Why You Really Should Care About This Year’s Budget

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will hand down the federal budget this week, detailing how the government plans to spend your tax dollars.

Every budget is, obviously, quite an important moment in Australian politics. But with an election looming, this year’s is particularly crucial. So what exactly is the budget, and why should you care what’s in it?

Let’s Start Small: What Is The Budget?

Like any budget, the federal budget details how money will be spent and saved throughout the year. But instead of it covering the cost of your groceries and rent, the federal budget encompasses everything the Australian Government does with our tax dollars.

The budget is broken down into income and expenses — that is, what your tax dollars are spent on and where the money to pay for said expenses actually comes from. But much like your own budget, which may see you sacrificing the cost of your $6 soy latte to cover your phone bill, there are winners and losers in the governments too.

Completely selfishly, we all expect to get the most out of the budget while paying the least tax possible. This is normal, it’s just how the world works. But when we’re talking about an entire country of people, it’s far more complicated than sacrificing one of your luxuries for another.

For example, the government may subsidise child care, but also spend less on Medicare. While this is great if you have young children and are paying out the wazoo in childcare costs, it’s not so great if you’re one of the millions of Australians living with a chronic health or medical condition that requires regular visits to the doctor.

When Is The Budget Handed Down?

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will deliver the 2022-23 Federal Budget at approximately 7:30pm on Tuesday 29 March, 2022.

Why Does This Year’s Budget Matter So Much?

The 2022 budget will be a particularly interesting one, considering it will be handed down just weeks ahead of the election. And — as we saw in the case of Tony Abbott and the big bad budget that lost the election — a shitty budget can ruin your hopes of re-election.

The fact that the budget will be handed down just weeks before the election has the power to make or break Morrison’s campaign — especially considering it means the country’s best political journalists will have six uninterrupted hours to scrutinise every detail of the government’s fiscal policy before it is released.

Not to mention, it’s also the first year we’ve been able to shift slightly back towards pre-pandemic life, which means we will likely see the first relatively normal budget since before COVID.

But just because COVID is less of an immediate threat to life, and the economy, it doesn’t mean everything is sunshine and rainbows when it comes to the budget. As anyone who has bought literally anything recently could tell you, inflation is way up, fuel is way up, and — unfortunately — wages are not.

We’ve already seen hints from Frydenberg that we can expect some sort of “targeted” cost of living relief amid rising inflation levels, but he has stressed that “crisis level” spending — as we’ve experienced over the last two years — must stop.

Obviously, there are a plethora of other issues from healthcare to education, to the war in Ukraine that are also in desperate need of funding as we hopefully move further towards COVID-normal, but as we know all too well from budgets past, there has to be some losers.

With an election still yet to be called (and only four possible election days left to choose from), the execution of this year’s budget will be crucial if Morrison hopes to win.

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Lavender Baj is Junkee’s senior reporter, focusing on news, politics, and finance. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Sam Mooy/Getty Images