Ross Gittins: “Politically, this budget had to offer a convincing response to the report of the royal commission on aged care. Reports have suggested fixing the broken system would take extra spending of about $10 billion a year. Had he accepted that challenge, Morrison would have put himself head and shoulders above his Liberal and Labor predecessors. He settled for spending an extra $3.5 billion a year. Major patch-up at best. The scandals will continue. Politically, Morrison had to make this a women-friendly budget, to prove he valued women’s contribution to the economy and remove impediments to their economic security. Making childcare free — as it was, briefly, during the lockdown — would have been a big help to young families, as well as greatly increasing employment. It would have backed his fine words with deeds. That would have cost about $2 billion a year. Morrison settled for $600 million a year, limiting the new assistance to about one childcare-using family in four by excluding the great majority, who have only one child in care. … [T]he purpose of the further stimulus in this year’s budget is to keep the kick-starting going until the private sector’s engine gets going. Much of this depends on a return to decent pay rises – which is, as yet, beyond the budget’s ‘forecast horizon’. We haven’t had a decent pay rise since before the election of the Coalition government.”
12 May 2021