For Jim Chalmers, the prospect of delivering a second budget surplus offers more for their government's long-term than a few upset colleagues in the short-term, writes Brett Worthington.
"At the end of the day, if the price of being responsible and disciplined with taxpayer money is an occasional story like this, then so be it," he told the ABC late last week, after some of his colleagues anonymously bemoaned getting their funding pitches shut down.
Chalmers's job for the next two months is to not just land that surplus, but to lower expectations about how big it might be ."We believe budgets should be shaped by the economic cycle not the electoral cycle." Low unemployment helps the budget bottom line in two ways — with more people paying personal income tax and fewer people receiving unemployment benefits.So while households might be hurting, it's been wonderful for the budget, made worse politically by the fact that spending all that extra money coming in risks making inflation even worse.
But they'd do well to remember those "Nos" might just help keep them in their jobs after the next election.That election could still be more than a year away and Labor knows it needs to do more than just manage the economy if it is to get re-elected.
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