budget – John Humphreys

Australian budget 2024/25

_{Published in The Spectator Online on 18 May 2024 under the title “A budget about (nearly) nothing“, and discussed in my interview with Alexandra Marshall on ADH TV Friday news starting at the 29 minute mark.}

The Australian Federal Budget gave us a couple of big headlines, but most of them were fake news.

The Treasurer talked up the importance of the stage 3 tax cuts coming in July this year, but those tax cuts are old news – originally proposed over five years ago and amended earlier this year. These tax cuts are a good first step, but Australia desperately needs further rounds of income tax cuts, and the government had nothing new to say.

The second big headline was the budget surplus, but that surplus is for the last financial year. It is good that the previous budget was in surplus, and people can learn about that on the History Channel, but the 2024-25 budget year has a deficit of over $28 billion.

Victorian budget 2024/25

_{Published in The Spectator Online on 11 May 2024 under the title “Victorian budget blues“.}

The best thing that can be said about the 2024 Victorian Budget is that it’s not as bad as recent years, but that is damning with faint praise.

The sad truth is that the government continues to spend money that it doesn’t have, run up large debt and deficits, slug the public with ever-higher taxes, and avoid all difficult decisions.

John Humphreys is the Chief Economist at The Australian Taxpayers' Alliance and Director for the Australian Economic Education Foundation.

John has a PhD in economics from the University of Queensland. He has worked previously for the Australian Treasury, as a consultant doing projects for the World Bank and ASEAN (among others), economics lecturer in Australia and abroad, and manager of an education charity in Cambodia (for which he was awarded a knighthood in 2016).

Outside of his day job, John is a certified scuba divemaster, recreational pilot & Justice of the Peace, and he spent four years as a travelling hippy visiting over 80 countries. He was the founder of the Liberal Democratic Party (now called the Libertarian Party) and the Friedman Conferences. Most importantly, John is married to a wonderful wife and has three amazing boys, and is now living the simple life just north of Brisbane in Australia.