharine Murphy reports a big “here, here” from the Nationals Barnaby Joyce and David Littleproud as he talks about the regional package.

(They won’t say this bit out loud but obviously to keep the Coalition coalesced, the Liberals have to keep the Nationals on side).

Guardian Australia’s political editor, Katharine Murphy, is in the chamber watching treasurer Josh Frydenberg speak. She says you’d “describe the atmosphere in the chamber as attentive but low energy, at least so far”.

If you need to wrap your head around the budget quickly, but also get the context, here’s Guardian Australia’s chief political correspondent, Sarah Martin’s take:

I can’t stop thinking about Redspice. REDSPICE? Did the words or the acronym come first? Did they workshop the “spice” bit, or the “red” bit? Is it just because of the blandness of lockup food that I can’t stop thinking about cayenne, or paprika, or a shiny habañero?

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine (and China watched), the government was itching to make national security a key plank of its election campaign (remember the Manchurian candidate?).

So it’s no surprise that this budget has muscled-up. There’s even a new project codenamed Redspice (definitely nothing to do with China). It’s a slightly tortured acronym for resilience, effects, defence, space, intelligence, cyber and enablers.

Redspice is part of a $9.9bn investment in defence and cybersecurity over 10 years.

There’s the ongoing funding for operations in the Middle East, $10bn over the long term towards a new submarine base, there are drones, choppers, tanks and more.

And of course, warships and those planned Aukus submarines (and no, we still don’t know how much they’ll cost).

There’s a grab bag of bits and bobs that loosely come under “essential services”.

We’ve already seen the infrastructure spending bonanza. Guardian Australia revealed on Tuesday that just 15% of the promised projects were endorsed by Infrastructure Australia, and more than 50% of the projects in individual electorates were going to marginal seats.

This not-quite-post-pandemic budget promises to shore up supply chains and boost manufacturing in Australia, including a promise to make mRNA vaccines in Victoria, and to make it cheaper for Australians to get patents on goods they invent.

Billions have been announced for regional investments (read: keeping the Nationals and their leader onside) including dams, telecommunications, better health services and a skills package.

Anyone hoping for game-changing spending on climate change, the NDIS or aged care will be disappointed.

The government is promising new jobs, even with the predicted unemployment level of 3.75%.

There’s $2.8bn for the “take-up and completion” of trade apprenticeships, $5,000 for new apprentices and $15,000 for employers who take them on.

And there’s a $120 tax deduction for every $100 a small business spends on training employees (up to $100,000).

Frydenberg says:

Australia’s unemployment rate is heading towards a 50-year low. We have a historic opportunity to get young Australians into skilled, secure and well-paid jobs.

The dignity of work is important for all Australians.

The urgency to address cost of living pressures grew in the weeks leading up to the budget as pandemic-related issues (including house prices) crossed paths with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which saw petrol prices spike. The budget expands paid parental leave and makes it more flexible, promises cheaper medicines, and a range of other measures, including:

• The fuel excise will be halved – from 44 cents a litre to 22 – for six months. The government estimates a family with two cars that fills up once a week will save $700 over that time. (Chris Richardson from Deloitte Access Economics called this “dumb”, and others raised concerns rising inflation will gobble up any savings).
• Australia’s 10 million low and middle income earners will get a one-off tax offset of $420 – this comes on top of the existing offset. That means up to $1,500 for singles and $3,000 for couples.
• A $250 one-off payment to pensioners, carers, veterans, job seekers, eligible self-funded retirees and concession card holders.
• An expansion of the first homebuyer grant.

Frydenberg said it was “a new temporary, targeted and responsible cost of living package to ease these [cost of living] pressures”.

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has begun his budget speech in the House of Representatives, introducing the plan the Coalition hopes will help them pick a path to another miracle victory. He says:

Tonight, as we gather, war rages in Europe. The global pandemic is not over. Devastating floods have battered our communities.

We live in uncertain times.

But all is not lost, Frydenberg says:

[Australia] remains resilient. Australians remain strong. We have overcome the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression.

Our recovery leads the world.

The 2022-23 budget papers – including a chunky sky blue regional Australia statement from Barnaby Joyce – have now been released. Despite the piles of paper and files of releases, much of this critically important pre-election budget had already been dropped to the press.

