Labor prepares for post-budget surprises
Jim Chalmers is expected to hand down his most boring budget yet. But there may be bigger policy changes on the horizon.
The treasurer has been priming the public not to expect any new big spending measures on budget night. By and large, Jim Chalmers has been a straight talker around budget spending (stage 3 tax cuts aside) and there’s no reason to suspect he isn’t being upfront about his plans for the short term.
But while May likely won’t provide any shocks, Capital Brief suspects a second Labor term might be full of surprises — if Australians want them back.
Over the past 25 years, the public has typically believed that the Coalition has been better at handling the economy than Labor.
Of course, no reasonable person wants economic upheaval or pain for families trying to make ends meet. But the timing of this latest cost-of-living crisis (with the first interest rate increase taking place in the month of the 2022 election) would have been especially frustrating for a first-term government. Such issues have hit average Australians hard and regardless of who, or what, is the cause, voters typically look to the government of the day for answers — or to blame.
