(generated from captions) This program will be live captioned by Ai-Media. It's 4 o'clock here in the Melbourne suburb of Nunawading, 2 p.m. in Perth, I'm David Speers, welcome to PM Agenda. The top stories this hour, the Prime Minister prepares to take questions from undecided voters here in one of the most marginal seats in the country, key cin, that's coming up in the next couple of hours. Also the surviving Boston bombing suspect awake and communicating with investigators. And rock ledge end Chrissy Amphlett dies at the age of 53. We are here at the burr veil hotel in the Melbourne suburb of Nunawading. It is one of the most marriage nale seats in the country second only to the seat of Corangamite where we were last week. This afternoon it is the Prime Minister Julia Gillard's opportunity to take questions from undecided voters selected by Galaxy research, and that will begin in an hour and a half from now. We're going to be looking closely at the issues of concern for this electorate and trying to speculate a bit on what sort of topics will come up in this one hour forum with the Prime Minister. Nothing is off limits, the Prime Minister is obviously keen to focus and talk up her education reforms that she so far has failed to ins request the states and territories on but they have until 30 June to sign on the dotted line. I've been out and about talking to some of the locals here in this part of Melbourne to canvass the mood. I can tell you very interesting and very mixed views on politics and on what's going to happen in this election now just five months away. Unlike last week in Geelong where it was all running against Labor, there is some support among those we spoke to in favour of Labor. But not a lot and even those who are supporting the Liberals, some do have concerns about Tony Abbott. We'll bring you some of those views from the streets of Nunawading in this hour, in about 40 minutes from now, we will be joined by the local member Mike Simon and also Alan Tudge who holds the neighbour. One of the big issues has been the budget with real concerns being expressed by independent analysts about the budget mess we are in, not just now but in the years to come. The Grattan Institute has forecast we're going to be facing moufenting deficits getting up to $60 billion. They say it means that seriously unpopular decisions do have to be taken. Some big cuts are going for needed not just to things like school kids' bonuses, superannuation, but some of the things people rely on, education, health, welfare, these are going to have to be cut to get the budget back on a sustainable footing. We'll be talking to the Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today, he'll be suggesting the Opposition has gone too far in talking down the economy. It was based on this comment from Christopher Pyne on Sky News this morning. We have Sef dits as far as the eye can see. Wayne Swan's never delivered a surplus and of course they inherited precisely the opposite. So we will outline all of our policies towards the budget before the election and during the election campaign. We don't know yet until the budget in May, the 14th, what the terrible situation is, just how bad it is, but we are in crisis, the country is in crisis because of this Government. The country's in crisis because of this Government, that Greg Combet says is talking the Government down, but its own language we did see the Treasurer over the weekend saying the high dollar has taken a sledge handler to revenuings. Also what the looming change in the carbon tax to a float ing price linked in with the European price, what that would mean for the budget. Why the Government is committed to a floating rate. In the meantime let's bring in Leigh Hatcher from the news desk for some of the big stories. Leigh the Boston suspect who we saw in such dramat ic fashion over the weekend taken into custody, he is now communicating with police.Yes David, major news net works are reporting that the Boston suspect is beginning to respond to questions from police. Prosecutors are preparing charges against the teenager and he could face the death penalty. The focus has turned to the hospital where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being treated. The city is waiting for answers as it tries at the start of a new working week to return to normality. But in places such as Laurel Street in the suburb of water tourn that won't be easy. This is the place where Tamerian Tsarnaev and his younger brother were cornered by police, where Tamerian died following gun Myer and a series of explosions. There was nonstop firing, bombs going off, the bombs put the hole there. And the other ones I believe are from the bullet holes. And there was a gun here on the ground. We heard our windows being shot out. There's bullet holes in my husband's car as well as mine. Such as the extent of the weaponry carried by the Tsarnaev brothers that police believe they may have been planning further attacks. We have already searched any of the locations that we know are directly connected with the two brothers. They clearly had other explosives, they detonated those explosives at the scene of the arrest and shoot-out in watertown. We feel they had plans to use those explosives, possibly on soft targets. The nightmare is over but the mystery continues. The former ed lead singer of the Australian rock group the Divinyls Chrissy Amphlett has died in New York. She had been battling cancer for several years and ultimate been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she was aged 53. New Zealand's South island has been lashed by wild weather, 100mm of rain fell in one hour, the second highest rainfall since records began. Residents and businesses in the settlements