The media like to report federal budgets in terms of lists of 'winners and losers', with the unstated assumption that the more winners there are relative to losers, the better the budget is.

This winner/loser view does help focus on what the budget calls 'policy decisions', but it is never the whole story — or even the main story — of the budget. In the 2024-25 budget recently tabled by Federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, it is a struggle to find any losers; unless you count those who failed to get a benefit they had lobbied for.

This paper reviews the 2024-25 Federal Budget across four key tests:

1. Does it contribute as much as it can to the effort to bring inflation down in a sustainable fashion and in so doing effectively address the cost of living ‘crisis’?
2. Does it stabilize and strengthen the government’s financial position after the upheavals of the pandemic period?
3. Does it help end the long period of productivity stagnation — surely the key to a resumption of growth in real wages?
4. Does it answer the national security and major social issues of the times, particularly the high cost of housing?