Every year there’s a mix of excitement and frustration in the air when it comes to budget time, but what do we need to know in order to understand what comes out of it?
1. A budget is basically the government deciding where they’ll put funding and how much they’re going to spend, as well as how much money they’re bringing in.
2. Two words you’ll hear a lot are ‘deficit’ and ‘surplus’. This just means that either the Government needs to take on debt to cover spending over the amount of money taxes and investments bring in (deficit) or taxes and investments more than cover spending and there is money left over (surplus).
3. The need to deliver a surplus is seriously exaggerated in Australia and it distracts from what could be the priority of government spending, limiting Australia’s ability to address some of our biggest challenges like climate change, growing generational inequality, the housing crisis and more.
A government budget isn’t the same as a household or personal budget, so it’s not the same as taking on debt as an individual. It is true that the government cannot spend endlessly because eventually it would impact things like inflation, but it can still shift priority away from delivering a surplus and toward investments for a sustainable and fair future.
4. The budget can definitely feel like an overwhelmingly dry document full of massive numbers, but amongst that it out outlines the current government’s future plans for things like climate action, education, mental health, housing and everything in between.
5. At the end of the day this is just the funding, not that this isn’t important, but in order to make calls on who has ‘won’ and who has ‘lost’ we need to the see the policy it is supporting.
We have no real idea of what a lot of this will look like, which is a significant flaw in looking at a budget through the lens of ‘winners and losers’ which you’ll probably see a lot of.
Keep an eye on The Smashed Avocado and our socials for our take on the budget, coming soon!