of Richmond and Stoke were worst affected with fire crews responding to more than 200 callouts. We've taken 7 people out of pensioner flats down behind me here out of caution. We were unable to get any medical assistance to them if required. The damage is quite severe, vehicles floating in the road and the full extent will not be known until the water subsides. There were concerns for three tourists who were missing in the area. They have now been found. A Catholic preflet has been arrested for sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s. This arrest relates to child sexual abuse that allegedly took place between 1976 and 1985 in the Melbourne suburbs of sunbury and fern tree Gully. The priest had been in Rome. Victorian police had been negotiating with the Catholic Church since July last year to have the man returned to Australia. That has now happened. The priest was arrested and has been charged with 10 offences including buggery, indecent assault and common law assault. He's been bailed and will front the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday. Meanwhile police described the cooperation of the church in this matter as a major break through. Until now Victorian police have been scathing to the church's response to sexual abuse allegations. It's the subject of a continuing Victorian parliamentary inquiry. NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has announced a $30 million partnership with Qantas aimed at attract the more overseas visitors to visit the state. The three year partnership will see both the state and the airline investing $15 million in the program each. This is about delivering on our termination to grow tourism as part of the state's economy. Our goal to try to double tourism spend in NSW by 2020, it's all about growing jobs across the state. Also encourage more Australians to visit NSW for business and leisure travel. Western Australia and the northern territories are the country as two strongest perform can economies while there are worrying signs for South Australia and Tasmania. The gap between the best and worst performing states in the country also appears to be widening. We've got a three tier economy, Western Australia, Northern Territory, then the three biggest states and the ACT. Then at the bottom end of the pack South Australia and also Tasmania. Each of the states and territory economies were assessed on eight key indicators, including economic growth, retail spending and population growth. Surf life savers say a rock fisher man who drowned off the NSW coast could have survived if he had been wearing a life jacket. The 44-year-old man was fishing with his 13 year old son and another family member when washed off rocks at Port Kembla Beach in Wollongong, he was pulled from the water after drifting some 200m out to sea. Paramedics could not revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene. While tensions have eased between North Korea and its rivals a town on the South Korean border remains on high alert. Situation just 10km from the demilitarised zone. Residents believe they are a prime target if Kim Jong-un was to strike. 8 specialised bunkers are on stand by, three more are under construction. Pamphlets have been distributed through the town you can instructing locals on how to react in the event of an attack. In sport, Stephen Milne is in hot water again after his involvement with Essendon players. Facing one match on the sidelines for striking. At the same time Demons captain says his side is brimming with renewed confidence following their come from behind win over the jie jie. It's good seeing the -- Giants. Unfortunately the last few weeks the boys have been flat coming into these sessions. Dustin Fletcher and Michael hurly have been ruled out on Thursday. The midfield players are a wonderful group of players, Swan and those guys have been big Anzac Days the opportunity for ourmlers to be competitive with this emand turn the game into eye real scrap which is that Anzac Day seems to be. Tomorrow's forecast, sunny in the east and west, hot in the north. Leigh Hatcher, thank you so. Much. We'll be back right after this break with a look at some of the issues in this very marginal part of Melbourne. Stay with us. Welcome back to the Burwood Hotel and the Melbourne seat of Deakin. We're in the suburb of Nunawading and in just ore an hour from now Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be taking part in her first Sky News People's Forum of this election year. Last week we were with opposition leader Tony Abbott in Geelong. This seat Deakin is the second most marginal seat. Held by Labor's Mike Simon on a margin of 0.6. He joins me now along with the Liberal MP Alan Tudge. Welcome to you both. Where we are here at the Burwood Hotel, Nunawading, Alan tudge, this is before a recent distribution, it was in your electorate. Now it's in your electorate. Just to clear that up. You both hold marginal seats. I'm going to show you later the mood of some of the voters. Let me ask both of you what are the most pressing issues at this election for voters in this area? I'd like to think that the voters that have been speaking to me, they come up with the same themes, time and time again, health, education, transport, infrastructure and amongst those you can break them down. People have concern with the provision of health services, whether they can get access into hospitals or other services in time. What's the local hospital here Local mopt for price is Maroondah hospital, the Box Hill hospital as well, both have long waiting lists, big elective surgery back lost. You've got concern with education, the access to it, I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Infrastructure is a big one, especially