Federal budget will be the Morrison-Frydenberg campaign manifesto for May election

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Tasmania. Picture: Alex Treacy

Whatever happened to the budget deficit – or indeed, more broadly, the overall budget itself?

It really is quite extraordinary that two weeks out from the 2022 budget, there’s been virtually no media ‘reporting’ – actually, more accurately and honestly, deliberately fed out ‘leaks’ - about what wonderful things it is going to do.

That’s to say, more specifically, if it’s not actually going to cure Covid, it will gaily splash some (more) of your money around it.

Now true there have been certain other ‘events’, dear boy, to grab the media’s attention – a little war in a far-away country; the shock death of an Aussie icon.

Incidentally, if you want to get an interesting – as in, bizarre – insight into the way people see things, listen to and read British obits of Warnie: like the BBC one claiming he was more highly regarded over there than down here because of the ‘misbehaviours’.

Anyway, the budget. Yes, we’ve had those other events, but this one coming up is not exactly another one of your common or garden, thousand-page snooze-fests.

It is the first budget of the ‘post-Covid era’, such as it is and whatever that quite might turn out to mean; but a budget stuffed with the fiscal baggage of the two preceding ‘Covid budgets’.

Secondly, it will be all-but officially the Morrison-Frydenberg campaign manifesto for the upcoming May election.

This will be the third time in a row that the budget’s been used to launch the election campaign. You have to say the last two didn’t turn out to be exactly master-classes in political strategy and success.

In 2016 then-PM Malcolm Turnbull and his then-treasurer Scott Morrison thought it was a good idea to launch the campaign off a budget that whacked some sections of the Coalition’s base, And then meander aimlessly through a two-month campaign.

That dynamic duo managed to – just – stumble over the line, but wiping out the commanding majority that Tony Abbott had won in 2013, with messages that were simple, cut-through digestible and appealing.

Scott Morrison Prime Minister (right) and Josh Frydenberg in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Then in 2019, then – and current – PM Scott Morrison and his then-and-now treasurer Josh Frydenberg used the budget again as the springboard into the election campaign.

As we know, it officially took a miracle – and, unofficially, Bob Brown’s Gaia-worshipping convoy to Queensland – to save the duo’s political skin.

However, I must concede, that looked at from a somewhat different angle - like those British Warnie obits – the budgets and the ‘events’ along the way could be said to have turned out quite well for ScoMo personally.

He’s ended up as Australia’s 13th longest-serving PM, getting past such notables as Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd.

If he gets his second – bigger, huger, capital-M – Miracle in May, he’ll race past such great Labor icons as John Curtin, Paul Keating and Ben Chifley and into the Top Ten.

So there really is a lot riding on this budget: whether we get a ‘Top Tenner’ or Kevin Rudd Version 2.0 in the Lodge after it.

Oh yes, and incidentally, the welfare of the other 26 million or so of you.

Now, we’ve come a long way from the shock – and shocking – 2020 budget, delivered late in October, in the very heart of the Covid darkness.

That forecast a shocking $214bn deficit for the 2020-21 year, falling only to $112bn in the current year we are in.

It forecast continuing and really only slightly smaller deficits as far as the fiscal eye could see into the future.

Total federal government debt – which had actually hit zero when Peter Costello ceased to be treasurer in 2007 – would pass $1tr by June this year, on the way to $2tr.

These numbers looked somewhat better in the last budget update last December.

We never got anywhere near that $214bn deficit; it came in at ‘just’ $138bn. But this current year’s deficit is forecast to only be down to $106bn from that $112bn feared.

Further, you could almost breathe fiscally easy - we won’t hit the $1tr gross debt mark now until June next year, one year later.

Whoopee. Burt it’s still on track for $2tr, whenever.

The best pointer to the ‘political side’ in the coming budget was the final ‘balancing item’ line in the long list of all the new spending proposals in the December update.

This was the amounts for “Decisions taken but not yet announced and not for publication (nfp)”.

That’s to say, spending decisions the government had already taken but didn’t want to tell us about yet.

They added to $16bn over the next four years, with the biggest amount – the biggest bang for them for what is quite literally your buck – some $5.6bn to be spent in the remaining months of this fiscal year out to the end of June.

We’ll find out where that’s going in two weeks. And away we all will a-politicking go.