Listen: Modest budget full of sweeteners, no ‘grand message’

Wright: These are the things we actually knew were coming. So say, the change around bulk billing, which will directly help people. The $150 energy rebate, which is again going to everyone. There’s changes around the pharmaceutical benefits scheme listings, bringing down the cost of a standard script to $25.

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Rather than throwing money into the economy, this one is trying to put it into services you buy, and you can see the price of every day.

Selinger-Morris: And just to wrap up, what does this budget say about where we’re at as a nation?

Wright: It’s not a grand message budget. But then again, pre-election budgets never are because, ultimately, this is about helping Anthony Albanese get re-elected. But this one is so modest, and that’s why it stands out.

But that’s Anthony Albanese. He’s making a deliberate decision to focus on a few key issues for the next five, six weeks – offering people a tax cut on top of a $150 rebate, on top of the bulk-billing incentives and cheaper scripts. You can see this is about cost of living, right?

There are other problems. For instance, this budget shows that another $14 billion has just disappeared from the tax take on cigarettes. There’s a problem that’s going to come down the line for petrol and diesel-powered vehicles. They are later problems – they need to be dealt with now – but you don’t look to a pre-election budget for dealing with long-term problems.

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