[Treasurer Wayne Swan already has] a seamless record of five budgets and five budget deficits… adding up to $174 billion, with this year’s unfinished fiscal symphony still to be added on.
Some are predicting it’ll be a modest $5 billion, others up to $15 billion. I’d go at least that higher figure for two reasons.
First, as the debacle over the mining tax has shown - projected last May to raise $4 billion this year, adjusted to raise just $2 billion in the budget update in October, actually raised $126 million in the first six months - the figures were evaporating under their own steam.
But secondly, now that he’s abandoned - actually, finally told the truth about - this year’s budget bottom line, he might as well go for, for want of a better word, broke....
Even if they’d just stayed steady, the projected bottom line would have been a deficit of $5 billion, not the literally unbelievable $1.5 billion surplus. ...
Over the next two months Swan will be trying desperately to [drag] ... spending back into what’s left of this year, and pushing as much as he can into 2014-15.
So this year’s deficit can blow out to who cares what number, to keep next year’s down and hopefully be able to be fiddled into a surplus. Into a projected/promised surplus…
[Then there’s] all the increased spending the Government can’t help itself with adding. The Business Council has estimated the Government has made $49 billion of unfunded commitments.
Then there’s the little thing called an election.
