‘Happy days are here again’ budget is back

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is set to give Australia its first “happy days are here again” budget since the glory days of the Peter Costello tax-cutting budgets of the early 2000s.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will hand down the federal budget on Tuesday.

Tuesday night Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is giving us our first “happy days are here again” budget since the glory days of the Peter Costello tax-cutting budgets of the early 2000s.

But whereas those Costello budgets gave us tax cuts and budget surpluses, Frydenberg’s will be one of splashing around money and, inevitably, budget deficits, certainly all the way through the official four-year estimates.

They will also leave us with a trillion dollar debt hangover at the ‘end’ of it.

Again, in contrast, Costello’s record 11 budgets, and surpluses, left us with zero debt and over $60bn in the Future Fund (now grown to $180bn).

There’s going to be – taxpayer – money for just about everybody. It’s going to be an ‘old person’s budget’; a ‘woman’s budget’; a ‘homebuyer’s budget’; an ‘infrastructure budget’; and who knows what else beside.

You’re a ‘group’ that wants money?

Josh has got a billion or ten for you.

And, thanks to China – and more upbeat (rose-coloured glasses-style?) Treasury forecasts for the economy - he’s still going to be able to unveil smaller deficits than were predicted just five months ago in the mid-year budget update.

While the deficits will be smaller, they will still be big. And endless.

Yes, there’s a good chance that Treasury will forecast the budget will actually get back into the black in the early 2030s. Yeah sure; in the alternative reality of fiscal forecasting fantasy land.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will hand down the federal budget on Tuesday.

This is clearly an election budget, but it does not mean the election will follow soon or even necessarily this year. That will all depend on the polling and on the virus and the vaccine.

Contrast this with 2016, when then PM Turnbull and Treasurer Morrison had a decidedly NON-election budget – it whacked rather than showered cash like this budget – and thought it was a ‘good idea’ to immediately call an election.

Yeah, that turned out to be ‘very good idea, not’. The inevitable result of course was that Turnbull lost his majority, clung to power and then got dumped.

I don’t think I’ve seen a treasurer and PM-in-waiting being more active in the media selling his budget before it even comes out, than we’ve seen from a very buoyant Frydenberg over the last week or so.

He is sensible enough to wait a little longer.

Originally published as ‘Happy days are here again’ budget is back