Economically the budget is hastening slowly. The trend is right and really is a matter of taste. I wouldn’t expect any serious revival before 2015 but this has hardly been the savaging everyone was talking about. After 2015 it sets us up for a quite good recovery. As with everything in economics, there are so many unknowns of the known and unknown variety that nothing can be certain. But it puts us in a good position to catch any passing wind.

Politically, however, it looks even better. I teach of a Tuesday night so don’t get home till late and had to catch up by watching ABC News 24. And what struck me was the extent to which the critics were pretty subdued. No real heavyweight venom and anger, just the usual negativity about trying to repair what everyone knows needs repairing. We are the lucky country in the sense that the harder we work the luckier we get. Just as in 1931 the Lyon Government cut deeply into public spending allowing Australia to be the first economy in the world to emerge from the Great Depression, so the cuts and crafting of expenditure this time round will allow us to put ourselves on a very solid foundation for growth.

Even the supposed nasties, listening to some woman worrying whether she might be able to find the $7 to get to the doctor came across as a pretty weak and whiny complaint. The co-payment is designed to make you think twice in a way that a freebie doesn’t. For 98% of the country, if your illness isn’t worth paying $7 for the medical advice you get, you either have your priorities wrong or you have been wasting a lot of our precious medical resources because you’ve treating them as a free good. Well, it might have been free to you but not to the rest of us.

Same with cutting Newstart for the under-30s. Luckily again we are a community that doesn’t look benignly on living off the earnings of others although there are many still trying to expand this constituency. But what is more important is that it will mightily discourage many from a wastrel style of life. Falling into a welfare trap young and early is a disaster. Maybe it will save a bit of money but more importantly it may save a few lives from being lost and wasted.

We’ll see over the next few days and months how the politics plays out in the real world. In the meantime I think it is a job well done.

Here’s some interesting news from just yesterday for those capable of learning from history: George H.W. Bush honored for courage with 1990 tax hikes, honoured by Democrats, that is:

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush showed courage in breaking his “read my lips: no new taxes” campaign pledge to broker a 1990 budget compromise that may have cost him re-election two years later, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation said on Sunday.

The organization honored the 41st U.S. president with its 2014 Profile in Courage Award, praising the Republican leader’s “decision to put country above party and political prospects” in the deal with congressional Democrats.

“America’s gain was President Bush’s loss,” Jack Schlossberg, grandson of former president John F. Kennedy and a member of the award committee, said during a ceremony at the library in Boston. . . .

In September 1990, two years into George H.W. Bush’s first term, the United States was saddled with a $200 billion budget deficit. Months of partisan wrangling over possible tax increases and spending cuts had ended in a stalemate.

Despite the potential political backlash, Bush announced a compromise with congressional Democrats that would cut $500 billion from the deficit in five years, in part by raising “luxury taxes” on items including yachts and pricey cars, among other tax hikes.

“The time for politics and posturing is over,” Bush said in an October 1990 speech. “The time to come together is now.”

The budget passed, but Bush’s concession on a tax increase rankled members of his party and stood at odds with his “no new taxes” campaign promise. He lost re-election to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.