‘Budget is under pressure’ says Finance Minister Katy Gallagher

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The federal Treasurer is remaining tight lipped about further relief from the cost of living, ahead of tomorrow night's budget. The government has already ruled out a surplus. It says it's found 2.1 billion dollars in savings but there'll be plenty of new spending including another round of rebates on household power bills.  Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says it's no secret the budget is under pressure.

Transcript

00:00We've seen a big improvement in the budget and in lowering the debt and lowering the

00:07interest on our debt because we have been so responsible in our budgets where we've

00:12had upwards revisions, we've paid down debt, we've banked that, we haven't spent it.

00:17But yeah, the budget is under pressure and that's unsurprising when we've got things

00:22like defence, health, aged care, all of those areas which are placing pressure and I think

00:28the approach we've taken is to manage that and manage that over time and we'll continue

00:33to do that.

00:34There are obviously decisions that need to be taken across the forward estimates I guess

00:39in future budget processes but every budget that we have done we have found savings, we've

00:45found $95 billion worth of savings and that's helped get the budget in much better shape.

00:51The deficits are much lower than they would have been under the former government and

00:55that's been a big focus of ours when we've been putting our budgets together.

00:59But you can't just snap your fingers and cut services like the opposition are talking about

01:04because that hurts people out there who rely on government services to help them.

01:11Our approach has been to look at this carefully, methodically and responsibly, to find room

01:17to pay for things where we can and to find savings where we can and over time that will

01:22return the budget to balance.

01:23There's enormous restraint in this budget but it's also important when households are

01:27doing it tough, cost of living pressures are there, that the government respond to those

01:31and so you've seen that with Medicare, you've seen that with energy bill rebates and you'll

01:36see that in the approach tomorrow night.

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