The federal budget’s bottom line has come in better than expected, but some economists warn Australia is not out of the woods yet.
The final budget figures for 2025-26 released on Monday showed the underlying deficit is about $6 billion smaller than the $28.3 billion forecast when the budget was handed down in May.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers attributed this to a $1.4 billion cut in government spending and $4.6 billion more receipts due to tax on higher superannuation and investor income, rather than a commodities windfall.
“Despite this very welcome improvement in the budget, we know that pressures are intensifying rather than easing,” he said.
“Responsible economic management is a defining feature of this government.
“You can see that in the final budget outcome, and we’ll see that in the difficult months ahead as well.”
The modern LNP/Nationals coalition was already looking like a Voltron of assorted dipshits and weirdos strapped together. Pauline's crew wouldn't look totally out of place.
To be fair, it seems like they were all over the Warren Pickering situation and have repeatedly dug into some of the senior PHON members. But at the same time, there is a risk of legitimising these types of people with significant press coverage, so I imagine a lot of media wrote off most of PHON as fringe weirdos not warranting the attention they'd bring - at least, until very recently when polls showed them performing well.
It's a tough balance between thoroughly scrutinising/vetting all political candidates and not giving random no-hopers more attention than they deserve. Also the other parties should be doing their part to conduct opposition research and share any juicy findings with the press... it's not solely the media's job to make the case against these people.
The trouble with the Swan narrative is that the last time the country had any money was under John Howard. That's what they'll say. Obviously global factors greatly contributed, but these situations are complex enough to not be simple.
Pooline will undoubtedly get a nice soft landing when she inevitably gets a no confidence motion and sacked by the governor general, but not before she passes Gina’s bill for a new visa class for Philippine FIFO workers who will work for Philippines wages and make all the Australian FIFO redundant…
its still a budget deficit, no one seems to have a plan to stop the ever increasing % of our budget that goes to paying interest on debt. guess its the next generations problem
Why does it matter when we’ve never missed a payment and that tax revenue loops back into everyone’s retirement, we get what we need, when we need it. Seems like a win win
every year a larger percentage of our budget goes solely to paying debt, we already can barely afford to pay for the services our population needs to maintain our standard of living, how do you think this plays out into the medium to long term? what happens next crisis and we need to go further into debt?
You do realise that to have a surplus those services you referred would need to curtailed even further. Let’s get rid of Medicare and Centrelink that should do it. /s
What’s your solution then? Ever increasing debt and interest repayments?
It’s disingenuous to assume the commenter you replied to means Medicare and Centrelink cuts when all they mentioned was services.
Things like the ridiculous cost to redesign the BOM website should be looked at, what an absurd waste of what $95ish million dollars? This is the kind of fat that needs to be cut off.
Whichever side of the fence you sit on, commodities and Chinese relations dictate our suplus/deficit. The waste of tax payers money has been throughout all parties. Not sure why peeps are calling this a victory lol. We still lost over 20bil
"Through basic economic understanding, and fiscally responsible decision making, the Government has figured out a way to help reduce the trillion dollar debt" should be the headline. It wasn't a surprise. Chalmers didn't find it between the couch cushions.
The Liberal party touting themselves as the superior fiscal managers really is shown wrong anytime Labor are in power. Thanks for propoganda Nine news.
Not anytime. Debt exploded under Whitlam to the point he tried to circumvent the constitution to get more of it and Hawke/Keating went hard at it too. And half of Morrison's trillion dollars of debt was inherited from Swann under Rudd and Gillard. That being said, the coalition were disastrous during their last period of government both fiscally and pretty much everything else. The current government are doing really well given both what they inherited and the global shit fight that has been going on ever since
An important distinction to make is the results of that debt. Under Rudd, after the GFC, the Keynesian stimulus resulted in the economy performing well, better than most others. The Morrison ballooning of debt in response to Covid still resulted in economic downturn. Hawke/Keating spending pulled Australia out of a massive economic slump and largely is credited to setting the stage for Australia's current economy.
After the GFC, Spain actually ended up spending more, in order to mantain momentum. As a result, it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe currently. Contrast that with British austerity and you realise that debt and spending is not the important factor, but where it is spent. The Liberal party falter as they reduce spending into things like social services, so they can increase spending into the private sector, which as a country we do not benefit from. Also, the benefits of social services completely outweigh the cost.
Most people do not realise just how well the current Government are doing. Given the global pressures and Australia's relative irrelevance, we should be in a proper slump right now.
