So, not particularly surprisingly the Abbott government is intending to bring the budget back to surplus by cuts to Government spending, rather than fixing the degraded tax system we have thanks to Peter Costello's tax cuts during the Howard era. That's one way of doing it I guess, but the question is what are they going to cut? The answer is of course that they are going to impose cuts on idealogical grounds that mean the lower income families in Australia bear most of the burden once again. But, will this help our economy? As it happens there is no evidence from economics around the world that it will, in fact austerity budgets usually result in economies performing less well. So when you hear the government saying we have to fix our budget (we have one of the lowest debt levels in the developed world), to fix our broken economy (one of the best performing in the developed world), ask yourself whether the two things are actually connected and read this article.