The line that reveals what’s left in the election war chest

If you need any further proof the Albanese government hadn’t planned to hand down this budget, you can find it buried at the bottom of table two on page 19 of budget paper two.

A single line item, “decisions taken but not yet announced”, reveals how little money the government has held back for a vote-buying cash splash during the looming federal election campaign.

The “decisions taken” column is the election’s war chest within the government’s larger contingency reserve – money set aside for cost blowouts, commercial-in-confidence and national security-in-confidence items and more.

In this year’s budget, over the next four years, the money held back in the war chest amounts to a miserly $1.52 billion – a drop in the ocean compared to previous budgets, particularly on the eve of an election.

There’s a long history of treasurers holding back largesse for the election campaign proper.

Former treasurer Peter Costello, back on the eve of the 2007 election, released an early mid-year budget update that had $4 billion in the “decisions taken” column. A couple of weeks later, Costello’s cunning plan was revealed: a swag of sweeteners for pensioners and carers.

Peter Costello tucked $4 billion away in his budget for undisclosed election spending. Jim Chalmers has allowed much less to play with.Credit: Michael Chambers, Dominic Lorrimer

And as recently as last December’s mid-year budget update, there was a bit over $5.5 billion squirrelled away, much of which was announced soon after in February, when Labor promised an $8.5 billion boost for Medicare to increase bulk-billing rates and make it cheaper to see a doctor.

Independent economist Saul Eslake, a veteran budget watcher, says the largest ever “decisions taken” pot he has seen was the $11.5 billion set aside in former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s 2021-22 budget, while the last two Chalmers budgets had a little under $10 billion each set aside for future announcements.

So why has Chalmers’ fourth budget set aside so little for big-spending future election campaign promises?

There’s a simple reason: Anthony Albanese.

The prime minister has been telling colleagues for months that he believes there is little point in flooding voters with election campaign announcements, particularly in an age where voters get their information from a more diverse and disaggregated group of sources.

Instead, the government took a strategic decision months ago to announce much of its policy offering ahead of time – on Medicare, women’s health, affordable housing and more – so that the decisions have more time to be absorbed and understood by voters.

This strategy also gave the government maximum flexibility on timing, something it ultimately needed because of Cyclone Alfred, which rained on the prime minister’s plans to call an election for April 12.

Ahead of budget day, both Eslake and Chris Richardson, another veteran and expert, correctly predicted the “decisions taken” figure would be much smaller than in recent years.

Richardson says the “decisions taken” column is small this time around because “this is the accidental budget, most stuff has already been announced”.

He adds that the “decisions taken” column is designed and used to suit politicians during a federal election campaign, rather than the public, to hide election sweeteners.

But this time around, with just $1.5 billion set aside, the size of the election war chest simply suggests that there are unlikely to be any further big-spending announcements from the ALP during the election.

Instead, the remaining spending to come from the so-called election war chest is most likely to be a series of small, targeted and electorate-specific announcements that will appeal to voters on a local level.

Think security upgrades, new parks, swimming pools and change rooms across the country: the stuff of hard hats, ribbon-cutting and thin slivers of pork for MPs in battleground seats.

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