Treasurer Jim Chalmers will project a surplus of $9.3 billion in tonight’s Budget, saying it has “come on top – not at the expense – of helping those doing it tough”. Source: The Guardian.
It is the first back-to-back surplus since the global financial crisis in 2007-08. Source: The Guardian.
The Budget outcome for 2023-24 is a $10.5 billion improvement from the mid-year economic update in December, but deficits over the next two years are projected to be worse.
After last year’s $22 billion surplus, Dr Chalmers said the result was “a powerful demonstration of Labor’s responsible economic management, which makes room for cost-of-living relief and investments in the future”.
“The forecasted surplus has come on top – not at the expense – of helping those doing it tough,” Dr Chalmers said, in a sign of further cost-of-living measures expected to include extension of energy price relief.
In a caucus pep talk to Labor MPs on yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, said tonight’s Budget is “a Labor party budget through and through because it is a budget for every Australian, not just some”.
In what might be the last full-year Budget before the next election, the Albanese Government has had to balance avoiding adding upward pressure to inflation and providing cost-of-living relief to struggling households.
Mr Albanese yesterday flagged that the Budget will contain “new investments in Medicare and the health system” and “investment in the future” in the fields of jobs, skills, infrastructure, housing and social care.
In a statement, Dr Chalmers said “the Budget will ease cost-of-living pressures, not add to them, and incentivise investment in a Future Made in Australia”.
FULL STORY
Federal Budget to remain in the black with forecast surplus of $9.3 billion for 2023-24 (By Paul Karp and Peter Hannam, The Guardian)
