Prime Minister expected to hand down budget after cyclone scuttles election plan

Tropical Cyclone Alfred has scuppered the prime minister's plans to call the federal election for the 12th of April.

Transcript

00:00Well, Jo, we know the Prime Minister was planning to visit Perth this weekend to celebrate the

00:06likely Labor win in the West Australian state election, but he had to can those plans.

00:11He was planning to call the election on Sunday for April 12th, but that is also now looking

00:17highly unlikely.

00:19The fact that the cyclone is only expected to make landfall tomorrow, obviously highly

00:24populated areas, sources close to the Prime Minister say it's looking very unlikely that

00:29he will in fact call the election this weekend.

00:32What it means is that Parliament will be returning on schedule for a March 25 budget, Jim Chalmers'

00:40third budget.

00:41One that he says he's been preparing for, but one very few people had expected him to

00:45actually hand down.

00:47We know behind the scenes they've been working sort of two tracks, they've been working towards

00:50the budget, but also towards an economic statement which Labor was going to release publicly

00:56shortly after calling the election for April 12th.

01:00But here we are, the cyclone pretty much washing away the Prime Minister's plans here and MPs

01:08preparing now to return to Parliament on March 25, which certainly they weren't expecting

01:13to do.