A ‘caring’ budget would have put productivity first

If it had either guts or gumption, it would be doing something to fix Australia's declining productivity.

It would also have produced concrete plans for dealing with Australia's biggest financial black hole, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), kept a tight rein on welfare spending, and worked out ways to get older Australians back into the workforce while stripping away impediments from business and investment.

Instead, it is adding to structural costs and cramping productivity growth.

The focus groups are cheering now, but they won't when they experience what is around the corner.

The four times the treasurer mentioned productivity, it was in the context of measures that were, at best productivity-neutral or -destroying.

But at least they were caring!

The first three times were when he dedicated $7.5 billion (US$5 billion) to spending on childcare, parental leave, medicines, housing, and wages. But, worthy as all these things might be, the policies do not positively impact productivity.

Paying more for the same, or working less, by definition, lowers productivity unless there is some step-change in efficiency. But step-change is completely missing here.

Education and debt for what?

The fourth time was about "fee-free TAFE and university places" and the Powering Australia Plan.

Education is a good idea, but giving it away isn't. It's not obvious why TAFE should be free when university education isn't. Or why an extension of courses in either will do more than transfer public money to the educators' purses.

Tertiary education has become a trap for many where the institutions oversupply students for industries that don't need them, blighting students' hopes and loading them up with HECS debt that cramps their ability to save and invest, for example, in a house of their own.

At the same time, employers complain that the students they hire need to be retrained anyway.