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https://theconversation.com/wellbeing-its-why-labors-first-budget-will-have-more-rigour-than-any-before-it-187160>
"What if the most important thing in Jim Chalmers’ first budget is the thing
his critics are writing off as a gimmick?
Australia’s new treasurer has a lot on his plate. He has commissioned a
complete review of the way the Reserve Bank works, he is drawing up a statement
to parliament he says people will find “confronting” and he is preparing the
second of two budgets in one year; in October, updating the Coalition’s budget
in March.
In what some see as a gimmick, it will be Australia’s first budget to benchmark
its measures against their impact on the wellbeing of the Australian people:
Australia’s first “wellbeing budget”.
When Chalmers proposed the idea in opposition, the treasurer at the time, Josh
Frydenberg, described it as “laughable”.
Wellbeing was “doublespeak for higher taxes and more debt”.
Frydenberg asked parliament to imagine Chalmers delivering his first budget,
the one he will deliver on October 25, “fresh from his ashram deep in the
Himalayas, barefoot, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand,
wellbeing budget in the other”.
But here’s the thing. In an important way, Chalmers first “wellbeing budget”
will have more rigour than any of the budgets prepared by Frydenberg or any of
his predecessors.
It’ll be the first to have a stab at cost-benefit analysis.
Budgets are usually three things: a statement of accounts, with measures that
will have an impact on the accounts (and sometimes measures that won’t), as
well as the legislation needed to authorise another year’s worth of
expenditure.
What they don’t do, as a rule, is assess the impact of those measures, even the
impact on the economy."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
