Chris Richardson

That's fine.

And trouble is, um, that our rules and our reporting mean that effectively stuff goes off budget and then we stop caring about it.

So increasingly over time, that's where the trash goes, and that money goes dark.

We don't look at it enough.

And so, for example...

when you have debt write-offs, as we did recently with student debt, it doesn't show up in, or not immediately, it only shows up very slowly in the main measures that we look at.

So there's a real incentive for our governments to put trash off budget and then to forgive that debt because the system sort of lets them get away with it.

It's not, by the way, the only way

uh, in, in which they, they do things.

They, they tend to, um, uh, any given budget gives you some numbers over 10 years, but it gives you detailed numbers over four years.

So they try to be careful in the four years and mysteriously years five and six are suddenly much worse, right?

You know, there's that dodge.

There's all sorts of things we do need.

Uh, and I would, I

It is an incredibly nude and niche point, forgive me.

But if we give our politicians such terrible reporting rules, of course they are going to vote them.

And I'm desperate to change those rules.

We are letting our politicians consistently pull the wool over our eyes.

And the acceleration in the amount of money that's headed off budget is spectacular.

To be fair to the budget this week, it threw an extra $5 billion in over four years, and I'm not that excited.