Why you may be eligible to get $125 from the government

Getting power bills down for almost four million Australians is one of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s key pitches to voters from Tuesday’s federal budget.

He’s also promised a surplus for the 2019/20 financial year, but won’t reveal if he will bring forward planned income tax cuts.

The Energy Assistance Payment – $75 for singles and $125 for couples – will be paid into the bank accounts of 3.9 million veterans, carers, single parents, aged pensioners and people receiving the disability support pension before July.

“This is money that is going to go into people’s pockets to help meet the cost of their next power bill,” Mr Frydenberg told reporters on Sunday.

The payment will go to 2.4 million people on the age pension, 744,000 people on a disability support pension, and 280,000 people getting carer payments.

A further 242,000 people getting single parent payments will also get the extra cash, along with 225,000 veterans and their eligible dependents.

Mr Frydenberg pushed back against criticism that the government’s surplus was built on huge underspending in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

“It is a demand-driven program and as of the end of last year there were 250,000 people who were in the NDIS, 78,000 of whom hadn’t received disability support before, and it is going to 460,000,” he said.

“Everybody who is in the NDIS is fully funded through this government and through this budget. We will meet every cent of our commitment to the NDIS.”

Mr Frydenberg also argued that wages, which have stagnated in recent years, are picking up compared to this point last year.

But shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the coalition had over-estimated wage growth in every single budget it had handed down.

“The treasurer changes from budget to budget, it seems. But the fact that they don’t meet their wages forecast doesn’t change,” Mr Bowen told ABC’s Insiders.

Mr Bowen said if Labor wins the May federal election the party will do its own version of the budget shortly afterwards.

“If we win, we will bring down a major economic statement in the third quarter of the year, which will in effect be the first budget of a Shorten Labor government,” he said.

“We need to reset the economic settings. We need to update the forecasts with the new government in place.”

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