The Coalition has been using the budget to spruik its credentials in government as it seeks a fourth term. Meanwhile, Labor has been using the budget to attack the Coalition's record.
Last week, we checked some of the figures flying from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's budget speech and found there was a common trick to some of them Mr Frydenberg was using to make the government's spending seem more impressive.
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers isn't yet treasurer, but he's using that same trick to attack the Coalition.
And that trick is time — or the lack of accounting for growth of certain measures over time — which changes interpretations of budget figures. Let us explain…
Time after time
In an episode of Q+A, two days after the Coalition handed down its budget, Mr Chalmers attacked the Coalition's record on debt.
"This government will go to the election with the worst set of books that any government in the history of federation…"
He repeated the claim during his speech to the National Press Club this week, stating that the current government had delivered "the worst set of books ever presented before an election".
But that's not correct.
Mr Chalmers's claim echoes one made in 2015 by then deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop, who said that her government had inherited "the worst set of financial accounts" in Australia's history.
At the time, on the basis of debt and deficit in proportion to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Fact Check found Ms Bishop to be wrong, concluding:
"Large borrowings to finance Australia's participation in World War I and World War II and the impact of the Great Depression led to much higher deficits and levels of debt than any government has experienced since."
And that's still the case.
According to the budget papers, as of the last full financial year (2020-21), Australia's net debt stood at 28.6 per cent and gross debt at 39.5 per cent as a proportion of GDP. The budget deficit measured 6.5 per cent of GDP.
Estimates for the 2021-22 financial year put those figures at 27.6 per cent, 39.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively.
And while the nominal debt figures are the largest since modern records began in 1970 (as is the 2020-21 deficit figure), looking back to federation shows they are not the worst in Australia's history, as claimed by Mr Chalmers.
Back in 2015, experts told Fact Check that during WWI, gross debt reached more than 50 per cent of GDP, while following WWII it ballooned to more around 120 per cent of GDP.
Similarly, a graph published by Fact Check in 2015 shows that the deficit reached more than 20 per cent of GDP during the Second World War — far higher than the 6.5 per cent recorded in 2020-21.
Looking at "books presented before an election", examples previously cited by Fact Check include John Curtin's incoming Labor government in 1941 inheriting a country in the middle of a war and a deficit of around 10 per cent of GDP.
And Australia's longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies, inherited 71 per cent gross debt when he took office in 1949 in the aftermath of the war.
Doubling the debt?
This same dynamic was on display in Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese's budget reply speech.
Mr Albanese said the government "blames a generation of deficits on COVID, but had already doubled debt before the pandemic ever reached us."
As Fact Check has previously explained, government debt can be measured in gross or net terms, with the latter offering a better indication of the government's capacity to pay its debts.
Whichever way you cut it, under the Coalition the dollar value of government debt had indeed doubled in nominal terms by the time the pandemic arrived in Australia.
Monthly data from the Australian Office of Financial Management and the Department of Finance shows that between September 2013 and January 2020, gross debt grew from $280.3 billion to $568.1 billion (103 per cent), while net debt went from $174.6 billion to $430.2 billion (146 per cent).
But a fairer comparison should also take into account the changing size of the economy.
The most recent data for this was released in the 2022-23 budget. Produced on a financial year basis, it doesn't align neatly with electoral dates or the start of the pandemic.
Between June 2013, three months before the Coalition was elected, and June 2019, seven months before the pandemic, gross debt as a share of GDP grew by 65 per cent, and net debt by 85 per cent.
By June 2020, several months into the pandemic, the share of gross debt had grown by 105 per cent and net debt by 138 per cent.
It's worth noting that in some previous years the net debt figures appear as negative, meaning the government's assets outweighed its debt.
Which government is better for wages growth?
Mr Albanese also attacked the Coalition on its record on wage growth throughout its term, accusing the Government of presiding over "nine years of record low wages growth".
