At a lunch event today I was asked to speak about what is in the 2008 federal budget. I confess that I know no more of the detail than anyone else, but this budget will be different to anything we have seen before.
When Fraser and Hawke were prime ministers they left the budget to their treasurers, John Howard and Paul Keating respectively. When Keating was prime minister, John Dawkins and Ralph Willis both had a fair degree of freedom. When Howard was PM, Peter Costello controlled his budgets, but in the later years John Howard inserted a vast number of spending schemes that horrified Treasury and did not please Costello. But the whole budget affair became linked to the leadership.
But 2008 is different. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has taken a deep interest in the economy and is in regular touch with many CEOs. Rudd realises that he must get the economy right. In addition, there is no doubt that finance minister Lindsay Tanner is the most influential finance minister Australia has ever had.
In recent years I have shared a breakfast podium with Tanner after Costello budgets. He studied the detail of the budgets with a terrier-like tenacity and in some cases knew more of the detail than Peter Costello. He saw the Howard spending and hated it.
The passion and skills of Tanner will pervade many corners of the 2008 budget. In some ways Tanner reminds me of Shakespeare's Cassius with his "lean and hungry look". But the conspiracy that Tanner has been plotting is not against Caesar (Rudd) but against the Howard's big spending. And so treasurer Wayne Swan is in the middle of a hands-on PM and a finance minster who is fulfilling a passion that has been building for years.
It has become traditional in budgets that vast amounts are leaked. So far this has not happened, but it could occur over the weekend. However, early in the budget preparation process the carer's bonus was leaked and the consequent political pressure caused it to be taken off Tanner's list of possible spending cuts. Ever since there has been much greater security.
Normally in tough budgets there are horrible surprises that no one thought about, so lots of people are uneasy.
Meanwhile, a key long-term plank of the Rudd Government is investment in infrastructure. The cost of that investment will depend on whether industrial relations minister Julia Gillard holds the line on commercial building industry industrial relations. If she caves in to the building unions, the costs will blow out and much of the efforts of Rudd, Tanner and Swan will be destroyed.
