Pitch Engine
The Times Real Estate

.

This budget will only work if business and consumers play ball

  • Written by Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
This budget will only work if business and consumers play ballAAP/Mick Tsikas

This is an extraordinary giveaway budget, driven by desperate circumstances that would have been inconceivable less than a year ago.

The debt and deficit numbers are predictably eye-watering - but the gamble is whether they are big enough.

The Morrison government is pleading.

In particular, it is begging business to chance its hand...

Read more: This budget will only work if business and consumers play ball

More Articles ...

  1. The budget's tax cuts have their critics, but this year they make fiscal sense
  2. Budget 2020: promising tax breaks, but relying on hope
  3. Budget 2020: Frydenberg tells Australians, ‘we have your back’
  4. Don't worry about the debt: we need more stimulus to avoid a prolonged recession
  5. The Brussels Finance Conference of 1920: a lesson in the perils of focusing on the past
  6. Big budget spending isn't new: it's a return to what worked before
  7. The bad bits of ParentsNext just came back
  8. Vital Signs: how to time a bombshell like Trump's tax returns
  9. The 5-prong plan for a budget that will set us up for the future
  10. Meet the Liveable Income Guarantee: a budget-ready proposal that would prevent unemployment benefits falling off a cliff
  11. Which Australian destinations lose, and which may win, without international tourism
  12. Each budget used to have a gender impact statement. We need it back, especially now
  13. Going cashless isn't straightforward. Ask Sweden, or Zimbabwe
  14. It's about to become easier to lend irresponsibly, to help the recovery
  15. We're facing an insolvency tsunami. With luck, these changes will avert the worst of it
  16. Top economists back boosts to JobSeeker and social housing over tax cuts in pre-budget poll
  17. Frydenberg is setting his budget ambition dangerously low
  18. Google and Facebook shouldn't subsidise journalism, but the government could
  19. Testamentary trusts are one of the last truly outrageous means of avoiding tax
  20. Keating is right. The Reserve Bank should do more. It needs to aim for more inflation
  21. New Zealand companies lag behind others in their reporting on climate change, and that's a risk to their reputation
  22. It's not only Westpac. What's behind the biggest fine in Australian corporate history
  23. More neurotic, less agreeable, less conscientious: how job insecurity shapes your personality
  24. 'If JobSeeker was cut, the unemployed would be picking fruit'? Why that's not true
  25. Why do bankers behave so badly? They make too much money to ask questions
  26. The major parties' tax promises are more about ideology and psychology than equity or fairness for New Zealanders
  27. Yes government debt is cheap, but that doesn't mean it comes risk-free
  28. Athlete activism or corporate woke washing? Getting it right in the age of Black Lives Matter is a tough game
  29. Vital Signs: 50 years ago Milton Friedman told us greed was good. He was half right
  30. Who suffers most from Melbourne’s extended lockdown? Hint: they are not necessarily particularly vocal 
  31. Super funds are feeling the financial heat from climate change
  32. Tasmania's tax system is broken: here are three ways to fix it
  33. 3 keys to meaningful work: an employer who cares about the environment, society and you
  34. In gold we trust: why bullion is still a safe haven in times of crisis
  35. Are your devices spying on you? Australia's very small step to make the Internet of Things safer
  36. The sackings at Rio look like a victory for shareholders, but...
  37. Corporate dysfunction on Indigenous affairs: Why heads rolled at Rio Tinto
  38. Winding back JobKeeper and JobSeeker will push 740,000 Australians into poverty
  39. Vital Signs: batch testing and contact tracing are the two keys to stop the lockdown yo-yo
  40. Relax, losing access to China won't make us the 'poor white trash of Asia'
  41. With their conservative promises, Labour and National lock in existing unfairness in New Zealand's tax system
  42. Clive Palmer versus (Western) Australia. He could survive a High Court loss if his company is found to be “foreign”
  43. China's leaders are strong and emboldened. It's wrong to see them as weak and insecure
  44. Now we'll need $100-$120 billion. Why the budget has to spend big to avoid scarring
  45. The modelling behind Melbourne's extended city-wide lockdown is problematic
  46. Tracking Victoria's job losses: there's no road to recovery without containing COVID-19
  47. Morrison is right. All governments will need to spend more to get us out of the crisis
  48. Vital Signs: How do you fight a recession without precedent?
  49. Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century?
  50. Six graphs that explain Australia's recession