On Thursday 1 October, Blueprint Institute hosted a pre-budget web event, “How to Budget in a Recession”. Blueprint Institute CEO Harry Guinness will be joined by five eminent budget experts to discuss the challenges facing the government in composing the first recession budget in almost three decades.

The event marked the launch of Blueprint Institute’s pre-budget framing paper: “Budget Blueprint: Five priorities to underpin the recovery”. 

You can view the full event on our YouTube channel, here.

Panel

- Steven Hamilton — Chief Economist, Blueprint Institute

- Nicki Hutley — Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

- Judith Sloan — Contributing Economics Editor, The Australian

- Amanda Vanstone — Cabinet Minister in the Howard Government

- Richard Holden — Professor of Economics, UNSW Business School

Background

Australia is at a critical juncture. The COVID-19 crisis has cut short three decades of uninterrupted economic growth. We must support the economy while demand remains weak, but we must also give targeted support to the most vulnerable. The combination of welcome discretionary actions and automatic stabilisers have ballooned net debt, and this pressure will only strengthen in coming years as our needs in areas like health and aged care grow. To pay down this debt, we will need a much more efficient tax base and much faster growth. This will require wide-reaching reforms that were necessary before the crisis, and are now more critical than ever before. We must achieve this growth in an environmentally sustainable way, with investments in clean energy themselves helping to power the next boom.