When Australians get asked who should bear the pain from any budget cuts, they never put their own hands up.
This masthead’s Resolve poll shows clear support for reductions in government spending. But when it comes down to where those cuts should be, voters point their fingers at everyone else bar themselves.
More than half of all respondents reckon that foreign aid should be the first area of cuts in Jim Chalmers’ coming budget. It’s the only option with majority support.
More than three-quarters of One Nation voters, who now account for a fair proportion of respondents, think foreign aid is ripe for cuts. Labor (49 per cent) and Coalition (54 per cent) supporters were also keen to make savings out of the foreign aid budget.
Sadly for them, even axing every dollar spent on foreign aid ($4.2 billion a year) will not touch the sides of a total budget that contains more than $785 billion of spending.
The same for renewable energy programs (another $5 billion), which is the second most supported at a modest 29 per cent.
As usual, those on unemployment benefits are a target (at 21 per cent with similar levels of support among all voters). At $17.2 billion, it’s not nothing.
But given Newstart is $400 a week (the aged pension is $540), cuts to this measly assistance reeks of punishment rather than prudent budget management.
The Resolve poll highlights the political danger for any politician who says government spending has to be reduced. The cuts that are politically palatable are simply too small to improve the budget.
The single largest expense in the budget is the GST. That’s the $100 billion that will go to the states and territories, raised by the tax and topped up with the fiscally criminal GST deal to placate angry West Australians. WA’s GST top-up is worth more than all foreign aid each year.
The next largest is the age pension at $65 billion. As the Resolve poll shows, no one wants to reduce that payment. Nor do they want to cut payment to carers, any health program, childcare subsidies or education.
Combined with the GST, there’s 50 per cent of total spending.
Then there’s aged care ($41 billion), NDIS ($52.3 billion), financial support for the disabled ($24.3 billion), the interest bill on government debt (almost impossible to reduce quickly), defence ($51 billion and growing as fast as aged care) and family assistance.
You’re now at almost three-quarters of total spending.
There’s a reason Joe Hockey’s infamous 2014 budget went down like a lead balloon. While it had cuts to foreign aid (spending on it was higher than it is today), the real savings were in health and education.
His planned cuts would have amounted to $80 billion.
Hockey understood that real budget savings required cuts to the biggest expenditure areas. But voters weren’t prepared to cop spending reductions that felt so close to the bone.
Easier to hit foreign aid, even if it amounts to three-fifths of nothing to fix the budget.
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Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.