2016 Budget | Q&A with Chief Economist, Stephen Walters

What was your initial reaction to the Budget?

As pre election budgets go, it was a pretty cautious one. There is nothing particularly irresponsible which is a good thing. There are a lot of initiatives for small business’s. The disappointment for me is that there was no big change on return to surplus- we are still looking at five to six years worth of deficits. The emphasis was really on not aggravating too many people. I would have hoped for more of a return on that surplus- but the timing just was not great.

Do you think the NFP sector was taken into consideration by the Budget?

The focus on the [NFP] sector was very small, there was more of a focus on high income earners and small business’s. There is a bit of stuff in the budget for low income earners- particularly women who have been out of the work force with children. There is clearly some focus on people who don’t have the skills for paid work. There is a bit of stuff on aged care- a lot more could have been done there. There is more emphasis on schools and funding and needs based education funding. In terms of things like homelessness, I didn’t see anything specific on that or charities in general.

Do you think there was a reasoning behind the government not prioritising the NFP sector?

I think we need to look at the context- this is an election manifesto and [the government] are really clearly targeting middle Australia. Let’s be honest, the NFP sector is not the sector that the government is focused on at this point. That is not to say that they are ignoring NFPs- but the priorities for the government clearly at this time is to get small business owners and high income earners on board.

There has been some pretty serious cuts in the past to aid budgets. I think certainly with the deficit that is close to 40 billion dollars- the opportunity for there to be extra funding for things like the aid budget or charities was always going to be low on the list of priorities. The government is clearly focused on the fact that there is time for the votes to swing around. The timing is therefore not good for NFPs. Perhaps in a years time there will be more of a focus on NFPs. Unfortunately the timing of the election cycle was a problem for the sector. It is unfortunate, I don’t think the government purposely neglected the NFP sector but certainly there were no new measures and this is disappointing for the sector.