Big bang for budget bucks

BACK IN BLACK

Our surplus is bigger than we thought — still, it’s not the size of it, but how you use it that matters, The Australian ($) says. It reports that at an event in Darwin today, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will reveal the $4.2 billion surplus forecast for 2022-23 will be higher thanks to low unemployment (higher income tax and lower welfare payments) and high commodity prices, according to an expert the AFR ($) spoke to. We’ll learn the surplus figure on Friday when the Commonwealth monthly financial statements are released. Still, high inflation, recessions overseas, rate rises and stable productivity mean it’ll be a short-lived sugar hit, the Oz says, so Chalmers is reportedly planning to return the “bulk of revenue upgrades to the bottom line”. He’ll also say we can expect inflation to tumble from 7% to 3.25% in 2023-24, and economic growth from 3.25% to 1.5% in 2023-24.

Meanwhile, former Liberal Senator David Van claimed more than $8000 for a Queensland trip that included a stint in the Whitsundays during lockdown, the SMH ($) reports. He boarded an all-expenses-paid defence ship in July 2021, but billed the taxpayer for an eight-night stay in Proserpine ($2208), and six nights in Brisbane ($2526). The paper notes he also charged taxpayers $663.50 for a chauffeur-driven Comcar — at $2 a minute, reporters Annika Smethurst and Paul Sakkal calculated it was a five-hour trip. Van told the paper the dominant purpose was parliamentary business, including a briefing with the Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. “South Australian Liberal Senator David Fawcett, who was on the same Australian Defence Force parliamentary program trip as Van, did not claim any travel expenses for the trip,” the reporters add.

LIBERAL-MINDED

One of the Morrison government’s key COVID-19-era programs, HomeBuilder, made the cost of building or renovating more expensive, and wasn’t monitored well. It paid the landed gentry up to $25,000 to build or renovate their home from a kitty of $688 million. That jumped to an incredible $2.3 billion when HomeBuilder finished. The ABC says a secret report commissioned from KPMG that it FOI’d shows it favoured the rich, builders barely benefited, and complaints went to a mailbox hardly monitored. Interestingly, however, the broadcaster notes a report by PwC Australia in late 2020 gave it “a clean bill of health”. Presented without comment, folks. It comes as almost one in six units were sold for less than the owner paid in the March quarter, Guardian Australia reports.

Speaking of PwC, it has walked back a report that formed the basis of the nature repair market’s $137 billion valuation, Guardian Australia reports. It said it included “indirect spending towards biodiversity” but conceded the figure spent on “threatened species conservation, with clear outcomes, is likely much less”. The report was cited by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in March, but The Australia Institute told the Senate it was misleading and sometimes completely unrelated to the market. Meanwhile, the NAB is in hot water for lending $43 million to a petrol station and fuel transportation business run by two people allegedly linked to the Rebels bikie gang, the AFR ($) reports. It’s been trying to recover the loan to Xpress Group since March. The administrators were reportedly frustrated that Xpress’ alleged link to the Rebels was just a Google away.

FOOT OFF THE GAS

The ACT government is ditching gas faster, revealing a plan to strip gas appliances from residential homes, schools, hospitals and government offices in Tuesday’s budget, The Australian ($) reports. The Sustainable Household Scheme is budgeted at $280 million, including $85 million to replace gas heating and hot water systems with electric systems. And the Vulnerable Household Energy Support Scheme will be extended so low-income earners can get some dosh to do the same. Gas Energy Australia’s Brett Heffernan told the Oz it’s a myth that electricity is cheaper than gas, arguing cheap appliances can be worse. That might mean a bit more if it came from an unbiased source.

Meanwhile, in Tasmania the swift parrot is fast becoming homeless as government logging agency Sustainable Timber Tasmania has begun chopping down its habitat. It’s despite folks from Greens forefather Bob Brown’s foundation protesting against the logging — the cops turned up and one photographer to whom Guardian Australia spoke, Rob Blakers, refused to leave. He was charged with trespassing. Thankfully the parrots spend winter in Victoria and NSW, but their summer homes may not be there when they return. A 2021 CSIRO guide estimated the swift parrot population was just 750, down from 2000 a decade earlier.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

It’s the question that can divide a dinner table faster than a pizza cutter through a hot margarita: does pineapple belong on your slice? For those who believe the tart sweetness enhances the gooey cheese and zesty tomato base (can you tell I’m hungry?), I present you with some precious vindication: the ancient Pompeiians appear to have included the polarising fruit in their version of pizza. That’s according to a stunning fresco newly uncovered at the ghostly site of Pompeii, notoriously caked in a molten volcanic eruption only slightly hotter than fresh-out-of-the-oven mozzarella. The 2000-year-old fresco was found in Regio IX and depicts a flatbread topped with what looks like pineapple, herb cheese, pomegranates and dates alongside a goblet of wine. It was probably a representation of a hospitable tray of chow for guests, The Guardian says.

