Alan Kohler

Yeah, right.

And the policy decisions for the budget year, this is 26-27, minus 6.5 billion, extra payments of 8.7 and extra receipts of 2.2.

But it also says the reduction in the deficit is entirely due to economic factors that are outside the government's control.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who knows.

Yeah, true, true.

The other thing I look at is Table 3.5, which tells you how much stuff they've whacked off budget, which is interesting because the underlying, they call it, the one they publish and talk about is what they call the underlying cash balance, which for the coming financial year is $31.5 billion.

But if you add up all of the things that are off budget,

It comes to more than that, $32.5 billion, and it's an absolute record for off-budget items.

So what they call the budget headline cash balance, which adds the two things together, is $64 billion.

Yes.

Amazing.

That's something we should all be thinking about, isn't it?

Well, they call the extra bits that are off-budget, they call them total net cash flows from investments in financial assets for policy purposes.

And you can make an argument that they shouldn't be on the budget.

For example, their student loans are $5.2 billion.

The Snowy Hydro loan of $3 billion.

Other loans, Housing Australia, $6.3 billion, all this stuff.

I mean, so they're all kind of, they are loans, I guess.