Australia budget 2025: the seven graphs you need to see

Australia’s 2025 federal budget papers are printed. ‘The big shocker for me was not just the tax cuts but that the budget deficit is not all that changed,’ Greg Jericho writes. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Early budgets before an election are often troubling affairs. The government usually doesn’t want to give away its entire election strategy.

In the past such budgets have not gone well. The 2019 “back to black” budget was filled with absurd assumptions about how wonderful the economy would be. The 2022 March budget was one of the worst-delivered to date – both pointless and dumb – sugar hits designed to buy an election win and then … well, nothing.