I’ve now had a chance to look at Budget Paper 2, and I think it might be more accurate to replace the observation “Nothing much for education, and nothing at all for health” with “Nothing or less than nothing for most areas of education and health”.
The Budget Papers have literally dozens of descriptions of “measures” in which the expenditure item is either a row of dashes (the government has left the program alone) or a row of negatives (the program hasn’t been abolished, but expenditure has been cut).
Now, there may well be areas of spending which ought to be cut. But a search of the Budget speech reveals only seven occurrences of the word “cut”. Five refer to tax cuts, one to income cut-offs for eligibility for Family Tax Benefit and one to not “cutting and running” in Iraq. There’s no hint of any cuts on the expenditure side.
John Quiggin 
You’re quick John! Comments at 9-38 without Budget Papers, remarks on Saunders at 9-51 and then comments incorporating BPs at 10-19. I’ll look for those unmentioned expenditure cuts with interest but won’t miss my beauty sleep now.
As R. Gittins suggested, gains to families with kids likely to depend on how far interest rates are pushed up by the need to offset the fiscal expansion with an economy running hot. Those with mortgages and lower incomes might find their gains eroded. The lucky few with kids but no mortgages should do well even if the economy overheats.
The handouts and tax changes regressive.
what I find interesting is that the govt can justify spending squillions to encourage procreation, based on the intergenerational report….
“If you can have children it’s a good thing to do – you should have one for the father, one for the mother and one for the country, if you want to fix the ageing demographic,” Mr Costello said last night. – SMH (laughed out loud at this quote!)
…. but can’t find much at all for greenhouse mitigation measures, despite the evidence suggesting this will be a problem for future generations. Surely the evidence that global warming is a problem is at least as compelling as the evidence that an ageing population will cause problems?
Steve
Given the experience of two years ago and the monumental amount of money spent in the budget it seems to me that it is has quite a sizable structural deficit which are hard to cut.
Howard doesn’t want to compare with Menzies his comparison is obviously with Whitlam.
It also puts pressure on SuperMac to raise rates
Professor
Just wondering – how do you think this will impact on the long-term economic future of Australia?
-=from The Illiterate Ones=-
Good to here you on “Life Matters” John,and for more
than the sentence or two you got on SBS.