local infrastructure. This is an area that was I suppose developed back in the 60s and 70s in many cases and a lot of community infrastructure has been built back then and hasn't been touched yet. Roads and bridges? Community facilities as well, things like libraries, halls, the types of buildings people use every day or on weekend s that sort of infrastructure has fallen apart. There's been no money availability to get rebuilds. What do you regard as the issues, var similar? Some of those are important. They're concerned about the cost of living pressures which are obviously exacerbated by the carbon tax which is putting up electricity prices. People are saying to you that that's the carbon tax. The carbon tax is absolutely hurting out this way. Electricity prices have gone up enormously, and this year that's almost entirely due to the carbon tax. People are concerned about job security, particularly in the manufacturing sector, there's a manufacturing belt way out this way. Have there been jobs lost in manufacturing around here? Yeah, there have been some jobs lost in the manufacturing sector. They're struggling with the high Aussie dollar but also had to deal with things like the carbon tax, extra regulations put upon them. The is Is the carbon tax coming up for you as an issue? It's not the size of the issue that Alan says. It was an issue with people before this came in. Once it came in, especially electricity prices, most people have either been compensated, haven't noticed, have been overcompensated. It's really only the high end are the ones who have actually caught that. When you look at electricity price increases, yes, it was 10% as we said it would be, if you look at what's happened to electricity prices over Victoria over the last 6, 7 years, pretty much every year it's 10%, then another 10%, it's a really big impact coming through from the state. Can the people distinguish? You ado have to talk to them about it. Because it's an electricity bill, it turns up. It takes a bit of explaining. Of course because there was a very good advertising campaign by the Opposition on it, it was due to the carbon tax, whereas most of it was due to the state... Electricity prices were already going up. This has made things all the worse. For small businesses many have seen and creases due to the carbon tax. Australian industry groups said on average for businesses it was about a 15% increase. For manufacturing energy costs are a critical ingredient to the success of their business. If you make energy more expensive you make it so much harder for our manufacturers who are already dealing with tough issues. What are some of the manufacturers who have struggled here and had to shed jobs. The most significant one, his name I can't recall now, which is in my electorate, part of a larger company but you've got companies like Boral also which have a presence, see mens, glax co welcome, all sorts of larger organisations. Are they telling you that the carbon tax... They are all telling me that energy is a very important ingredient. Are they telling you the carbon tax is part of the problem. As well they'll say generally the tax regime, talk about regulations which have been difficult. All small businesses will tell you about that, also say the industrial relations regime is far less flexible than it used to be. All of those contribute to making it a more difficult competitive environment. Let's turn to the schools in this area, are they Jenly good schools, struggling schools? We have a great range, 50 schools across my electorate of Deakin, we go from the very top range to schools that are literally falling down. Eastwood primary, I have put my hand through the outside wall of, not because I wanted to. Not in anger. But because there was already a hole there. Buildings that are put up, similar to what I said before, in this case in the mid 50s are still there today, well past their use able life, so although the school inside is safe, the physical environment is no good for 20th century. I thought the building the education revolution was meant to fix that. It didn't replace all the classrooms, a re build of the school is a big project, we've done a couple in the electorate but it costs $8 or 9 million to build a primary school. Is there anything that will fix those classrooms. What it will do is provide more resources for the students in those classrooms. The problem is the wall, the physical building. The state government has to put money into rebiletds. This is a long ferm problem. You can't say it's now, the problem's been building and building. You've got to start. You're asking the states to cough up money for the Gonski reform inside the classroom, now spend money on the classroom itself. This is why the Government's putting two for one. The state gets good value for dollar. At the moment it's not there. An average payment to a state school is around about so% of its recession correction 10% of its recurrent funding. Alan what do you think these local schools, the parent communities think about these reforms and the prose peck of more money? The short answer is we don't know what the reforms are going to look like at this stage. The brvm didn't reach an agreement with am I Premier, Labor or Liberal at the COAG meeting a week ago. There's huge issues that still remain unresolved. What will be the disability loadings, the loading for kids struggling with English. We don't know what the deal for the Catholic sector will be, typically they only charge 1,000, 500 bucks per student per year. These are issues that remain unresolved. We don't know what the package will finally look like. The farce of the Prime Minister's process, it's been nine years now since the Government - since the Labor