Treasurers state and federal are coasting on unsustainable revenue

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns.

At core the incoming Minns-Mookhey NSW state Labor Government has done exactly what the incoming Albanese-Chalmers Federal Labor Government has also done.

This is to build a budget that rides the tax revenue benefits from the hundreds of thousands of migrants flooding into Sydney – a proportion of the millions that will flood into Australia through the 2020s.

While, in both cases, postponing into future manana budgets the costs of providing services to those bigger populations: both the basic infrastructure build and the people to staff them; the schools and hospitals, the teachers and medical staff.

In both cases, Treasurer Chalmers in Canberra and Treasurer Mookhey in Sydney, are also more than happy to pocket billions from the boom in the very industries they want to close down and obliterate - fossil fuel exports, gas and coal, along with of course iron ore,

In Canberra, in just seven months, expected tax receipts were revised up by a thumping $135bn over the next five years, including a massive $42bn in this current year all on its own.

The extra $42bn this year will all come from just two sources.

First, an extra $29bn in company tax – due to, and I quote, “elevated commodity prices”; and, trust me, Chalmers was not talking about more income from the wool exports on which the ‘old Australia’ used to ride.

And second, an extra $15bn than expected, in a single year – due to, and again I quote, “a larger labour force”. Read: more people - arriving from overseas.

It’s a similar story with the NSW budget numbers.

The Minns-Mookhey duo are happy to grab an extra $2.4bn from the coal exporters they want to drive out of business – a problem to resolve for ‘someone else’s’ budget, manana.

They are also writing in huge increases in payroll taxes – the bigger migration-driven worker numbers - along with ever-escalating property transfer duties (the new stamp duty), thanks to ever-rising population-squeezing Sydney property prices.

It’s great for a budget in the short-term, if not so great for ordinary citizens having to live in this exploding population, escalating property price Sydney reality (and also especially Melbourne, but increasingly Brisbane as well).

It can make fiscal heroes of a treasurer, slicing budget deficits – at least, in the privacy of their bathroom mirror each morning.

But what’s going to be the reality in that manana future, when it arrives, as it will, in both Canberra and Sydney, and of course in a post-Chairman Dan Melbourne?

We’ll still have massive debts – approaching $200bn in NSW, well over $200bn in Victoria, somewhere north of $700bn in Canberra.

Along with much bigger populations screaming for the schools, the hospitals, the transport networks – teachers, doctors, nurses, and of course, police, ambos, fire service personnel etc etc – and even just houses: all unbuilt and unhired.

But at least we will have closed down all our coal-fired power stations and replaced them with, and I quote from the new boy-treasurer’s budget, “more affordable” renewables.

Funny, then, how this more “affordable” electricity demands billions in handouts to NSW consumers to actually make even just barely affordable.

All, insanity.