With the opportunity to use windfall gains in revenue to begin the fix of structural issues in the economy dealing with the low paid and essential services, the government instead has thrown money at voters in the hopes of re-election.

The Centre’s Fiscal Director, Greg Jericho, goes through the budget numbers and finds that despite predictions of once again strong wage growth, the underlying assumptions are overly optimistic and would even still leave workers worse off than they were in the middle of 2019 until 2025.

The budget forecasts are for strong growth now, while the money is being pumped out, but once that ends we find yourself back with the same middling growth we had prior to the pandemic.