🗞️Federal Budget Surplus Expected to Reach $9.3 Billion
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A $9.3 billion surplus is expected to be generated by the most recent federal budget for the current fiscal year, which concludes in June.
In nearly two decades, this is the second consecutive budget surplus.
However, because of what it refers to as "unavoidable spending," the government has projected higher deficits in each of the next three years than it did as recently as December.
The December estimates were $18.8 billion, $35.1 billion, and $19.5 billion, respectively; however, we do not yet know the exact magnitude of those deficits.
We will be closely monitoring the numbers for the 2024–25 fiscal year in light of inflation.
Last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) updated its projections, indicating higher inflation for the remainder of the year. On Sunday, however, the government disclosed that Treasury had reversed its own projections.
In an interview with ABC radio, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said :
“There’s always a lot of opinions and therefore is a lot of people who’d like you to spend more or less on a particular policy. I think that just comes with the job. What people can expect to see tonight, in addition to that primary focus on cost of living, and the focus on investing in the future and fighting inflation, is there’ll be important investments in more homes for Australians.
There’ll be big investments in Medicare and the care economy, in universities and skills and in the industries and jobs which will power the future.”
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The Labour government's second surplus is not being credited by shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.
Taylor stated on ABC Radio that Labour was made possible by the work his government did:
The key to achieving ongoing buy balance is to make sure that your economy is growing faster than your spending. That’s what we did between 2013 and 2019.
The government is benefiting from from that being done during that time period.
And that ensures that you can get back to structural balance.
So no credit?
Well, the reporting we’re seeing today is that it’s a sea of red. And we’ll see – we haven’t seen the final numbers.
But that’s not what we need if you want to tame inflation.
You’ve got to get the budget back into balance. You’ve got to make sure that there’s restraint in the sense of ensuring that the economy is growing faster than spending.
So far, we haven’t seen that from Labor budgets.
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