Party has had a proper - has had a school funding policy, nine years, and they still haven't resolved all the issues that need to be resolved. It's supposed to be in place next year. Intl some like the disability loading is taking a while because you have to finds a definition of disability that all the states can agree on. Are you saying that Victoria shouldn't sign up to that until that's been lock ed in? Victoria will want to know what the agreement says in all of its intricacies, how much red tape they are going to have to deal with, they are going to want to know what the overall magnitude of the funding arrangements is. Let's turn to the budget impact because this will have an impact on the budget, some of the money's coming from universities and some of it from current school funding. We saw today the Grattan Institute warning we are going to face budget problems for years to come. In the next decade getting as bad as $60 billion. Is either sides willing to take what the Grattan Institute says are the unpopular decisions and take the knife to education, welfare. It's a really good question that they've posed because it's talking long term. What they've said, if things don't change it's going to become entrenched. It's a problem not only for Governments of today or Oppositions of today but Governments of the future. What services do we want, what can we cut back. Do you think we should be cutting back now? I don't think we should be cutting back now. We're in an area where our economy is doing well, but we don't want to push it much harder. No more cuts? Every MP is going to say no more cuts in their electorate. I'll put up my hand. Should there be more budget cuts? Y we're in this situation now where we've got $300 billion and budget deficits as far as the eye can see. The Government's putting us in this position. We weren't having this conversation five years ago. Now the Grattan Institute report goes through this, it talks about the situation and it also provides some possible solutions as well. It does say we should be in surpluses now. Made cuts now? There does need to be some cuts now. Can you say where? The Coalition has already put cuts on the table from the last election. For example we can't funds the school kids' bonus and there are other savings that can be made. We need to look at workforce participation, try to boost productivity again, try to get the businesses thriving once more by reducing taxes, getting rid of red tape, supporting R and D, that's the type of things we need to do. We're going to wrap things up there. We'll be back right after the break. You're watching PM Agenda. Time to check the news headlines with Leigh Hatcher. Good afternoon again. The Prime Minister is preparing to face questions from undecided voters at the People's Forum in Melbourne. Julia Gillard will be quizzed by 100 people at the Burwood Hotel at Nunawading. It follows Tony Abbott's People's Forum late last week. Coverage will begin at 5 o'clock eastern here on Sky News National. The Grattan Institute has warned Australia must prepare tore difficult economic times ahead by reducing its overall budget deficit. A new think the think tank says the nation faced a decade of deficits ahead. The Treasurer revealed on Sunday Government revenues would be less than originally forecast. Tony Abbott says revenue is not the problem and the Government needs to curb its spending. The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings is reportedly awake and responding to questions in writing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev regained consciousness but is un able to talk because of a gunshot wound to his throat. The former lead singer of the Australian rock group the Divinyls Chrissy Amphlett has died in New York. She had been battle ing cancer for several years and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was 5.3. To sport and the Asian league's championship clash in South Korea is likely to be one of the last times they play together. Trent Sainsbury, goalkeeper Matt Ryan and striker Bernie ibeany need to move joefrs seas to further their development. Mostly sunny in the east and west. Isolated showers easing in the south and hot in the north. We are coming to you live from the Burwood Hotel in the Melbourne suburb of Nunawading. It's in the federal electorate of Deakin, one of the most marginal in the country, held by Labor on less than 1%. In one hour from now Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be taking questions from undecided voters here at the 'Herald Sun' Sky News People's Forum. One of the issues it's an issue that's been in focus the last couple of days, the size of the deficit and what the Government is doing about it. Earlier today we heard Christopher Pyne saying that the budget crisis is a crisis for the country as well. He was talking to Kieran Gilbert. He have deficits as far as the eye can see. Wayne Swan has never delivered a surplus and of course they inherited precisely the. So we will McAuley of our poll Chris before the election and during the election campaign. We don't know yet what the terrible situation is, just how ba it is. We are in crisis, the country is in crisis because of this Government. Those words prompted the Government's Greg Combet to front a press conference to accuse the Opposition of talking the economy down. I spoke to the Minister a short while ago. Greg Combet, thanks for your time. You've accused the Opposition of talking down the economy. What exactly has been said that you think has gone too far. Christopher Pyne who is of course Tony Abbott's right hand man in parliament has been out there today, on Sky, in fact, claiming that the economy is in crisis and everything's terrible, of course it's just a