Is Australia still Max Walsh’s ‘poor little rich country’?
The pre-election debate around the budget shows why today’s political class should read the AFR Classic from The Australian Financial Review’s former editor Max Walsh.
Confronting never-ending fiscal deficits, Josh Frydenberg’s pre-election budget on Tuesday night is set to follow Australia’s biggest-ever budget emergency spending package with another cash handout to households and a cut to petrol excise in order to gain votes in the May election.
The Labor opposition, too, refuses to commit to a credible budget repair strategy so Australia can rebuild its fiscal buffers in case another crisis hits, and to make headroom for the rising health, aged care, disability and defence expenditure.
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