Joe Hildebrand: The NSW Budget is boring, but that’s not a bad thing

This Budget is a self-congratulatory celebration of the painfully pointy-headed. No big cash splash, no big bottom-line blowout, just slow and steady spending restraint and a pathway back to surplus, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Treasurer Daniel Mookhey. Picture: Rohan Kelly

“I did say we’d get to nerd out about bond yields so let’s do that.”

With those soul-stirring words, Daniel Mookhey reached the climax of his Budget presentation, leaving his small army of breathless Treasury officials struggling to stop themselves from breaking out in spontaneous applause.

The Treasurer made good on his promised treat — bond yields are doing just fine in case you were wondering — but it is the very fact that the government is going peak geek that is the real story.

This Budget is boring. And boring is good.

A wise man once said that if people were excited about politics that was a bad sign in itself. If politics is working properly then nobody is paying any attention to it and people are arguing about the footy.

Thus this Budget is a self-congratulatory celebration of the painfully pointy-headed. No big cash splash, no big bottom-line blowout, just slow and steady spending restraint and a pathway back to surplus.

Want a sexy tabloid headline? Expenses growth is at 2.4 per cent compared to 6.2 per cent under the previous government. Readers will need a cold shower after that one.

But lower spending means less inflation which means more chance of a rate cut — and that’s the sort of thing that can really spice up date night for married mortgagees.

Treasurer Daniel Mookhey and Finance Minister Courtney Houssos at the Budget press conference. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Indeed, this Budget wears its boringness as a badge of honour.

“This is certainly not glamorous — depreciation and amortisation,” the Treasurer said with unguarded delight about one fiscal drag, while of another: “It’s the poles and it’s the pipes and it’s not particularly glamorous.”

It sure isn’t. But glamour doesn’t issue pre-sale finance guarantees.

Still, it wouldn’t be a state Budget without a good old fashioned turf war over GST funding.

Noting NSW was the second-best performing state after WA, Mookhey quickly added: “I don’t really count WA.”

Even the warm-up act was in on it, with Treasury Secretary Michael Coutts-Trotter saying: “They are James Magnussen and we are Kyle Chalmers.”

Yes, you can’t spell “horizontal fiscal imbalance” without LOL.