1. Budget savings and return to budget balance
This is a “nothing” budget in terms of returning the budget to surplus in 2012-13. The claim that this will be achieved in a couple of years is hard to believe.
The savings (Budget Paper No 1, Table 3, p.314) of several billion annually is pitiful. The few billion in reduced spending would only be in the error margin of a $368 billion budget. In addition, most of the reduced expenditure comes not from cuts …
