Federal Budget 2021: Frydenberg evokes the spirit of Menzies … just a bit

Josh Frydenberg may be part of one of the only governments in the world that can boast both a successful coronavirus response and a roaring economy, writes James Morrow.

It’s a tricky business to guess what another man is thinking, but one can imagine a few of the things going through Anthony Albanese’s mind as the Treasurer delivered his budget speech.

“Can you believe this guy’s luck?”, or words to that effect, were likely among them.

After all, Mr Frydenberg may be part of one of the only governments in the world that can boast both a successful coronavirus response and a roaring economy, and Tuesday’s budget will be very difficult for Labor to answer without getting locked into a spending arms race, pushing themselves further from the centre.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Photo: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

While economic dries and deficit hawks may be appalled, Mr Frydenberg’s willingness to keep spending big on the economy suits the times — even if there may be a reckoning down the road.

The fact is, there is zero appetite for austerity, and any hints in that direction, this close to an election, would be a boon for Labor.

There was no way with interest so low the Treasurer was going to leave all that money on the table and risk the bottom falling out of the economy and instead insist on paying down debt.

And for better or worse, the budget also tilts the Liberals away from a doctrinaire free-market fundamentalism that lets people sink or swim, and instead reaffirms the social capital that is created by home ownership and frontline healthcare workers and what the government has more than once called “Team Australia”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Photo: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

When combined with some of Scott Morrison’s recent and welcome remarks about culture, the astute listener can almost hear an echo of Robert Menzies talking about the instinct to “have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours” and complaining of “the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs.”

Originally published as Federal Budget 2021: Frydenberg evokes the spirit of Menzies … just a bit