The inconvenient fact of the election campaign is that the out-of-control NDIS is the place to start paring public spending back to pre-COVID levels to reduce the structural budget deficit.
The day before news broke that inflation had surged to 5 per cent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that federal, state and local governments collectively had spent $876 billion in 2020-21, representing 42.4 per cent of gross domestic product.
Although as significant as the surge in inflation – and not unrelated to it – this alarming figure largely managed to dodge the spotlight.
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Robert Carling is a Senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, and a former IMF and federal and state Treasury economist.
