Government budgets can be both eye-watering and mind-numbing affairs. Even budget updates, like the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook released on Thursday, involve hundreds of pages of analysis, projections and data points. What really matters about such economic statements is the impact the decisions within them have on the lives of Australians now and into the future.

This latest update further demonstrates how recent budgets have served Australians well – before COVID-19, through the depths of the pandemic, and in the recovery that is now under way.