‘Lucky Jim’ delivers middle class budget that helps unluckiest first

The government is putting in skywriting ‘generous relief for the struggling’ while those who can weather the storm are expected to tough it out for a couple more years before being rewarded with tax cuts.

The government is backing gas as a future energy source to keep a lid on soaring energy prices. Picture: Getty Images

If you dust off your old economic textbook and look up the correct fiscal term for a budget like this you’ll find it’s “Kicked in the arse by a rainbow”.

Because for a bloke who took an affirmation instead of an oath when he was sworn in as Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese sure does seem to have God on his side.

Or maybe Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been saying a few extra Hail Marys to bring his boss back into the fold. Either way, last night’s Budget result is little short of a miracle.

Most Australians had resigned themselves to the thought that they would not be seeing a surplus for a generation and yet thanks to the weirdest economic crisis in modern history and the ever-present resources boom that no Greenie can kill Chalmers has delivered one in his first full Budget.

No doubt the Treasurer will now wear the moniker “Lucky Jim” for the rest of his days but as the old saying goes, troops would rather have a lucky general than any other kind.

Those truly struggling have been given support in various forms, including funds to help the homeless access services. Picture: John Grainger

And indeed even the argument that the government has just caught a lucky break cuts both ways. Just as the government can’t claim all the credit for the good economic outcomes and deny any responsibility for the bad, so too its critics can hardly maintain the fiction that all the bad stuff is the government’s fault but when anything good happens it’s just dumb luck.

The truth, as always, is a bit of column A and a bit of column B.

The fact is, however it happened, Labor has landed the first federal surplus in 15 years.

Josh Frydenberg must be looking out his office window at Goldman Sachs and wondering if he accidentally ran over a cat.

Doctors are being supported to offer more bulk billing appointments to those on lower incomes. Picture: Getty Images

But as I always tell my girlfriends, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts.

And what Chalmers and Albanese have done is craft a Budget aimed squarely at struggling Australians, with big billions aimed at cost of living relief for power bills, rent and healthcare.

This is, depending on how you look at it, a slap in the face for middle Australia or targeted spending to those who need it most.

On the first charge, it might be argued that given the Budget windfall came in large part from the taxes of more working Australians and more people moving into higher tax brackets, those people should have shared in more of the goodies.

In fact they will, thanks to Labor’s commitment to the Stage 3 tax cuts in the face of much opposition from the left.

And so the government is in fact rewarding aspirational Australians, it’s just not spelling it out in this particular Budget. Indeed, for Labor it is the love that dare not speak its name.

And at a time when most economists and conservatives are urging spending restraint lest any cash splash further fuels inflation, it is difficult to argue against providing relief only where the need is most acute and no further.

Elsewhere in the Budget there are signs that the Albanese government is indeed rooted in mainstream Australia, including $10 million from the Prime Minister’s own department to hold more community Australia Day events in 2024.

And Labor has also sensibly backed gas as a major future energy source, with a $6.7m future gas strategy – a strong signal to both the industry and everyday Australians that it is focused as strongly on energy security and affordability as it is on Net Zero.

The fact that both these will outrage the Greens is just an added bonus.

You can almost see the grins as they dropped these little Easter eggs in. They are elegant little jabs at the far left and a welcome sign the government is determined to position itself firmly in the centre.

Of course for anyone who missed it, the government is also putting it in skywriting: Generous relief for those truly struggling – which amounts to many millions of Australians -- while those who can weather the storm are expected to tough it out until they are rewarded by lower taxes, lower interest rates and higher wages in the years to come.

It is a big bet but it is also an each-way bet, which is fitting given the PM’s nickname. And it should not be forgotten that each-way bets are always the safest.

As for the Treasurer he is not the first JC to favour the poor or promise his people that whatever their current hardships there was a better life to come. Maybe this is why divine providence has apparently shifted from handing Scott Morrison a 2019 election to handing Jim Chalmers a 2024 surplus.

But as the former PM now knows, sooner or later all luck runs out and politicians are left only with the luck they make themselves. The fact that this Budget helps those who are the unluckiest among us is a pretty good start on that.

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