Advertisement
Tonight’s federal budget will go to great pains to show that the deficit isn’t as bad as claimed and that the government is working hard to balance the books.
The federal budget will paint this narrative by quoting the underlying budget balance, which measures the difference between recurrent spending and recurrent revenue.
The problem, as illustrated below by veteran budget watcher Chris Richardson, is that the federal government has pushed lots of spending ‘off-balance sheet’ via:
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe
About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.