ridiculous position. The economy is strong, we're growing at just over 3%, created over 900,000 jobs since coming into office. Unemployment is relatively low at 5.6%, inflation contained at 2.2%, and an awful lot of investment coming into the economy, $270 billion. I think it's incumbent upon political leaders to represent the economy in a positive fashion and not talking about down. Wasn't Christopher Pyne and the Opposition talking about the budget being in crisis, not the economy.No, not from my reading of the transcript, it was the country is in crisis, the economy is in crisis, we need to keep a bit of perspective here. The Opposition has been pretty good at crementing a sense that all these things are awry. But, in fact, the economy is on a very solid footing. When you consider the circumstances overseas, for example the UK economy is certainly not growing at all and their debt to GDP ratio is very high, ours is only 10%. That's why we've got a AAA credit rating from the three global credit ratings agencies, we are only one of eight countries. We are in a good position. Still we do hear even the Treasurer talking about the impact of the continued high Australian dollar. We spoke over the weekend about taking a slem hammer to revenues in Australia. Does that instill confidence? The Treasurer is trying to point to despite the good economic performance there are significant pressures. Of course he's pointed to the high value of the Australian dollar, it makes it tougher for domestic industries and tougher for exports to compete. But also we're coping with the effects of the global financial crisis which has continued now for a long period of time, the last five years and in particular is still impacting very severely in Europe. These things all impact on our budget. We've had $160 billion writedowns in revenues and of course that's what the Government is signalling we need to come to grips with in the budget. One of the other writedowns in revenues that you're like ly to face in a couple of years time is when the carbon tax price links in with the European price. That's going to have a hit on have ares as well. When we move to the float can price in 2015/6, we'll take an international price and that's Xiaobo actually what the business community says it wants. We move to a floating price which will the international price. As I indicated and the Treasurer indicated last week... What's that going to do to revenues. The Treasurer has got to do an updated forecast of the carbon price in 2015/16 and the revenue. And we'll obviously demonstrate that on budget night. Isn't it time to acknowledge that if the revenue is going to be lower, you don't need to hand out as much in households compensation. That if the price of the carbon tax is so much lower you don't need to compensate households and industry as much. It's about important from our point of view in introducing the carbon price it's done in an environmentally effective way and it's done in an economically responsible way and we haven't seen the disaster that Tony Abbott forecast, the economy is going along well, but we also do it in a socially effective manner. One of the important reforms is to treble the tax free threshold. That has liberated 1 million of the lowest paid people in our country, they no longer have to file a tax return or pay tax. It's always been the case when we move to a float ing price the price will be what the price will be. Just always a principle, if the price of carbon is a lot lower surely the household compensation needs to be lower?No, I'm not speculating about any of that. How about we let Treasury do the updated forecasts and we deliver it all in the budget before you start speculating about anything. If you're not paying as much for the carbon tax as a household surely you don't need as much combination? I'm pointing to a very important reform at the core of it all. That is we've lifted 1 million people out of the tax net altogether. You have to set priorities, sustaining that increase in the tax free threshold is an important priority for this Government. The revenues across the board are down, the budget's under a lot of pressure, surely we can't afford some of these things. Well Governments and making budgets is about setting priorities for the country. Of course we're prioritising jobs, economic growth and prioror tieing education in particular and the development of a National Disability Insurance Scheme. Another pry avert has been the trebling of the tax free threshold. You've got your priorities there and you adjust other pressure s as appropriate. I can assure you with all of the pressures and revenue writedowns this Government is committed to sustaining economic growth and to continue to grow jobs. We've had more than 900,000 jobs created since 2007. And the way that we've handled the global financial crisis has been enormously important for jobs. I'm just wondering from a budget management, responsible budget management perspective, you've now got the mining tax and the carbon tax which may not be raising enough money to cover the things they're paying for, things that have already been committed. All I can say to you is we intnd putting the budget together on the basis of what resources we have and prioritise ing, on budget night the Treasurer will spell out how all that has been resolved. Can you as Industry Minister ensure that money well spent in the years to come? Let me emphasise again that there's about 250,000 people whose livelihoods depend one way or the other on the car industry in this country. As Industry Minister I take that extremely seriously. We are proud of the fact we've put in place the new car plan and are continuing to work with the car companies, they're certainly under