But could it really be pineapple? The pomologists among us might pipe up that pineapple dates back as far as 1200 BC in Peru but didn’t arrive in Europe until none other than Christopher Columbus introduced it in the 15th century. Interestingly, the ancient fresco’s site is just a 25-minute drive from Naples, the home of pizza, where pineapple is widely considered an abomination, as the BBC reports. The ingredient has even led to international disputes between world leaders and diplomatic interventions — Iceland’s President Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson sternly told schoolchildren in 2017 that he would ban it in his country if he could. It was thought a Greek chef in Canada was the first to add pineapple to pizza back in 1963 (and the British broadcaster notes it coincidentally coincided with Aussie company Golden Circle’s release of the Tropical Recipe Book). Until the discovery of this fresco — maybe.

Hoping you uncover something sweet today too.

SAY WHAT?

Really, your [sic] a hyphenated name dick. I’m a renter and I represent my electorate. I absolutely know how people feel … go and get stuffed you Tree torie prick … Sit yourself you upstart shit!

Robert Skelton

The Sunshine Coast Labor MP tweeted the now-deleted spray at Greens federal member for Griffith Max Chandler–Mather because he thinks the Greens’ housing policy makes homelessness worse. Chandler-Mather said it’s what he expects from a party “that ultimately serves the interests of property developers”.

CRIKEY RECAP

‘Society used to respect experts’: Bruce Pascoe on the Voice, treaty and sovereignty

BRUCE PASCOE

“One of the most insidious threats to democracy is the idea that learning and intelligence are enemies of the people. It is fashionable for politicians to accuse experts of trying to hoodwink the public, to tell them that knowledge is a plot of the elites, situating the populist politician as their only true friend.

“These are the arguments of the huckster, the carpetbagger, the autocrat and the fascist. Reduce all argument to slogans — and when the promise of making a nation great collapses, it is easy to blame the elites. Populations have a responsibility to resist this scaremongering. The debate on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is no different.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Sierra Leone’s Bio declared winner of presidential election (Al Jazeera)

Belarusian leader confirms arrival of exiled Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin (The Guardian)

More than 100 U.S. political leaders have ancestors who were slaveholders (Reuters)

‘Turning point’: Brussels and London strike deal to boost financial services cooperation (euronews)

Xi Jinping says NZ a ‘friend and partner’, Hipkins demurs (Stuff)

FBI downplayed risk of Capitol riot — Senate report (BBC)

THE COMMENTARIAT

I exposed war crimes among the SAS. A few weeks ago, my car was repossessed — Samantha Crompvoets (The Age) ($): “It wasn’t long ago that I had been a successful business owner with a string of government contracts. For me, it all began on Australia Day 2016. That was the day I submitted a report to army chief General Angus Campbell that would trigger the biggest inquiry into war crimes in Australia’s history. It would also be the day that David Morrison, chief of army from 2011 to 2015, would be awarded Australian of the Year. Chair of the committee that chose the winner was Special Forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith.

“The first time I heard mention of war crimes among Australian Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan was in 2014, in a small, partially furnished office in an army barracks. I’m a sociologist and I had been contracted by the army to undertake a number of research projects. I was speaking with an army chaplain about domestic violence prevalence. The conversation went well beyond the initial topic. It was the first time I heard of the ‘serious misconduct’ that was occurring within SAS patrols in Afghanistan. The chaplain described returning from deployment ‘a broken man’, having tried and failed to have his concerns taken seriously.”

Why the attacks on PwC are ideological and overblown — Nick Hossack (The AFR) ($) : “No-one disputes that the PwC partner should not have broken confidentiality, and that PwC should have relied less on legal client privilege to inhibit inquiries. But there is a serious disconnect between what should be a sober assessment of what went wrong and how to improve processes, to that of a seeming bloodlust to destroy careers in some sort of cathartic need for a sacrificial offering. My sense is that the passions, particularly those of Green senators, are driven more by ideology than anything else, a disdain for commercial principles and successful, well-remunerated professionals.

“There is a bullying element as well. The senators leading the attack know well that PwC’s reliance on government contracts means the accounting firm will not fight back using the types of arguments needed to compete in a political stoush. But unfortunately, tentativeness just eggs on politicians who sense a riskless opportunity to keep the scandal going in service of parading their own moral purity. To understand the disconnect between the facts and the emotions, here are six key considerations. First, the breach of confidentiality by the PwC partner had been resolved well before it became a media and political matter this year …”

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Age discrimination commissioner Kay Patterson will speak to the National Press Club.

Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)

• Hinkler MP Keith Pitt will deliver a speech entitled “The people, the power and the path to a better Australia” to The Sydney Institute.