If This Is the Black, I’d Hate to See What Red Looks Like

Somehow, it’s hard to be quite so hoopla as Zippy and Albo are at their “budget surplus”, when mortgages, power bills, fuel prices and grocery prices are zooming into the stratosphere. Especially when the “surplus” is entirely a chimaera of creative accounting and tax gouging, and splashing benefit handouts which is only going to send inflation climbing even higher.

In response to which, the Reserve Bank will almost certainly raise interest rates even higher.

The “Party of the Worker” is hammering workers to buy off the welfare classes.

First, the government’s self-serving propaganda:

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he is “very proud” of Tuesday’s budget which will show “the biggest budget turnaround on record”.

“It’s a budget in Labor’s best traditions.”

Well, that part is at least true: it’s a budget built on bullshit, envy politics and handouts.

When asked if a JobSeeker payment rise would be available across the board, Dr Chalmers said his cost of living package is “broader” than what people think.

Even Zippy is admitting that this surplus is a once-off.

“We are now forecasting a surplus this year, smaller deficits after that.”

The Australian

But how is Labor even posting a surplus in the first place?

Two things: first, it’s now apparent that the previous government was far too conservative in its revenue predictions. Even Chalmers admits that he is benefitting from “upward revisions to revenue, without which we wouldn’t be publishing the much, much stronger position that you will see in the budget tonight”.

Secondly, those “upward revisions” are entirely due to unexpectedly booming commodity prices. Commodities which Labor are going to gouge with tax hikes.

Offshore oil and gas companies will be slugged with $2.4 billion in extra taxes to help pay for Labor’s cost of living relief package.

The Australian

“Cost of living relief” we wouldn’t need if the government’s ludicrous climate policies weren’t driving power and fuel bills through the roof, and interest rates weren’t being constantly ratcheted up in response to those inflationary pressures.

We might as well make the most of the “surplus”, though. Because years more of typical Labor economic pain is going to come right back to whack us all. Not least due to the all-consuming financial black hole that is Julia Gillard’s and Bill Shorten’s NDIS.

After Treasury officials spent last week crunching April data, Dr Chalmers is expected to bank a 2022-23 surplus, but will warn of higher deficits in later years fuelled by spending pressures on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, debt interest payments, aged care, health and defence.

The EY federal budget preview said that while a “surplus is a happy budget beginning; beware the ending”, with a structural deficit still apparent.

Then there’s Labor’s all-time-record mass immigration still to come.

Opposition Immigration spokesman Dan Tehan says the Albanese government has “got no plan whatsoever” to deal with the up to 600,000 permanent migration intake for the next financial year.

“They’re cutting infrastructure funding at a time they’re bringing all these permanent residents into the country, 715,000 is the overall net overseas migration that we’re looking at,” he told Sky News on Monday morning.

Senator Tehan said the migration intake would add pressure to housing, the rental crisis and congestion.

The Australian

The fiscal snow job is so obvious that even a dripping-wet lefty like Peter van Onselen can see it.

The five minutes of surplus sunshine we’ll see tonight is likely to be a once off. And even then we are talking about a low single digit surplus […]

What today’s debt and surplus rhetoric really speaks to is mere superficiality. Just watch as spending grows, the debt burden grows and reforms to ensure future prosperity get put in the politically too hard basket.

The Australian

Not to worry: by then, Labor will have been turfed out again, and it will once more be left to somebody else to try and sort out the wreckage. As always.