A triple ‘F’ rating for this federal budget

Yes, in the way Woollies or Coles will home deliver your meals.

"Sit back and let government services look after everything in your life for you," he means, rather than "This will set you up as a self-reliant individual so you can deliver for yourself."

There are subsidies to deaden the pain of electricity prices, tax cuts for everyone (even bigger than the Coalition Stage III tax cuts, so he boasts), cheaper pharmaceuticals, less student debt, more rent assistance, more homes, and more transport links.

There's $13.7 billion for billionaires to develop green hydrogen and critical minerals projects. Workers in child and aged care will be paid more, there's money for rural communities and climate change, and money for nursing homes.

I only heard one savings measure, and that was $14 billion over four years from the NDIS. But then, that's an estimate of fraud and overservicing, let's see how that really goes. And anyway, it is much less than the projected growth in the NDIS.

No doubt all these are deserving causes, but then there's very rarely a cause that is undeserving, although many are unaffordable.

Australia's Treasurer Jim Chalmers (Front R) and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher (Front L) arrive for the budget lock-up at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on May 14, 2024. (Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images)

And government keeps growing

Since 1982 government expenditure has tended to fluctuate, but with a floor of around 23 percent of GDP.

That was until around 2008, the first year of the Rudd Labor government. Then government spending peaked at 25.9 percent of GDP in 2010, but was brought back to 23.9 percent in 2018.

COVID-19 broke the paradigm with government expenditure peaking at 31.6 percent of GDP. That is the cause of our current inflation, and that expenditure needed to be pulled back down until it hits 23 percent, or even less.

Instead, this budget cements 26 percent of GDP or higher as the low end of government.

That is funded by government debt with net debt increasing from 20 percent of GDP this financial year, to 21.9 percent by the end of the forward estimates, while interest expenses increase from 0.5 percent of GDP, to 0.8 percent-up 60 percent.