Labor’s pitch: deficit not as bad as pandemic times

Phillip Coorey and Michael Read

Updated Mar 25, 2025 – 8.05am, first published at Mar 24, 2025 – 10.30pm

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The Albanese government is banking on voters looking past the budget plunging back into deficit for the next 10 years, and focusing instead on the nation’s books being in better shape now than they were at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who will release his fourth budget on Tuesday, clearing the way for Anthony Albanese to call a May election, will boast that debt and deficit are lower now than the Treasury forecasts released during the 2022 election campaign. But they are higher than they were this time last year.

Phillip Coorey is the political editor based in Canberra. He is a two-time winner of the Paul Lyneham award for press gallery excellence.

Michael Read is the Financial Review's economics correspondent, reporting from the federal press gallery at Parliament House. He was previously an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and at UBS.