The Coalition still won’t say where any of the spending is coming from – this matters because they keep saying they will put the budget ‘guardrails’ back up and also restore structural surpluses to the budget. So the spending matters.

Peter Dutton says they are not baking in the spending – the fuel excise and low and middle income tax offset have expiry dates on them.
But that doesn’t make them free. It just means there is an end date to the spending.

So that spending gets taken away from people, but at the same time, other things will still need to be paid for, while the spending is in place. And the other spending promises the Coalition have made at this election – to match Labor policies on health – as well as the housing policies and now defence – will need to be paid for.

So what is not going to be paid for?