{"id":652475,"date":"2026-05-06T03:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/652475\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:43:15","slug":"building-the-warning-australia-should-heed-ahead-of-the-federal-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/652475\/","title":{"rendered":"building&#8217; &#8211; The warning Australia should heed ahead of the federal budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>Michael McLaren has shared a message for every Australian ahead of next week\u2019s federal budget.<\/p>\n<p>The 2GB Afternoons host has warned every Australian to take any forecasted figure with a grain of salt, as the only certainty in the budget papers will be the lack of projects coming in on budget.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s made it clear that the nation cannot afford projects blowing out \u2013 including inland rail, which any proposed figure has now blown out since it was first proposed nearly 20\u00a0 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s not to suggest that Canberra simply abandon nation-building projects because Treasury can\u2019t forecast very well, but it is to suggest that we only undertake projects that are necessary, essential, and genuinely nation-building.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to more highlights from Afternoons below:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Image: iStock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael McLaren has shared a message for every Australian ahead of next week\u2019s federal budget. The 2GB Afternoons&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-652475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}