Key conclusions of our analysis include:
- This budget says explicitly that Australia’s economic reconstruction after COVID-19 is to be trusted almost entirely to private business – helped along with generous tax cuts and business subsidies.
- The need to strengthen public services (like health care, child care, and higher and vocational education) is largely ignored, as is the need to preserve and strengthen income security programs (with the phase-out of JobKeeper and cuts to JobSeeker going ahead).
- Tax cuts, whether targeted at businesses or high-income households, will have little impact on actual spending and job-creation.
- The government needs a more forceful, hands-on, and sustained reconstruction plan to ensure that the economy does not get ‘stuck’ in its current state of partial recovery. That needs much more public sector leadership, vision, and funding.
- The government admits that wage growth is going to get weaker before it gets stronger – but is doing nothing about that critical problem (which will undermine consumer spending far more than tax cuts will stimulate it).
Download our full review of the 2020-21 budget below.
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