What we have now, though, is the detail. Here’s a sneak peak:

• The fuel excise will be halved – from 44 cents a litre to 22 – for six months.
• Australia’s 10 million low and middle income earners will get a one-off tax offset of $420 – on top of the existing offset.
• There is also a one-off $250 payment to pensioners, carers, veterans, job seekers, eligible self-funded retirees and concession card holders.

What used to be the headline figure – the nation’s deficit – is set to hit an eye-watering $78bn. Frydenberg’s message will be that it could have been worse, and that it will get better – he says it will halve as a percentage of GDP over the next three years. There is also that prediction that unemployment will dip to 3.75% next year, boosting income tax revenue and slashing the cost of welfare.

Frydenberg has made it clear where this budget’s focus lies: cost of living relief, jobs, jobs, jobs (and jobs), investments in essential services, and defence and national security.

The Guardian Australia team has been feverishly fossicking through the budget papers, jittery with caffeine and shaky from the sugar hits. Photographer-at-large Mike Bowers is with the team in Canberra – Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Daniel Hurst, Josh Butler, Paul Karp, Adam Morton and Greg Jericho. Joining them (virtually) in Sydney are Lenore Taylor, Anne Davies, Elias Visontay, Peter Hannam and Nick Evershed.

Just five minutes to go until the budget is released. There have been a couple of last-minute revelations about the contents of the budget, which we’ve covered already. They include:

• The budget will give a one-off increase to the low and middle income tax offset – the temporary tax offset for those earning $126,000 or less. That offset currently pays from $255 to $1,080, depending on your income. The changes would now give between $675 and $1,500, paid out from 1 July. About 10 million people will get $420 on average.
• An almost $9bn package to improve Australia’s cybersecurity and intelligence capabilities, designed to deal with changing security threats in the Asia-Pacific, according to the ABC.
• A one-off payment of $250 for welfare recipients and pensioners, designed to assist with cost of living pressures.

Something to bear in mind when we inevitably hear the constant refrain of “working families” in tonight’s proceedings:

So, what will be the big takeaway from this budget?

Will there be bold reforms? That’s unlikely, said economics commentator Jessica Mizrahi.

She said that it’s a safer bet the government will be writing cheques like there’s no tomorrow, a firm eye on the election.

It’s not likely we will see a jobkeeper or NDIS-scale program on the papers this budget night. However, it is unmistakably an election year. While the economy is growing, it’s still getting back on its feet. Cost-of-living pressures are real and growing.

Maybe money can’t buy love, but spending can buy votes – or so politicians hope.

Put these things together and it’s a safe bet that the chequebook will be out. Speculation to date is focused on booze and bowsers. If the whispers are right, cheques will be made out to motorists (cutting or freezing the fuel excise) and beer drinkers (cutting the draught beer excise).

We will also get an important sense of just how big the pre-election promises are likely to be. Each budget contains a line for “contingency reserves”. One part of contingency reserves is “decisions taken but not yet announced”. This is code for new spending that the government has decided on but does not yet want to disclose. The number is reliably largest in the period before an election.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the 2022-23 budget.

We are just 30 minutes away from showtime. It’s an election budget, so you can expect plenty of sweeteners dressed up as ‘cost-of-living’ measures.

Here is what we know about the budget so far:

• The government has promised a cut to fuel excise, to reduce the high costs of petrol due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The 44 cents a litre excise could be cut by up to 20 cents.
• The budget is reportedly going to give a one-off increase to the low and middle income tax offset – the temporary tax offset for those earning $126,000 or less. That offset currently pays from $255 to $1,080, depending on your income. The changes would now give between $675 and $1,500, paid out from 1 July, according to the ABC. About 10 million people will get $420 on average.
• Welfare recipients and pensioners are expected to receive a one-off $250 payment. The payment is also billed as relief to cost-of-living pressures
• The budget will include $16bn in new infrastructure funding. A Guardian Australia analysis of the 144 projects being funded by the government in Tuesday’s budget shows that just 21 are included on Infrastructure Australia’s current list of priority projects.
• An expansion is expected of the home guarantee scheme, which helps first home buyers get into the market by placing government as the guarantor of the loan. The government will make 35,000 guarantees each year, up from the current 10,000, from 1 July.
• About $365.3m will be spent on getting an extra 35,000 apprentices and trainees get into a job, through extensions to the boosting apprenticeship commencement wage subsidy.
• The government has also promised $480m to improve NBN infrastructure in regional, rural and remote areas.