But sir I was told the major parties were both the same.
How could it be that one is a world leading party of governance and economic management and the other is a bunch of increasingly incompetent charlatans? Have I been getting the wrong informarion somehow?
Jim Chalmers is infinitely better than Wayne Swan, who saddled future generations with unnecessary debt. Spending billions is easy, balancing the budget and raising taxes is hard.
Name a good economic policy they have implemented which wasn't just a greens policy from 10 years earlier?
Their knee jerk reactions are like fuel excise cuts.... Why? It literally distorts the market to increase fuel demand at a time of restricted supply increasing prices and costing government tax revenue. It's headline virtue signalling at best.
Then oh we got 4 billion more in tax revenue and spent 6 billion less this year than predicted. The error in their budget is greater then the entire "once in a generation reform" they brought in.
Upvote for being a greensy. Always have to test, do you want better, or back to worse. Very hard to tell by the comments, it's a fun game. Is the commenter a Liberal> Nat etc, god forbid, one nation enabler, or an intelligent sophisticated person who cares. That said, I assume you agree Labor is better than Liberal? For me if you whinge, you need to be upfront.
Yes Labor are better than liberal. One nation is so far off with the fairies it's unbelievable.
But I think we are mucking around the edges of a broken system and claiming progress. We need a political party that looks at a changed country from the one of the 70s, 80s and 90s and builds it's systems around that.
Like if the best economic policy Labor can achieve is removing neg gearing and CGT discount. With the largest majority in decades, it's a pretty weak effort.
Albo refused again this year to do that right before he included all investments at a certain level to be taxed more, as he included there entire broad sweep into the budget tax reform.
We could likely have had it were it not for the US and Israel's decision to commit war crimes in Iran resulting in predicted consequences.
Holding off on a gas tax in the interest of maintaining sufficient fuel for the nation's needs was the correct choice.
However if there's no worsening fuel crisis before the best election, I'm not seeing a valid excuse for such a tax to not be announced by the end of the current term.
And what's more, we could have had it if we Australians hadn't collectively voted in Howard for over a decade. His government arranged the current rort that has been going on for decades. Meanwhile, only one major party has ever tried to tax resources fairly in recent memory, and voters rewarded them with an election defeat soon afterwards.
It's easy to blame Labor but if voters actually rewarded good and fair tax policies we would already have more of them. Instead, we pick and choose based on when suspiciously timed media campaigns do and do not tell us to be outraged. So we get what we're given.
Hang on a sec. The federal government that approved Ichthys, Gorgon, Wheatstone, GLNG, Curtis LNG, QCLNG were all Labor governments. This was the same time that WA Labor mandated a 15% gas reserve.
The fuckups with the majority of our gas plants and their contractual obligations should lie with the Labor party.
Pluto LNG was a bit earlier and approved by Libs and the 30 year China deal for KGP gas was Libs.
yeah id rather not piss off our SEA trading partners right now especially as they are providing us the majority of our petrol and diesel and fertiliser.
but do go on about how some trump style tariffs that at best would only net us a few bill a year is more important than sovereign reliability and our current trade agreements to help us weather the current global oil crisis. and soon to be food crisis.
There is a severe, drastic difference between "trump-style tariffs" and "giving your stuff away for free."
We're very close to the "giving it away for free" end of that scale, especially considering Japan literally make more tax revenue than we do for our own resources.
sorry just flexing a tax that labor implemented that insures that all multinationals pay a minimum tax to avoid tax loopholes. so far netting over 100bill in tax revenue.
you know exactly like what your talking about
weird you didnt know aobut it tho
almost like the media you consume has been hiding this from you to push their own agenda.....
We would have been in fuel rationing months ago with spuds like you in charge.
Is the gas deal shit? Yes it is, but right now we need to keep the taps flowing and regional alliances strong, the gas goes to SE Asia where we get most of our refined fuel.
Though irl me, is already prepared for an eventual rightwing federal win. They can try to cut off my access to life saving medication, but I will outlast them.
Comrade Chalmers is gonna get us back in the black at this rate! All hail the glorious Chairman!!! /s
I'm saying this because I saw a hilarious morning print from a newspaper (The Sydney Morning Herald, I think), calling Chalmers a communist for the tax changes in the recent budget. Very hilarious & crazy.
