Treasurer Jim Chalmers tackles your funds questions

Good it's Jim Chamas here the treasurer here to answer your questions I'm Lan Calderone and we're uni students and we want to know treasur Treasurer what are you doing to help uni students with their he well a big focus of the budget uh is helping people with student debt and we.

Know that last year in particular was particularly rough uh on students the way that the hex debt was calculated and so we've wiped around $3 billion of student debt uh on average that means about $1,200 less debt for yourselves uh and anyone who was uh accumulating that debt uh last year and so we're going to calculate it differently and we're going.

To backdate that change to last year uh so that you don't have to pay for that big spike uh in the calculation we saw then so my name is Murray and my question to Jim Charmers is what are the factors that makes your prediction of inflation by year end different from several other economists hey good on you maray good.

Question again uh the main difference between the treasury forecasts in the budget and some of the other forecasts you would have seen before then is the treasury forecast can take the budget into consideration uh and if you follow it closely and it sounds like you do uh you'd know that some of the big most important elements of the budget are.

Around pushing inflation down getting on top of these cost living pressures and so the treasury forecasts take that into consideration some of the earlier forecasts that you would have seen reported uh in the media they unable to do that um Rebecca dunk suburb is roed our South and I would love to know how you're going to help with the cost of.

Living and grocery prices oh Rebecca I've got the great privilege of being your local member and I went to school in roach South when I was a little Tacker uh I grew up uh in your suburb as well for part of my childhood so I know rdale South really well and I'm very grateful for your question because it goes to really uh.

Probably the most important priority in the budget which is helping people with the cost of living uh we know that people are under the pump you know that in our part of the world and people know it right round Australia people are under pressure and we're doing what we can to ease that pressure in a substantial way but also in a.

Responsible way uh so there's a tax cut for every taxpayer there's Energy bill relief for every household there's rent assist increases if you're on rent assistance uh there's cheaper medicines uh and we're also doing what we can to get a fairer go for you at the supermarket and so all of these things together are about recognizing the.

Pressure that you're under but more than recognizing it and acknowledging it actually trying to do something about it and that was a big big big focus of the budget hi my name is Sarah Higgins I'm from ly and my question is how are you going to address the housing crisis especially for young people who are entering hous market for.

The well thanks Sarah for your question about housing you know this is really important focus of the budget last night uh you know you would have read a lot about our cost of living help you would have read probably a lot about our plans for a future made in Australia and renewable energy uh but just as important in the budget were $6 billion.

In new investment uh in building more homes for Australians so that we can make it easier to build and rent and buy the country doesn't have enough homes you'd know that in Adela and people would know that right around Australia we need to build much more uh and the housing pipeline the construction pipeline is not very good right now so.

We need to turn that around uh the Commonwealth government and in our budget uh we are prepared to do our bit uh and we need the states and territories to do their bit as well and I'm confident that they will uh we need to train more Builders and construction workers too but we can build heaps more homes we can't do it overnight but over.

The course of the next 5 years we've got a pretty ambitious Target to build 1.2 million homes which is a achievable uh if we all do our bit one of the big motivations for that is the fact that young people in particular are finding it hard to find uh affordable housing whether it's rental properties or to get a tow hold in the housing market we know.

That uh and we're doing what we can to address it uh Linda weon treasure Jim Charmers wondering what you are going to do to assist and incentivize Early Childhood Educators and teachers uh to bring them up to what they deserve to impact on the ever important children of our nation oh absolutely terrific question Linda you know we've got a big.

Big commitment to Early Childhood Educators uh in our communities that's why we've invested billions of dollars uh in cheaper child care that's why we provisioned in last night's budget uh more money for better wages uh for early Educators we know that they are underpaid uh there's a decision about to be made by theed Work Commission and.

We've said uh that we will provide uh some money towards that better wages outcome that we hope to see uh out of that process and the other really important thing uh is when it comes to the tax cuts that were in the budget last night so every Australian taxpayer gets a tax cut uh but for early Educators people on low and middle.

Incomes and women they'll be much much better off than they were going to be under the old tax arrangements from our predecessors so early educators are frankly one of the reasons why we made thex ta Cuts better and bigger uh for people on low and middle incomes because you want to support the absolutely terrific work that you do I know in our.

Own family circumstances how wonderful Early Childhood educators are and we want to support your really important work well thanks very much for your questions uh and hopefully we can do it again soon

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