Federal Budget: Gerry Harvey takes aim at ‘bulls**t’ announcements

Harvey Norman boss Gerry Harvey has launched a scathing attack on the Federal Budget, claiming it “won’t make a bloody difference because we’re playing politics.”

As industry groups and business leaders weighed in on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ big-spending Budget, Mr Harvey said it would do nothing to address the soaring cost of doing business.

“The budget won’t make a bloody difference because we’re playing politics,” he told the Herald Sun.

“When I look at what it costs me now to run my warehouses as opposed to a couple of years ago, it’s 100 per cent more. Anything you do at the moment in development costs is just so high and the government is not doing anything to reduce that.”

“You’ve just got to realise that there’s a lot of bulls**t that goes on in this world and you should take it with a grain of salt. It doesn’t matter which party you’re talking about - they’re just playing politics,” Mr Harvey said.

“We operate in eight different countries, the only other country in the world that’s as bad as Australia is New Zealand.”

Meanwhile economists warned the budget could increase inflation, rather than reducing it.

Economist and budget expert Chris Richardson said the budget would “poke the inflationary bear” because there was too much front-loaded new spending.

“So this budget narrows the Reserve Bank’s already narrow path,” Mr Richardson said.

But the Business Council of Australia singled out “some positive steps towards making Australia more globally competitive”.

Forecasts embedded in the Albanese government’s third budget show inflation will go back within the two-to-three per cent range targeted by the Reserve Bank in 2024/25, helped along by cost-of-living relief measures.

The expansion of energy bill relief and another boost to Commonwealth Rent Assistance are expected to wipe half a percentage point off inflation.

If inflation makes it back to the target band before the end of the 2024 calendar year - which the government says is possible - it would be a year earlier than the central bank predicted just weeks ago.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government wasn’t concerned that people would go on a spending spree with their tax cuts, following the decision to change the stage 3 tax cuts to include all taxpayers.

“We know that what people overwhelmingly will spend money on, which is why we changed it,” he told Sunrise.

“If you’re earning under $45,000 a year, you know what, you’ll spend it at the supermarket.

“You’ll spend it on the essentials of life, on things for your kids that you need. That’s why we changed the tax cuts so they’re focused firmly on Middle Australia.”