Imagine for a second, footballers talking like politicians on budget day:

SHARK PLAYER: The estimates contained in the 2014‑15 MYEFO are based on forecasts of the economic outlook. Changes to the economic assumptions underlying the estimates will impact on receipts and payments, and hence the size of the underlying cash balance. Even small movements in economic parameters can result in large changes to the budget aggregates.

BUNNY PLAYER: The economic scenarios provide a rule of thumb indication of the impact on receipts, payments and the underlying cash balance of changes in the economic outlook. They represent a partial economic analysis only and do not attempt to capture all the economic feedback and other policy responses related to changed economic conditions. In particular, the analysis assumes no change in the exchange rate, interest rates or policy over the forecast period. The impact of the two scenarios on the economic parameters would be different if the full feedback response on economic variables and likely policy actions were taken into account. The analysis does not aim to provide an alternative picture of the economic forecasts under these scenarios, but instead gives an indication of the sensitivity associated with different components of receipts and payments to changes in the economy. As such, the changes in the economic variables and their impact on the fiscal outlook are merely illustrative.

SHARK PLAYER: The first scenario involves a permanent fall in world prices of non‑rural commodity exports in 2014‑15 consistent with a fall in the terms of trade of around 4 per cent, which causes a 1 per cent fall in nominal GDP by 2015‑16. The sensitivity analysis evaluates the flow‑on effects on the economy, the labour market and prices. The impacts in Table 3.17 are stylised and refer to per cent deviations from the baseline levels of the economic parameters.

Yep...

It’s easy to miss the big picture if you look at things close up. It’s easy to miss the detail if you stand too far away. This year the government is carefully positioning the public debate in the middle distance from its second budget, just the right vantage point to see how politically restorative and fair it all is.

The vantage point is close enough that we might miss some of the big questions, like the gaping difference between what this budget does and the case the government made until a few months ago for changes to bring the budget back to balance over time. Or, God forbid, the case it made a few years ago that deficits less than half the size of those it will bring down on Tuesday constituted a “budget emergency”.

It is close enough to miss the logical implications of some of its immediate political lines, like that one about Labor’s modest plan to limit the huge tax loopholes available to the very rich through superannuation tax concessions. If any change to a $30bn-a-year tax loophole, which delivers more than 40% of its benefits to the top 10% of households, constitutes an unconscionable “sledgehammer” to retirement savings – as the government says – it’s hard to see what the Coalition would do to raise tax revenue. But if it doesn’t do anything on the revenue side of the budget, the savings needed pretty quickly move back into the “unfairness” territory traversed by its 2014 budget effort.

But the debate is also sufficiently distant from the fine print to blur some of the detail. The enthusiastically adopted pre-budget theme of how hopeless/invisible/under threat Joe Hockey is compared with the astute/omnipresent/rising star of Scott Morrison is not entirely inaccurate. Hockey did do a lousy job of explaining budget 2014 and Morrison is doing a good job of explaining his pre-announced policies this year.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/11/budget-2015-devil-is-in-the-detail-but-its-all-rather-blurry

The voters aren't mugs; they know things are grim. And Joe Hockey's budget will not - cannot - turn the economy around. But that is not its aim, writes Mungo MacCallum.

A treasurer's lot is not a happy one. His job description is, after all, to be contrarian.

Whatever the popular economic mood is, then he is against it. The bulls are roaring? They must be sedated. The bears are slumbering? Time to stimulate them.

If the country is booming, if wages and profits are soaring and unemployment down, there is a risk of rampant inflation, so the Treasurer needs to inject a note of caution, even of gloom. But if things are down, with spending and investment constrained and recession a possibility, then the Treasurer must be determinedly optimistic, predicting silver linings and good times just around the corner.

Hence Joe Hockey has spent the last few weeks exuding ebullience, however much it has forced him to grit his teeth in doing so. But in the last week his exuberance has got the better of him; as so often with the Abbott government, he has overdone it and drifted into self parody.

When the Reserve Bank once more cut interest rates, bringing them to almost unheard of lows, Hockey was cheering at the news. Bouncing into a press conference, he adjured the punters that this was their opportunity: borrow, invest, spend, spend spend! There were green shoots sprouting, and now the fertiliser was being spread.

Immediately the stock market tanked and Woolworths announced that it was laying off a raft of employees. This was hardly a surprise. Next day, the Reserve Bank spelled it out: far from being good news, the interest rate cut was an attempt to stave off impending collapse: growth was declining and was predicted to get lower, and unemployment was rising and could get worse.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-12/maccallum-budget-2015-political-green-shoots-require-fertiliser/6464222

See mischief at top...

"Hockey 2015 budget is like using lubricant and a condom in a rape..."

Sophia Leoniskava, tent refugee from the previous budget.

"Spend, spend, spend" is the new mantra of this turdy government. Some pundits of the commentariat lauds this Hock-botch budget as a "Labor budget", but it's not. It's full of small prints, caveats and false assumptions. 

The recent rise in "pay-day" lenders in Australia is symptomatic of a general situation in which more and more people find themselves in bad debts. There is profit in pay-day lending at usury rates. The government should be worried that more people are going into unmanageable debt.

Thus to tell people to "spend, spend, spend" is not going to help the economy which under this slogan is not going to revitalise the industries that Turdy and his minions have spent the last couple of years reading their last rites by their moribund bedside. 

"Spend, spend spend" is cynical. Cynical from a cynical government. Not even desperate. This turdy government has talked to us about the need to tighten our belt for the last two years. Obviously it was not going to work. These turdixperts who told us economic Armageddon was coming our way should we live well under Labor, now have realise their chances of re-election is gone — because guess what? They got it wrong wrong wrong... But fear not, you're going to save their bacon by "spend spend spend"...

It ain't going to work. First people should be sceptical about the new mantra. All it's going to do is put most of us into further debt — PERSONAL debt. Second, this is would only favour the merchants of goods, mostly imported from overseas. Third, this would make the "pay-day" lenders richer by the truckloads. Fourth, should the economy "relaunch" by PERSONAL spending, the interest rates would go back up and all the PERSONAL borrowers would be hit for six. This is what the Turdy Shitty Abbott government wants: YOU GETTING INTO MORE PERSONAL DEBT, WHILE IT SHOULD BE THE GOVERNMENT GOING INTO MORE DEBT by investing into education, health, science, ideas (not economic fiddle ideas). Call me cynical if you will. I know my onions. This Turdy government is hundred times more cynical that me.

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey says it would be "regrettable" if businesses restructure their paid parental leave schemes to ensure workers still qualified for Commonwealth payments, describing such a move as a "scam".

This week's budget included plans to save about $1 billion over four years by stopping new parents claiming paid leave from both their employer and the Federal Government.

Business groups warned some employers might scrap their own schemes in response to the change or restructure payments to allow their employees to continue claiming leave from the Commonwealth.

Mr Hockey said such a move would be regrettable.

"It's something we will have a look at, but a good employer will offer fair-dinkum paid parental leave to their employees, like the ABC does, like the Government does, like many businesses do," he said.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-15/hockey-urges-business-not-to-change-ppl-policies/6474124

Yep, Joe lives in dreamland...