A ‘caring’ budget would have put productivity first

In this year of the coronation, Australia has a second sovereign-sovereign risk.

Offshore oil wells are tremendously expensive, and risky, and take years to pay off. Why take that risk if some government is going to retrospectively alter the terms of the deal just when you see a decent return on your income and when you know prices will dive again at some time in the future?

Failure to deliver housing solution

Australia's most "successful" export industry this budget appears to be immigration, but this hobbles another area of government policy-housing.

We have a shortage of houses.

The 400,000 migrants expected to arrive this year and the 300,000 next will make that shortage worse.

Traditionally, Australia has a highly productive housing sector driven mostly off the back of private owners who live in or rent out their properties.

Current government policies are tilting away from that and providing tax breaks to favour corporate "build-to-rent" operations and discourage private landlords.

That won't produce more housing, just divert resources from efficient private landlords to less-efficient corporate ones.

It will also produce a style of housing that is only suitable for rent, robbing our housing stock of the flexibility where a renter's house today can become a first homeowner's tomorrow.

I appreciate the sentimental tugs of where and how you grew up and wanting to do the right thing by people. But sometimes you have to look to the future, and a more productive society is a richer one which can provide more for everyone.

"Future" was mentioned even more times than "care," but it will be a bleak one if we can't get the basics of growth right.