It’s interesting to look back at our commentary from last year, because so much still applies to the 2024 Federal Budget delivered by Treasurer Jim Chalmers in Parliament on Tuesday night.
“This budget plan tries… to do the smallest amount possible in a lot of areas but nothing substantial enough to address any one issue meaningfully.” Still true in 2024. Incrementalism has become a theme for Anthony Albanese’s Labor government. “Politically, it makes sense… to disprove the myth that the Liberal party is “better at managing the economy”, especially by delivering a surplus.” Still true. “There is literally no criticism the Liberals can give to this budget that would make any sense.” Still so incredibly true.
But not everything has stayed the same. The economic crunch has worsened, with more people in serious financial pain. It does feel like we now need big, serious reform in too many areas at once – tax, housing, education, Medicare, aged care and disability support, energy – because they’ve all been left to erode for far too long.
That’s the backdrop. Here are the takeaways we think the young progressives who read Zee Feed need to know. JUMP TO: Status Quo | Class Division | Young People | Climate
Most comprehensive Budget explainers: This analysis is not going to list out specific funding commitments going to specific organisations – there are so many other places you can find that.
We recommend:
- Guardian Australia’s Complete 2024 Australian Budget explorer
- The ABC’s Federal Budget 2024: Winners and Losers – absolutely hate how this is framed, but it does cover the main points
- Commonwealth Bank’s 2024-25 Federal Budget summary
Surplus: $9.3 billion (about 0.45% of Australia’s GDP, so a very slim margin). It’s a follow up to last year’s $22billion surplus… but expected to be the last one we’ll see for quite some time.
The decision to save this money and show a surplus is political, rather than practical. Next year we’ll have an election, in which Labor will once again be forced to defend whether or not it is a “good economic manager”. Make no mistake: that is why this money was not used to help Australia’s most vulnerable people make it to 2025.
Inflation: In his speech, Chalmers said the Budget plan aims to bring inflation down to the target 2-3% range by the end of the year. There is no consensus among economists about whether this will happen in that timeframe – it’s all guesswork.
2024 Federal Budget Key Takeaways
A status quo budget:
This budget doesn’t change anything about how the country works – it isn’t trying to. Regardless of what Chalmers, Albanese and other politicians might say about it, the Budget only aims to keep things as they are until the 2025 election (which must be held before September 27, 2025).
The one exception is the Future Made in Australia Fund, which is the centrepiece of this Budget (as one of the few things that’s actually new). While the fund is going to be used for industries that will be essential for a future thinking, green-er economy (more on that in the climate section below), it applies ‘status quo’ strategies. Rather than giving money to organisations working on these solutions, it is providing tax incentives in the same way the government already supports other crucial industries.
Reform, necessary change, whatever we want to call it, is not the intention of this budget. Which of course leads us to the obvious question: if not now, when?
Class division:
While this budget doesn’t necessarily make wealth inequality actively worse, it takes an incredibly class-blind approach to many policies. For example, giving every household a $300 electricity bill subsidy ignores the fact that Australia’s wealthiest households are doing just fine, actually. Ironically, giving money to the wealthy contributes to inflation (as I’ve previously explained here), whereas the miniscule increases to Jobseeker and Rent Assistance don’t have the same negative impact because the money is spent on survival, as intended.
We interpret this as the ALP’s lack of trust in the public. They do not trust that Australia’s middle class and wealthy voters understand how social welfare is beneficial to the country and economy as a whole. They expect middle class and wealthy voters to complain if the poor, working poor and low socioeconomic groups “get something” while they “don’t get anything”. In a word: greed.
Whether most Australians have a better understanding of the economy and a more socially-minded outlook than that is up for debate.
For young people:
If you look at any of the bigger budget explainers listed at the top, you will see there are barely any initiatives targeted at young people. Although wealth does not strictly fall along generational lines, we do know that Millennials and potentially Gen Z are expected to be the first generations worse off than their parents. You will be unsurprised to find out that this Budget does not address that.
A very generous interpretation of this decision would be that the government knows there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ experience of Australian youth – for example, HECS indexation rates are usually branded as ‘youth policy’ but are more specifically and correctly a change to tertiary education. Same goes for Rent Assistance. Yes, many young people rent but it’s certainly not a payment that is exclusively accessed by those under the age of 30.
Beyond this, we don’t know what to tell you. If we are to expect significant reforms to education and housing – the two most pressing issues in the day-to-day lives of most young people – it wasn’t made clear this year.
Climate who?
Contributed by Tegan Lerm from Project Planet
We’ve been given some major mixed signals from the government on their climate priorities this year. Labor’s centrepiece climate package, Future Made in Australia, will see $22.7b spent over the next decade to turn Australia into a “renewable energy superpower”. The package will provide tax incentives to attract and deploy investment in strategic industries which will be part of Australia’s clean industry future – like critical minerals, green metals and clean energy component manufacturing. But it has meant that other incredibly important investments into climate initiatives (vehicle emissions, establishing the Net Zero Economy Authority, improving the Australian Carbon Credits Scheme, any other nature-related programs) paled in comparison.
The big shiny fund sounds great and investing in a green economy is vital… until you start looking elsewhere in the budget.
The government is as close to the fossil fuel industry as ever, with subsidies totalling $14.5b this financial year, an increase of 31% on the $11.1b recorded last year. And the recently announced Future Gas Strategy. It not only suggests that gas will play a critical role in the transition to renewable energy, which commits us to extracting gas to export “to 2050 and beyond”.
If achieving net zero by 2050 is the real goal, this budget does not contain a coherent strategy to get us there.
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