Another river of gold flows into Chalmer’s backside

The worst treasurer since Jim Cairns, and the dumbest since Wayne Swan is certainly not the unluckiest.

Having squandered incredible national income windfalls as record inflation outbreaks, slaughtering real incomes, Treasurer Jim “chicken” Chalmers is ready to ride another unlooked-for river of gold flowing into his backside.

This time, it is literally a river of gold.

Ignore gas because it does not incur any tax. But gold miners do, and the steady rise of quarterly revenue, as hedges roll off, won’t top out until about $20bn per quarter at current prices.

The budget is expecting materially lower prices than where we are already.

That said, I agree it is sensible to have gold prices falling back over the longer run. It is very volatile, and you don’t want to pin spending upon a gold blowoff.

For now, it is all upside as the budget deficit is ahead of forecast by more that $5bn.

The full-year deficit is on track to be smaller than the forecast $36.7 billion over the full 12 months, as further large tax payments become due before the end of the June 30 financial year.

The question we need to ask is how so much good fortune—record-high LNG, iron ore, coal, and gold prices—became the worst period of falling living standards anyone can remember?

Ralph Willis was wrestling with record-low commodity prices, Josh Frydenberg was wrestling with a global pandemic, and Jim Chalmers was gifted the highest commodity prices on record, yet his performance is shocking.

Chalmer’s and Albo’s refusal to tackle the gas cartel, out of fear of blowback, and their obsession with restoring immigration-led growth, which, by definition, reduces Australians’ per capita slice of the resource endowment pie, plus overspending on anything wasteful thing that moves, led by a wildly rorted NDIS, is how Jim Chalmers turned a river of gold into a stagnant pool of sludge.

The opposition’s implosion amid a prime example of macroeconomic mismanagement in the government testifies to its lack of talent.

I guess only the LNP has less ability than Jim Chalmers, and in a two-horse race, that is all that matters.