The 2017-18 Final Budget Outcome (FBO) shows the deficit came in almost four times worse than forecast in the Liberal Party’s first Budget.
 
This is after the Liberal Party’s massive cuts to schools, hospitals and the pension.
 
The Liberal Party has clearly given up on any sort of credible Budget repair strategy with the rookie Treasurer all but giving up on offsetting new spending and revenue measures.
 
Despite today’s Final Budget Outcome, we still have a Budget in substantially worse condition than that inherited by the Abbott-Turnbull Government:
 

• Net debt has doubled under the Liberals, having ballooned from $175 billion in September 2013 to $342 billion in the latest FBO figures
• Gross debt is at record highs, stuck above half-a-trillion dollars having grown by $250 billion since September 2013

 
Clearly strong global economic conditions have seen revenue pick-up in the Budget bringing the 2017-18 deficit down from what was forecast in May.
 
Instead of banking the uptick in parameter improvements resulting from this major global upswing, the Liberal Party has decided to completely ignore their own fiscal rules.
 
As the global economy has strengthened, the Liberal Party’s Budget discipline has weakened. We’ve seen this story before with the Howard-Costello Government baking in unaffordable, permanent income tax cuts and tax concessions and middle class welfare into the Budget, only for that to be unwound by successive governments as a temporary boom dried up.
 
We know the Liberal Party will move to bring back the big business tax cuts as soon the opportunity arises – that’s exactly what senior economic ministers said after the company tax cuts were defeated in the Senate.
 
The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison has given up on implementing structural Budget repair in a fair way and so it’s only Labor is being upfront and honest with the Australian, putting forward tax reform proposals on negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts.
 
Labor will deliver bigger cumulative surpluses over the forward estimates and will have a better plan to pay down debt putting the budget on a more structurally sound footing.