Normally the Federal budget, which shall be announced tomorrow, is a fairly unexciting exercise, except around elections when it’s used to announce policies. But an article I read yesterday has suddenly got me a bit more interested, and also worried.

A fairly respectable dude at the ANZ bank estimates that there’s been just on a hundred billion dollars worth of Budget surpluses in the last few years. While it’s inevitable that some of that money would be spent on vote-buying exercises, you’d normally expect most of it to be used for big, important purchases that are good for the nation long-term. Things like new universities, or a reformed welfare system, or a nationwide fibre network.

At State level, our Labor government has done just that: its hundred-million-dollar surpluses are funding new sports and theatre venues, an (admittedly iffy) shakeup of hospitals, and some reasonably major road projects. But the Feds have nothing of the sort to show for themselves …