the lot of pressure. Over the last 12 or 24 months from the high Australian dollar but in the last few months in particular the quantitative easing taking place in Japan that has led to a significant depreciation in the Japanese yen against the Australian dollar is having an impact on small car production in Australia. We're going to keep working with the car companies, it's a vital industry, critical to manufacturing, and I think we've got a total opposite position to the Opposition. Their position is a cut of $500 billion before 2015. They will destroy the car industry and many people's jobs will go with it. People will focus on that the closer we get to the election, particularly in the states of South Australia and Victoria. Tony Abbott says he might be able to encourage Ford to produce left hand vehicles. In Australia for sale. Over seas. Has the Government tried that? Are you kidding. Tony Abbott thinks he's going to do a business plan for an international car company? This guy finds economics boring. I wouldn't be allowing him to do a business plan for me if I was a car company. I think Ford and General Motors might have the capacity to do their own business plan. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks David, Biwot. After the break we're going to have a look at what some of the locals in this seat of Deakin have to say about the political contest on offer this election year. We'll hit the streets and bring you those views. Stay with us. Is Welcome back to the program. Coming you live from the Burwood Hotel in Melbourne. In about 45 minutes the Prime Minister will be here taking questions from undecided voters at the 'Herald Sun' Sky News People's Forum. We're in one of the most marginal seats in the country, Deakin, held by Labor on less than 1%. Had a wander around a little earlier today, talked about the locals about conditions of concern to them. Might give you a sense of the mood in this very marginal electorate. How do you think the two sides are going? Well, I don't think one is any better than the other to be quite honest. Really, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott makes no difference?No, I would like to see somebody else in completely. You don't know which way you're going to vote yet. No. Has Julia Gillard done anything well?No, I get the feeling a lot of people buying votes. Probably both Labor and Liberals. And that worries you?Yes. Do you think Julia Gillard has been a good Prime Minister? No. Do you think Tony Abbott would be? No. So you're not too keen to either of them? Not at all. I think the way Australian politics is at the moment it's at its lowest level ever. That goes for state and federal level. Always voted Liberal, Do you think Tony Abbott would make a good Prime Minister? Not hundred per cent certain about that. Yes, Joe Hockey that's right, yes. You think he'd make a good PM. I think he would. Perhaps he needs to mature a little bit. What about Julia Gillard has she been a good Prime Minister? I don't think so. Why not? She's let us down, Labor has gone Sprend thrift, she hasn't stopped the boats. Do you know which way you're going to go yet? Probably Labor I think. Why is that? I've always been that way and I said the final sort of thing in it when the Liberals announced the plan for the NBN and when I compared them together the labour one kind of was, had a head up on it. So the NBN is going to lock your vote in for Labor. Pretty much. I don't pay enough attention to really figure out what else is relevant to me. That's pretty much it. What about Julia Gillard do you reckon she's been a good Prime Minister? I reckon she has. You can criticise every politician, with this election you've got to pick the less ever of two Eels. She's stuck pretty well to Labor directions. She's made some silly mistakes but anybody in a job like that does. I think her percentage is better than another direction. And does Tony Abbott worry you, the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister? Yes, I don't really think it's going to happen. I think the Liberals will do something to put better control up the top. So you think Labor can win? It's going to be tough. Labor spend all the money and leave us in deficit. And tell a lot of lies about what they're going to do, and they don't do it. And I just don't like them. So it's a management of the budget really that's got you concerned. Yeah, and you know, the Libs build up the money. Labor just get rid of it on social issues. If we go with them we'll end up like Greece. I always go with Liberal. And you're not sure this time. I am not sure this time. Why aren't you sure. Because I think they are both nearly, nearly the same, very, very similar both of them. You think these school reforms, we just can't afford them. Right now we can't . But I think we should plan for them, and lock in what you wan to do. Like any private company you have to plan your budgets and your explanation pansion of your company. You can't say we're going to spend it because it's a great idea to do right now. What's making it so urgent today when three years ago, more or less whatever, I think about three years ago Garrett was saying the education revolution, you know why it's urgent because Julia Gillard wants to have a list to check off and say these are all the great things I've done, I've done this for the country, blah, blah can blah. What's he really done? You think Tony Abbott has got the right plans? It's hard to tell, he and the Liberal Party need to come out and say this is exactly what they're going to do. Like say we can't afford to do it right now, we will do that in two years from now, whether people like it or not. But then the average person in the street instead of them saying we don't trust