Federal budget 2020: Josh Frydenberg creates a plan for every Australian
In a true budget for every Australian, Josh Frydenberg has laid out a job-creating, economy stimulating plan that crucially has an end point for the cash splash in sight, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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If he had to saddle a generation with debt, the Treasurer needed to make it worth our while.
In a true budget for every Australian, Josh Frydenberg has laid out a job-creating, economy stimulating plan that crucially has an end point for the cash splash in sight.
While Australia has necessarily turned to Keynesian-style, massive government spending to lift the country out of the economic crisis of a lifetime, Frydenberg has put a decidedly Liberal stamp on his work.
He has turned to the power of the individual and nous of small business to drive our recovery, with targeted measures to get them spending and, more importantly, get people back in jobs.
Frydenberg’s recovering Australia is painted as a place where hope rules: “a trucking company will be able to upgrade its fleet, a farmer will be able to purchase a new harvester and a food manufacturing business will be able to expand its production line,” he says, describing the impact of his business boost.
But there are big caveats for us to swallow — this budget rests on some hopeful assumptions.
It is based on the idea we’ll have a vaccine by the end of next year, that state borders — except WA — will be open by the end of this year, and that we do not need to stare down another Victorian-style second wave.
This, to be fair, is surely one of our best case scenarios.
In reality, the dose of hope we’ve been served in this budget must be tempered by the reality of a pandemic enemy we can’t predict.
Frydenberg, though, is almost singularly focused on something we can predict — our unemployment rate. He rightly believes we need to tackle no matter how that vaccine and those other assumptions pan out.
Frydenberg has repeatedly reflected on how in previous recessions, unemployment has “gone up the elevators and down the stairs”.
He wants to get it “down the stairs” faster than they did in the 1980s when it took six years to get back below six per cent and faster than in the 1990s when it took a decade.
We can’t do much to control when a vaccine emerges, but we can do our bit to stimulate the economy.
Frydenberg has laid out a budget with cash for almost everyone _ and now the onus is on us to spend it.
