This year’s Federal Budget is, inevitably, a pre-election affair – given that an election has to be called no later than 18^th April and held no later than 21^st May. But, despite being blessed by substantial windfall revenue gains, this Budget isn’t as much of a ‘spendathon’ as some previous pre-election budgets have been. Some of its measures are appropriately ‘targeted and temporary’ – though some of the others fall well short of ‘good policy’ and some of them are, in former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s phrase, ‘frankly, bad’. But there’s still a meaningful amount of deficit reduction, which is also appropriate for the economic circumstances in which the Budget has been presented.

2022-03-29 Federal Budget Assessment