No vote sweeteners as budget update props up ongoing expenses and cost blowouts

Eager election observers would have better luck divining the timing of next year’s federal election in a cup of tea leaves than trying to glean hints from Labor’s budget update.

Analysis: Eager election observers would have better luck divining the timing of next year’s federal election in a cup of tea leaves than trying to glean hints from Labor’s budget update.

Although the Albanese government has unveiled an extra $58.3bn in extra spending over the next four years, practically all of the additional cash was to prop up ongoing expenses and cost blowouts – there was not a vote sweetener to be found.

Not the approach traditionally taken when an incumbent is months way from asking the public to keep them in office.

But as has been the case for this entire term, Labor is rightly wary of the inflationary impacts of any economic sugar hits.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers releasing the mid-year budget update in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Labor’s $5.5bn in “decisions taken but not yet announced” is hardly the election war chest dreams are made of, but to set aside any more than that – like the $15bn the Coalition parked in MYEFO ahead of the 2022 election – would have risked the ire of the Reserve Bank.

With the prospect of a February rate cut already dwindling, thanks to stronger-than-expected jobs figures released earlier this month, even the whisper of a government poised to spray cash around to win an election would have undoubtedly concerned the RBA board.

Instead, Labor will try to run on its economic credentials – two surpluses and a smaller deficit in their first three years.

Just don’t look out over the forwards where the budget numbers are red as far as the eye can see.

Without spending cues to rely on for guessing when between February and May that Anthony Albanese will send Australians to the polls, all that’s left is the “vibe”.

How the public is feeling as the first post-Christmas credit card statements arrive in the new year will be as good a barometer as any on the timing of next year’s federal election.

Originally published as No vote sweeteners as budget update props up ongoing expenses and cost blowouts