Stephen Koukoulas

Anything that can sort of change the efficiency of the tax system is good, but the tax changes, while they might be big for some individual components of the economy, trusts, the capital gains tax issue, negative gearing, they probably add a few micro decimal points to the productivity equation, but that's over a very long period of time because they don't really kick in for a couple of years.

My reading of the thinking and the way that the Treasurer articulated it, both in his public comments associated with the budget and the media comments afterwards, and an assessment of what they were on about, is that very...

a relatively small part of the economy and the population get the benefits from those taxes as they currently exist.

And so if you change the trust taxation laws and negative gearing, you're hitting a small part of the population and they're the ones that have got the bulk of the money.

They're the older age cohorts.

This is part of this intergenerational thing.

And whether that's good or bad, I'll leave it to the voters to decide in a couple of years time.

But in a sense, it's the...

the proverbial Robin Hood, taking from the rich and using some of the revenue they get from those things, the tax changes, to increase the instant asset right down for small business investment, to give a $1,000 non-receivable tax deduction for PAYG taxpayers and these sorts of things.

So they're really skewing some of the tax revenue

burden, if you like, away from low and middle income earners and hitting the taxpayers in the trust area, in areas where they get capital gains, a little bit harder.

for the stimulus.

Look, the budget deficits were a little bit smaller than we're assumed at Maifo.

And a lot of that was actually parameter changes.

Parameter changes plus the cuts to the NDIS that were announced a few weeks ago.

There are the little bits and bobs that were there on the sideline in a sense, but it's really the two things that have improved the budget bottom line.

were better economic parameters, the Australian tax office benefits, if you like, from these high commodity prices, and the NDIS, which was, I think, $37 billion, if I remember correctly, over the four years.

So that's a very chunky cut in government spending there.

Bottom line of the budget improved by $45 billion over the course of the forward estimate.

So in terms of its contribution or stimulus or contractionary effect on the economy, it's probably...