Greg Jericho
Chief Economist

Ted O’Brien at the National Press Club has made a big play about government spending and the need for fiscal rules.

He suggested that government spending growth in the past year was not driven by the NDIS. And while he might be correct on the previous year, to ignore the NDIS on overall government spending is to ignore the main issue for why total government spending is larger now than in the past:

Government spending excluding disability support in 2024-25 was the same as it was in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Also O’Brien also mentioned that the ALP has dropped the “fiscal rules” relating to tax and spending.

Let’s be clear – those rules were completely made up. Scott Morrison for example as treasurer suggested a tax cap of 23.9% of GDP. And he boasted that they remained under it. Well big whoops. The only ones who didn’t stay under it was Peter Costello in the midst of the mining boom

Fiscal rules are bullshit devised by conservatives to pretend we need to limit how much tax the government should raise or how much it should spend.