TERRY MCCRANN

the iron ore price adds $1.2 billion to the current year’s budget bottom line and $3.6 billion to that of 2019-20.

Treasury based its budget numbers on a $US55 price; in recent weeks it’s run around $US80-85. That’s sure some powerful “Butterfly flap”.

Will it be enough to save the government?

I doubt it. The first budget that will be back in the black since Peter Costello’s last budget in 2007 will be Frydenberg’s first and – unfortunately for the country – also his last.

That’s to say, it’s almost certainly going to be a – importantly, only partial – replay of 2007.

Yes, once again, we will have a coalition treasurer handing a budget in surplus to a Labor treasurer. And once again, the rest – and most especially that surplus – will then be history.

It’s particularly worth noting that it’s not just any old Labor Treasurer, but one in Chris Bowen who thinks that previous treasurer, Wayne “Four Surpluses” Swan, was among Australia’s best treasurers.

The big, and somewhat less than positive, difference, though, between 2019 and 2007 is that exiting treasurer Costello not only handed his successor Swan a budget surplus but a treasury that had no – that’s, zip, nada, zero – government debt, after Costello paid off the debt he had inherited from the Keating Labor government.