We are all pretty aware the Budget is not in great shape at present and that the planned October Federal Budget will be looking for lots of savings!
See here:
Chalmers’ ‘dire’ budget pressure warning
Updated May 25, 2022 – 6.21pm, first published at 5.53pm
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned that the dire budget position and “skyrocketing” inflation mean the Labor government cannot afford extra spending beyond its election commitments, as he accused the Morrison government of failing to disclose all the budget pressures.
In his first news conference as Treasurer, Dr Chalmers said not to expect the budget to improve immediately despite high commodity prices and low unemployment.
In response, budget experts said there could be rising debt repayment costs due to higher interest rates, infrastructure projects cost increases from a shortage of workers and materials, defence spending pressures and cost overruns from the Coalition’s ongoing spending booked as one-off grants.
The very optimistic annual productivity growth assumption of 1.5 per cent used by Treasury for the former government may also need to be revised lower due to the slump in productivity over the last decade.
Productivity growth affects the budget’s long-term revenue forecasts by billions of dollars.
The US Congressional Budget Office and NSW have lowered their productivity growth assumptions to 1.2 per cent, which could be adopted as a more realistic benchmark.
Other factors working against us
Dr Chalmers dismissed former treasurer Josh Frydenberg talking up during the election campaign a potential $30 billion budget windfall from high commodity prices and a low 3.9 per cent unemployment rate.
“Commodity prices have been stronger than what the forecasts have assumed for a little while now, but there’s no guarantee on that uplift in the budget,” Dr Chalmers said in response to a question from The Australian Financial Review.
“And there are other factors working against us, including some pressures on the budget, which were not disclosed or booked by the previous government.
“You shouldn’t assume automatically that the budget, absent of any policy decisions, will necessarily be stronger in October than it was in the pre-election fiscal outlook.”
Pressed to disclose the areas of unexpected budget pressures, Dr Chalmers said he would have, “more to say about that on another occasion”.
New governments often accuse the former government of bequeathing shock budget black holes that necessitate budget repair, as the Howard government did after the Keating government in 1996 and the Abbott government did when it succeeded the Rudd government in 2013.
The Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) signed off by the secretaries of Treasury and Finance forecast cumulative deficits of $224 billion over the next four years and gross debt of $1.2 trillion.
Dr Chalmers made the comments after hosting a group meeting in Canberra of Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe, Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman Joseph Longo, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres and Australian Taxation Office commissioner Chris Jordan.
Dr Chalmers said he plans to make a “blunt, frank and upfront” economic statement to Parliament in June or July.
The $1 trillion debt Labor had inherited meant there wasn’t enough money for “everything that we would like to do”, Dr Chalmers said.
“We have to prioritise, we have to sequence, we have to weigh up our priorities and work out what we can responsibly do and when we can do it.
“And that inevitably means that some things that we would like to do will take a bit longer for us to find room for a budget change.”
Line by line review
The planned October budget will enact Labor’s $18.9 billion of election spending commitments including $5.1 billion for childcare subsidies, $2.5 billion on aged care, about $2 billion on healthcare, $1.3 billion on 20,000 extra university places and fee-free TAFE and investments to support the clean energy transition.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said Labor’s audit of “waste and rorts” would be a “line by line” review that extended beyond $11.5 billion of spending cuts and revenue measures identified before the election.
More here:
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/chalmers-dire-budget-pressure-warning-20220525-p5aoea
I am pretty sure most who read here can see a few hundred million dollars available from a close review of health spending. All that needs to be done is simply cancel ongoing expenditure on the #myHealthRecord, after is has failed to prove its value in the last decade, and while that is being done a check on what the public is getting for the millions spent on the ADHA might also see some pretty extra saves.
What is done will be a pretty good test of whether the new Labor Government has a real commitment to evidence based funding. There is plenty of evidence that the over $1Billion spent so far has delivered pretty much zilch in the way of lives saved or illness prevented! As for the ADHA who would actually notice if they vanished? (Again it has been a decade long experiment with Federal Digital Health which has gone pretty much no where!)
Before all the yelps of what about e-prescribing, secure messaging and telehealth remember they were pretty much privately led initiatives.
I wonder will the ‘line by line’ review identify these financial sinkholes?
Time to stop the ‘waste and mismanagement’ as the other political side said so loud and often!
It will also be wondrous to see just how little actually happens I fear!
David.
2 comments:
I thought it was $2.6 billion so far, with $300 million dollars towards the ADHA this year according to the federal budget. Did I get it wrong? Feel free to disabuse me.
That seems close to the mark to me - and makes it even worse!
David
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