CONTESTED GROUND: Is Australia slowly regulating away its own prosperity – and, with it, its national resilience?

And what is and has been evolving is the economy subsequent to the budget.

And we've sort of spoken at length about that.

We've had some views and opinions on

it.

Can you think of...

I mean, you've probably followed these things for as long as I had.

Can you think of a time when a, you know, months down the track, you know, the outcomes of a federal budget are still being,

maybe the

implementation of the GST way back, which is what, 2000?

2000.

But that only had courage for a bit of theatre around.

Houston tried to explain a cake, right? That was the

Yeah, but that was the first attempt at GST.

Then when Howard as PM, Costello as Treasurer brought in, which I think was 2000.

Yeah.

That's probably the only one that comes to my mind, to be still talking about a federal budget so many months later.

I mean, given the 24-hour news cycle and the perceptions of relatively short attention spans of the electorate, I mean, I am struck almost every day by just how persistent this conversation is.

It certainly has a long tail.

But you would argue

that the inherent health of the Australian economy is probably something which governs all other aspects of the Australian economy, right? If you've got your dollars and your cents sorted out, typically other stuff matters a lot more.

So I would argue that the budget should have greater relevance all the time rather than just being a... hey we make an announcement we've got some headline about what the next year is going to look like everyone happy move on no it certainly certainly um injected more more contest i've ever seen in discussions around it you know um i used to go to dinner parties and talk about you know we always sort of spoke about real estate and sport but now you talk about tax minimiser.

Yeah,

well, dead right.

And I guess, you know, it's a timely reminder that, you know, the discussions around cost of living pressures are not just discussions.

You know, there are people out there doing it genuinely hard and, you know, scrimping and saving to get from paycheck to paycheck.