Once again, inflation is an issue here, but there's a little more devil in the detail.
Fact Check has investigated wages growth on numerous occasions previously, finding agreement among experts that the best measure was a key benchmark published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics: the Wage Price Index.
However, the WPI was first published in 1997 and experts told Fact Check that measuring wages growth before then was problematic due to a lack of consistency in historical records, casting doubt over Mr Albanese's basis for claiming "record low" wages growth.
This means that there are few governments to compare wages growth with using a consistent series. And even then, while most of prime minister John Howard's term is covered by this data, not all of it is.
Nonetheless, professor of economics at the University of Melbourne Jeff Borland told Fact Check that comparative wages performance could be measured by calculating the average quarterly growth of the WPI under each respective government.
On this basis, from the three months to September 1997 (when the WPI began) to the three months to December 2007 (when John Howard's term in office ended) wages grew at an average rate of 0.89 per cent per quarter.
Under the Labor government — between March 2008 and September 2013 — quarterly wages growth was on average a little slower at 0.86 per cent.
Since the December 2013 quarter, following the Coalition's re-election, the rate has slowed to an average of 0.53 per cent.
Professor of employment relations at Griffith University David Peetz told Fact Check that when assessing wages growth, adjusting for inflation was important to account for changes in purchasing power.
While not discounting the value of tracking nominal wages growth, Professor Borland noted that real wages growth was a "better indicator of changes in standard of living".
Once adjusted for inflation, the respective difference between governments narrows significantly. The Coalition under Mr Howard achieved 0.17 per cent average growth per quarter and Labor under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard reached 0.19 per cent.
Since December 2013, the Coalition has achieved a quarterly average of just 0.06 per cent.
As previously reported by Fact Check, there are alternative measures of wages growth such as the ABS average weekly earnings series dating back to 1941, which shows negative nominal wages growth at the end of World War II.
Economic historian Simon Ville, who has documented average weekly earnings back to 1861, previously told Fact Check that wages growth was also negative in the mid-to-late 1890s.
"Wage dips in late World War II were undoubtedly wartime causes," Professor Ville said. "The earlier falls are more serious and related to economic slumps."
Is everything going up except your wages?
And on the subject of wages, Mr Albanese sought to put them in context with cost of living pressures, claiming:
"The cost of everything is going up — but your pay isn't. Petrol, groceries, rent, child care, health care — the costs keep piling up, and have been piling up for some time now."
Broadly speaking, inflation is on the rise — and is moving at a faster rate than it was pre-pandemic.
But even if most things are going up in price, there's more to it than that.
Not even everything in the basket of goods that is used to measure the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is increasing.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows we are paying significantly less for communication purchases (which includes phone, internet and postal costs) than a decade ago.
Clothing and footwear is also down slightly under this government.
Education costs — which had been rising pre-pandemic — have barely shifted from where they were two years ago.
Looking specifically at the most recent quarterly CPI data, for the December quarter, health costs fell by 0.3 per cent. Every other item did rise, however, even if only marginally.
The ABS will release the CPI for the March quarter later this month.
Mr Albanese also named five individual categories — petrol, groceries, rent, child care, health care — where prices were going up.
While rents did rise by 0.1 per cent nationally in the last quarter, they are down 1.1 per cent since the start of the pandemic. They also fell throughout 2021 in Sydney and have fallen in the last three consecutive quarters in Melbourne. However, they have been rising in the other capitals.
A two speed market may also be commencing in the property market, with figures from property data firm CoreLogic showing that house prices also fell in the two biggest capitals in March — albeit from a much higher position than a year ago. (Figures for the sale of previously existing dwellings are not included in the CPI.)
By contrast, costs for child care, another of the categories Mr Albanese singled out, are around two-thirds higher than a decade ago.
And the ABS noted that its "automotive fuel series" is at a record level.
Principal researchers: Ellen McCutchan, David Campbell, Sonam Thomas and Jack Kerr