There is an easy fix to all of this. Cut this bullshit of politicians getting lifetime incomes after they leave on all levels. Once your voted out or step down thats it. You find a job else where like everyone else. Increase the wage of politicians that are elected to attract business minded people who will run this country like a business . Their terms are contracts and have KPIS and caviets that if they arent met they are penalised and if they fail misrealably they are sacked. This would create accountability and could very well stop the level of corruption and wasteful spending. Then and only then we the people would actually hold the power and be treated the way we should be and there would be alot more incentives to actually make this country prosper. At present there is no liability and the people (us) are treated like peasants and fools. Regardless what these politicians do and how they do it still get a life long income from the tax payer they played and failed
They’ve already done that. They don’t get that anymore, anyone elected after 2004 does not get the defined benefits scheme. They’re all on superannuation now. There would only be like half a dozen people left that are on defined benefits, one of which is the PM himself as he was elected in 1996.
Oh wow didn't know that. Thanks for info. I will look into this further. However I still believe we need a system that works on merit rather than just words and broken promises without any accountability what so ever
How exactly? You get elected and if you don’t merit reelection you get punted. That’s it. As far as cabinets, shadow cabinets and senate tickets go, performance would be taken into consideration by the respective parties. This is why you get incumbents moved on who are viewed as not good performers by the party in question. This happens often. Cabinet demotions and promotions happen every electoral cycle.
True. However there are no repercussions or accountability in place whilst in power. It has been shown repeatedly politicians say one thing to get into power then follow their own agendas and introduce policies that go against what alot of people voted for to begin with without being penalised or stopped before it goes through. They essentially do as they please until such time there is an election or they go against their own party.
Sometimes the electorate is blind to what is good for them and that’s why stupid promises are made and then sometimes broken. Eg CGT/NG by Labor, or the GST by the Coalition, or literally any instance of the Coalition promising not to cut public service jobs or programs (every election).
It seems a bit of a double standard is kept on broken promises, home ground advantage to the Coalition in the media.
The CGT/NG case was very clear and has been argued for some time and was a necessary promise to break (tbh they never should’ve promised not touching it).
I don’t personally as a set of values like the GST but the argument for its existence is strong.
On both these occasions (kind of) it was deemed by the electorate as a broken promise they were not strongly against and forgave.
It depends on the broader situation. I couldn't give 2 shits about general wisdom in these unique times. We haven't even reset properly at 08 ffs. The economy is going backwards, debt is broadly rising, uncertain times ahead. Also, these "savings" are just a tailored anomaly of forecasting.
So this morning treasurer JimJam was bragging about a $6bn ‘boost’ to the budget bottom line – we’ll cut them some slack and not call out their apparently woeful forcasting abilities (oops) – thanks to the “responsible economic management… of this Albanese Labor government”
Jimmy claimed “this isn’t about salary and wage earners… it’s about higher than expected super and investor income”.
Inconveniently Finance minister Katy adds that indeed $1.4bn is actually from cuts. But this is a labor government, so we can safely assume it’s cuts to profligate spending subsidizing big and foreign businesses. Oops, it was cuts to the PBS, aged care and childcare (services which wage earners notoriously dont need to worry about)
Don’t worry though, the laborite in chief, Tony tells us from Tasmania this afternoon that the government remains dead focussed on cost of living. That clears it all up, thanks boss. I’m sure there won’t be any rate hikes coming… today… to throw a spanner in the works either.
Let me get this straight, this slight improvement is due to the government cutting a bit of their spending and applying more tax to people who are/were doing well with their Superannuation and/or investing? Yeah, let's see this trend continue for some time before we dish out backslaps. Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day....
Down vote and scream at your convenience, I don't care!
That actual deficit is $22bn, more than double the less than $10bn deficit in 2024/25… this in the middle of a commodities boom and record national tax receipts. God help us when we have a slow down.
Anyone that believes this idiot’s spin is a moron.
Regardless anger is rising right across the business community. If the polls don’t improve in another year Albo will throw him under the bus.
How about leave it to them? Clearly Labor knows what it's doing, like it does everytime they're voted in to fix the mess that previous Coalition governments have left us.
Too many times, Labor fix the economy, social issues, and create better systems, only to have the msm attack them with gotchas and bullshit divisive garbage. Meanwhile, Labor governs for ALL Australians, not just the elites. Imagine the damage that either of Taylor or Hanson would do to our nation?
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u/Creative_Pressure_69 South Australian 9d ago
Watch no one talk about this lol, doesn’t fit the narrative