Commentary
There is more care than productivity in this budget. Literally, ‘care’ is one of the most frequently used words in the budget, with 20 mentions, while “productivity” has just four.
Yet, if we are to pull ourselves out of the hole we have dug ourselves into, increasing productivity is the most important thing.
Word cloud of the 2023-24 federal budget. (Graham Young)
While Treasurer Jim Chalmers seeks to forge a link between himself and the “Placido Domingo” of treasurers, Paul Keating, it takes more than growing up in an outer-suburban working-class electorate to make a great treasurer. By the same token, it takes more than being brought up in social housing, the child of a single mother, to make a great prime minister….