Alan Kohler

This is what you do when you go into a budget lockup.

You read the speech first.

Then you read the Treasury's economic outlook and then you write your piece from the speech and the economic outlook.

But over the years I've changed that.

I actually don't even read the speech now in the lock-up.

If I go to the lock-up I don't bother reading the speech.

I think it's just guff.

It's not worth reading.

And I don't really read Treasury's economic outlook either because

So what I do is I look for the, firstly, I go to table 3.3.

Let me just look it up.

Table 3.3, which is the

Reconciliation of General Government Sector Underlying Cash Balance Estimates.

And that tells you, that adds up the policy decisions and what they call parameter and other variations, which is the windfall gains or losses, you know, the things that are outside their control.

And so it gives you a quick summary of the impact of their decisions and what they're getting from the economic

from the Iran war, for example.

So the Iran war and other commodity price increases this year in the budget year, which is 26-27, is extra receipts of $18.8 billion, increased payments of $9.5 billion,

So net parameter and other variations of $9.3 billion.

That's the plus.

But that for this year, over the forward estimates of five years, it's $36.6 billion.