Budget makes depressing read

When I first sit down to look at a budget, the first thing I reach for is the budget speech. 

You can tell a lot about a budget by that document, which is the Treasurer’s plain English attempt at explaining the following volumes of numbers and tables.

This year: a lack of articulation of key numbers (projected operating result, net debt), an unprecedented attack on  the Federal Government (it’s all “Dr Chalmers” fault, apparently), and no clear narrative, let alone a headline “grab” told me all I needed to know.

It’s a budget that makes for a depressing read, no matter which way you look at it.

Record debt and deficit, a slowing economy – it’s hard to find an upside.

In fairness, anybody predicting or wishing for an austerity budget had rocks in their head the moment the Tasmanian people chose a minority Government.

No minority government in their right mind would risk their very existence by going down that road.

Nor where the prognostications of economist Saul Eslake an option. Raising taxes is anathema to the Liberal DNA, especially in the middle of a cost of living crisis and slowing economy.

Left with the challenge of trying to make it all add up while not comprising the Government’s existence, the Treasurer has had to content himself with extending the modest efficiency dividend for another two years.

Yet even here the Treasurer has had to be apologetic, telling us that “for every dollar of efficiencies the Government has committed $3 in new funding.”

If anyone can explain to me how “investing $3, while cutting $1” makes any sense, please let me know.