Boom Time Budget

The Fifth Estate is the Wheeler Centre’s new series of fortnightly forums: a more measured approach to news and current affairs. Provocative and studied, authoritative and unhurried, this is real analysis that will be pulling no punches. Hosted by broadcaster, journalist and anthropologist Sally Warhaft, The Fifth Estate is indispensible live journalism. All events are recorded, with podcast episodes posted on our website by noon the following day.

Bad for business, good for ‘struggle street’, sharing the resource boom, hampering overseas investment. This is just some of what’s being said about Labor’s 2012-13 budget.

One week on from budget night, join Stephen Mayne, George Megalogenis and host Sally Warhaft as they explore Australia’s fiscal fortitude. Battling opposition jibes that Labor cannot deliver surpluses – and fulfilling his desire to deliver on a long-held promise – Wayne Swan’s 2012-13 planned budget surplus is here ‘on time, as promised and ahead of every other major advanced economy’.

But is this projected return to surplus genuine, or a result of creative accounting? With households largely escaping the cost-cutting measures, who are the winners and losers – and how do the states fare? Will this ‘election’ budget, wearing its Labor values proudly on its sleeve, win back the heartland? Does the average Australian care?