The 2012-13 surplus has been preserved, at the cost of moving spending around, but Europe is still a huge threat to the economy.
Federal budget
MYEFO: Swan cuts to save the thinnest of surpluses
The government has unveiled a range of spending cuts but they won’t stop a big blowout in this year’s budget deficit.
Mental health and the budget: positive steps but many gaps remain
Given the magnitude of the burden of mental illness and the scope and extent of needs in the mental health sector, the Gillard government’s significant down payment on new and expanded services can only be considered the beginning, writes Lesley Russell.
Parallels between mental health initiatives and portrayals in Australian film
This year there has been a striking — but completely unnoticed — correlation between the federal government’s mental health initiatives and the dominant theme in Australian films. Luke Buckmaster explains.
Jericho: Hockey’s budget reply address was an embarrassment
Joe Hockey’s budget reply address was a ludicrous quasi economic lecture capped off by a grilling from the press gallery, writes Greg Jericho.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Huffing and puffing over Fukushima coverage
Crikey readers have their say.
Political snippets: The budget yawn.
So the impact of the budget has been measured by the pollsters and nothing really has changed.
Budget breakdown: the holding pattern on clean-tech investment
In the first of a series of post-budget reports, Fiona Armstrong and Laura Eadie from the Centre for Policy Development explore options to encourage innovation and roll out less mature renewable energy technologies.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Middle-class welfare
Crikey reads have tehir say.
Political snippets: Variation on a theme
Space and time in the media expands to fit the journalists available.
Jericho: The question is not ‘who is rich’ but ‘who cares’?
Reportage of the federal budget was generally of a high quality, but some media outlets were sidetracked by the pointless question of who is rich and who is not, writes Greg Jericho.
Some context to the budget’s mental health announcements
Mental health is a particularly fraught area of public policy. Croakey presents two pieces which provide some historical and current context to the cutbacks to the Better Access program, which were announced in this week’s federal budget.
Political snippets: The budget attack to come
our sentences from this morning’s Liberal Party missive on the budget sum up the attack to come.
The Media Monitors' Top 20: Wayne Swan moves in to the spotlight
Wayne Swan’s presentation remains dead ordinary, but his messaging has been reasonably good in the wake of the budget.
The BBC perspective: quasi-austere Swan delivers politically cautious budget
The federal budget was not a collection of deep cuts, but rather a lot of tiny ones. The Labor government simply doesn’t have the numbers to be bold, says the BBC’s Nick Bryan.
healthcare A wrap of reaction to the health budget
What will the budget do for healthcare? Croakey presents media statements from the Public Health Association and Consumers Health Forum and Doctors Reform Society.
Federal Budget Live Blog
Come join Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane and economist Nicholas Gruen, fresh from the lock-up — along with the usual suspects of First Dog on the Moon, Crikey editor Sophie Black and politics wonk Charles Richardson — as they discuss the cuts, deficits, long-term unemployed and Wayne Swan’s garish purple tie. The Crikey budget live blog is on right now, so […]
Post-budget media wrap: what they’re saying
For many of Australia’s finest political journalists it’s out of the lock-up and straight to the bar — but not before filing copy for tomorrow’s edition. Here’s the initial round-up of the first impressions of budget 2011.
The politics: it won’t save the government, but it won’t kill it
In truth Wayne Swan has produced a budget that is hard to distinguish from his effort last year or in 2008. There’s the same unwillingness to cut deeply into sensitive spending areas, in favour of fiddling at the margin and cutting rats-and-mice spending. There’s the same lingering revenue impacts of economic disruption that we saw […]
Keane: the challenge of Swan’s two-speed budget
A collapse in receipts has ripped a $16 billion hole in government finances over this year and next. Treasurer Wayne Swan has revealed a budget deficit for 2011-12 of $22.6 billion, up $10.3 billion from November. This year’s deficit has increased $8 billion to $49.4 billion.
Budget wellbeing: Australia’s lead role
While the current British and French prime ministers bemoan the inadequacy of GDP to measuring their citizens’ wellbeing, for over a decade Australian bureaucrats have been getting on with building the means by which we could take a more sophisticated approach, writes Nicholas Gruen.
No chainsaw massacre, just modest cuts from Swan
For this year’s federal budget Wayne Swan once again promised The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and delivered Twilight, with a suite of modest spending cuts over the remainder of this financial year and then the four years over the forward estimates.
Gruen: welcome our new, riskier budget
Here’s one reason why the budget isn’t bouncing back into surplus as fast as it went into deficit…writes Nicholas Gruen.
