Federal Budgets are very difficult things to put together. They're even more difficult when you're dependent upon the advice of the bureaucracy who - invariably on Budgets - are wrong.
After all, to put it simply, whatever the merit of it, when governments start boasting about surpluses of $21.7 billion next financial year; that's $21.7 billion they've taken from us more than they need.
The argument is that knocks off inflation. But the surpluses for the last several years have been up around 15, 16 and 17 billion dollars. Last year $16.8 billion. And we're still told we've got to fight inflation.
So it's obvious that the interest rate strategy, stick them up 12 times in a row and build Budget surpluses, is not the answer to inflation. But there's no other strategy being presented, because that's the bureaucratic advice.
Now we're told that inflation is driving up interest rates. But last week the Reserve Bank told us that inflation would not get back into that two to three per cent band until December 2010. Now the Budget tells us it will be back to two to three per cent by June next year.
How do you know who's right?
Given the election promises, Mr Swan has made a fair fist of things. The big question mark is, if we're not going to be paying more for our money, has the slash and burn gone far enough?
After all, when you look at the table of where they're going to save allegedly seven billion, there's nothing too specific.
For example, appendix F in Budget paper 2 lists a stack of so-called major savings. Abandoning the much needed dental treatment programme introduced by the Howard government comes in at $116 million. One wonders whether that has merit.
But you've got efficiency dividends everywhere. How on earth they're going to be measured you'd have no idea.
Or a special dividend from Australia Post for $150 million. The luxury car tax is $130 million, surely inflationary.
But the largest single item in these so-called savage cuts is $640 million for the tax on alcopops. And then there's a Budget line called "other saving initiatives" worth 2.5 billion.
Now this is hardly a Government tightening its belt.
Yes, something's been done about the baby bonus and the family tax benefit B. Whether attacking private health insurance is anti-inflationary is very problematical.
To make a comparison, Peter Costello's first Budget all those years ago was designed to fight another scourge, Government debt. So he cut Budget spending by about nine billion. This Budget cuts it by about one billion.
Is that going to stop the Reserve Bank from jacking up interest rates?
And if not, is the Budget going to inflict more pain on people who already are suffering? But you've got to feel some sympathy for Mr Swan.
The Reserve Bank last week said there was economic turmoil ahead. The Treasury says inflation will ease fairly soon.
Given that Mr Swan doesn't set interest rates, the Reserve Bank can ignore what happened last night. And if it believes the Government was soft on expenditure cuts and overzealous about including election promises for spending, including tax cuts, then it may regard the Budget as not doing enough.
In other words, if you're allowing all this money loose into the economy, tax cuts, people not paying a Medicare levy, 50 per cent rebate on child care, how do you soak up all that money? Or does the Reserve Bank please itself and belt us up again?
There are many issues here. This is a high wire act. We won't know until the weeks and months pass.
But one thing's clear: the future now belongs to Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan.
The proposal to set up a Building Australia fund and Health and Hospitals fund is a good idea. But there's not one line which tells us what they're going to do.
There'll be more committees to decide that.
But surely you'd go to an election knowing what you'd do with the money and get started on the job now. One of the criticisms of Kevin Rudd has been that he's all about image, appearance, rhetoric and not substance. There is a tendency for this Budget to be about image rather than management. It's all very well to tick all the boxes, but if at the end of the day it's been far too complacent, we may be in for tough times down the road.
For now, the Treasurer deserves the benefit of the doubt.
We can only hope that he and his advisers in the bureaucracy have got it right.
