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Ryan Bridge: The growth forecast in Budget 2025 at least gives us hope · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Guess what things are looking up? Futures looking bright everybody
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: not from the budget announcements themselves necessarily, but the treasury forecasts,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: if they are to be believed and on home more
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: on than a second, will hit just shy of three
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: percent growth next year. It will average two point nine percent,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: so basically three percent across the next four years. Unemployment
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: back below five, inflation down at two, wages growing faster
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: than costs at two point seven percent. Great, but there
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: is a dip. This is an update on the halfierly
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the HAFU. There is a dip first to get through
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: of down point eight percent. The government surplus also a
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: fly in the ointment. Despite that average growth of almost
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: three percent a year for the next four years, willis
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: won't in any of these years return the books to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: surplus and actually start paying down the debt. It's very expensive.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Costs us more to service than to defence, police, corrections,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: justice and customs combined. It peaks at forty six percent
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight and won't come down below the forty
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: percent target band in this forecast period. And you say
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: why I do? I say why not? Net debt doubled
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: under the last lot and your net borrowing is still
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: increasing as a proportion of the economy, and the economy
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: is going to grow. Willis says this would have required
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: harsher cuts, you know, health, education, that stuff. If you
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: were running a business, though, you'd gut the costs, wouldn't you.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: There's more fat to trim. But Willis sadly is not
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: running a business. She's running a country. You cut too
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: deep and you risk being turfed out in twenty twenty
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: six and the next lot, reversing the cuts you've made anyway,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: In a way, deep cuts less sustainable politically than smaller,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: incremental ones. And this is not to take away from
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the growth track. The question of reliability is a reasonable
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: one to ask. True, he's been wrong before. We know that.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: The elephant in the White House is, of course, Donald Trump.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: He is to economists what cyclones are to meteorologists, quite
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: hard to predict with accuracy. Trying to nail down an
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: accurate forecast is a bit like trying to whack a
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: pinata blindfolded and drunk. So all of this is to
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: say that, finally, on the whole, you'd have to feel
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a bit more hopeful about the future of this country
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: today than you did Yesterday. For more from Early Edition
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talk Set B
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio