The one word missing from the budget

Last week’s budget shows what a lightweight political class we have. Jim Chalmers sombrely summoned the clouds of war as his backdrop to declare:

This Budget is ambitious in the face of adversity.

It’s a responsible Budget, and a reforming Budget, which builds resilience and bolsters our economy.

That is not how I would have described a budget which spends a record percentage of GDP, outside a world war or other catastrophe like COVID, pushes debt above $1 trillion, relies on imaginary savings to the NDIS to produce a surplus in around ten years’ time, and bashes savers, and productivity, by moving to tax wealth on the same basis as wages.

Oh, and no real extra money for defence. So much for the war.

And no word of what they will do when the commodity cycle inevitably turns down and stops funding their extravagance – that’s if they and the Greens don’t shut the whole mining industry down first.

But what struck me hardest was the total absence of one word – “immigration”.

It wasn’t used even once, despite being implicated in at least half the economic mess that the government has created.

If Angus Taylor had talked about immigration, and nothing else, in his address-in-reply to the budget lastThursday night he might have started to claw back some of his own party’s support. Pauline Hanson's already done her reply and she certainly used the word.

Taylor's speech did mention immigration, but amongst a huge amount of other economic data. The problem for the Liberal Party is credibility, so I'm not sure that a policy checklist will effectively stave One Nation off. But unlike his predecessor, he certainly took on the immigration dragon, and apart from immigration numbers tweaked the tail by declaring immigrants who weren't Australian citizens would not have access to certain social welfare programs.

The treasurer talks about growth, which is projected as an anaemic 1.75% for next year, but 0.87 percentage points of that are from immigration. The economy is growing, but not by much for individuals. He needs immigration to disguise his dismal record.

Investors are taking the rap for housing unaffordability but it's immigration, not investors, that is squeezing first homeowners out of the market. It will be worse because the negative gearing and capital gains changes are projected on the government’s own figures to produce 35,000 fewer houses over 10 years.

Immigration is a significant contributor to national debt as we borrow to provide the infrastructure required amongst other things.