any politicians, they all lie. Instead of saying that they could say, okay we can lock in to that, we can go with that plan. You've got to know the good news and the bad necessary. The views on the streets of Nunawading in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. Let's bring in now the 'Herald Sun''s national economics editor Jessica Irvine. Welcome to the Burwood Hotel. The PM will be here in a little over half an hour. Interesting talking to local voters, this issue about how the budget is being managed or mismanaged clearly is an issue for some of them. Do you think it is going to be an issue for voters tonight will raise with the Prime Minister? This is what I'm starting to see shape up in this election campaign. Even with Tony Abbott saying this reckless spending won't stop. I won't promise as much money as Labor. If you don't have the money you don't pay for things. He's starting to sharpen that line of attack. It's incumbent on Labor to come in and say this $14.5 billion that we're spending, that is an economic investment that will return a dividend in terms of increased productivity. So... Which they haven't really done in terms terms of the productivity angle. They talked about lifting and helping kids in schools but not tying it to an economic story. That's where they're missing the opportunity. Because a dollar Spefent on education should yield you something more than a dollar in the future. When your kids are smarter, think of bitter jobs to do, do them faster and smarter. We haven't had that line of attack come out yet. That is the strategy that Labor has to take now, saying this isn't any old kind of spending, this is an investment. There is that opportunity for Labor to say we're not going to go cutting the budget. There's reports out today saying to bring the budget back you need $60 billion in cuts. That Grattan Institute study, it's a big number, the $620 billion over the next decade. Are they on the money? They are, this isn't something that hasn't crept into the-ness yet, that the mining boom is receding. The tide's pulling back, we've been swimming neighbouring. It's all about to become clear when this revenue isn't coming in the door. It's going to become clear that the Howard Government gave away too much in personal income tax cuts. That Labor did spend money during the GFC even that people supported that. In the wake of that they've applied new taxes and new spending so actually the new taxes that they've tried to put in haven't done anything to restore the tax base. Let me ask you this, this is going to be the debate for the next few weeks, is now the time to be cutting or not because Wayne Swan's language for now used to be about we've got to get back to surplus, now it's about we want to protect jobs. Is now the time to be making further cuts or not? I think now is the time to be cleaning up after yourself. You should find offsetting savings, re allocate the spending so you can make room for that. Really what Swan was trying to say is we can't make up for the effect of the real economy on the budget. The economy is a bit softer, normal GDP isn't growing as fast. If we did try to chase the budget down and keep it in balance, that would hurt the economy, and that does take spending out of the economy, and potentially leads you into this cycle where economists say that's pro cyclical policy if you're cutting as the economy is weakening, that's a bad idea. No economist is going to tell you that they need to go out in this budget and find $60 billion worth of savings. That would have a large impact on the economy. But prudent nips and tucks, savings to make up for the new spending, good idea. No, you wouldn't want to be cutting massive amounts to chase it down. We will see what comes up in the forum, whether those issues of budget management are going to dominate. As you probably heard in the last hour or so we've had the news confirmed that Chrissy Amphlett the Aussie rock legend has sadly passed away. Leigh Hatcher on the news desk has some more on this. She passed away in New York at the age of 53. Joining us for a reaction is music critic Paul cashmere, sad loss for Australian music, again only 53. Absolutely, Chrissy Amphlett was one of the great rock stars of the music business, had some tremendous international success right around the world over the last 20 years, very sad day indeed for the music industry. How would you define the magic the edge that Chrissy Amphlett gave to the Divinyls up front? She came along, she was ferocious, she had that schoolgirl uniform and the fish net stockings and she had the voice and the looks, and she had the sound and I think it just connected with the Australian public in the early 1980s. There was a movie called 'Monkey grip' which was the showcase for the first Divinyls s music we heard. Then a string of hits right through to the early 90s when they actually went into the top 10 in the UK, the US A and number one in Australia with a song called 'I touch myself' Ever She Adelaide been I will ill for some time. Quite a number of years battle ing breast cancer and particularly in the last couple of years it got quite serious and today was the culmination of basically a lot of hard work but sadly she lost her battle with breast cancer today. Very sad loss. Very important contribution to Australian music. David back to you for the people's forum. Leigh, thanks so much for that. Sad news this afternoon. No doubt more reflections on that throughout the evening as well. Coming up after the break Kieran Gilbert will be along with his panel to preview the People's Forum with Julia Gillard which gets under way in just half an hour from now. Stay with us right here on Sky News. Live Captioning by Ai-Media ai-media.tv.