BUDGET ANALYSIS: The long and winding road

The long and winding road/That leads to your door/Will never disappear/I've seen that road before/It always leads me here/Leads me to your door. – Lennon-McCartney

It’s unclear if Treasurer Guy Barnett is a Beatles fan (his vintage would suggest he should be) but either way, his first budget will remind Tasmanians of that timeless hit for all the wrong reasons.

The Treasurer claims that his budget delivers “a sensible pathway to surplus”, but if it does, that pathway is so narrow and overgrown it’s imperceptible to see.

Indeed, with unabashed chutzpah, the Treasurer claims that not only is the budget on track to be in surplus by 2029-30, he “wants to return to a net operating surplus earlier than that”!

How exactly that will be achieved is impossible to determine; the numbers written in black and white in his own budget don’t support that narrative.

A budgeted deficit this year of just over $1 billion, followed by deficits of $850 million, $400 million, and then $236 million in 2028-29. 

And yet we’re somehow expected to believe that in 2029-30 it’ll suddenly jump into surplus?

And that’s all on the truly unbelievable premise that the Government’s spending won’t increase over that period. Even the most fiscally strict Government does well to keep expenditure growth to 3 per cent per annum.