There wasn't any question posed.
Many would disagree. People like Chris Richardson usually are pretty much on the money.
Most of them could hardly do as poorly. Give us six examples of treasury's figures actually turning out to be correct.
At no point did I say Treasury got it consistantly correct. Earlier I said economics is an art and not a science. I also said many didn't seem so interested in mistakes that they underestimated revenues during much of the Howard years. When the error seems positive people are less interested than negative even if over time they near balanced out. "Something is wrong, we must fix it" - what is the fix?
How many are accurately predicing figures that come from China? There is often a degree of scepticism about the accuracy of reported figures from China. It does impact on a number of commodity prices. There seems to be some attempts of massaging iron ore prices by China and when that failed complaints about iron ore producers.
How many predicted the droughts in Russia which impacted on world wheat prices? Strong influence on the pricing there.
How well do the predict what Bernanke will say and how markets will react? Earlier in the year he said something that a few read as an earlier winding down of the stimulus - markets reacted. Later he makes statements stimulus will be continuing for a while and markets pick back up.
How many know how the Japanese attempt of stimulus will play out?
How about the recovery in USA? What about the drag of Europe's woes?
How well will exchange rates be predicted? At times the change can be quick.
How well are people predicting the mood of the market and people? Did they predict the return of Rudd when it happend? Or how about Rudd's little spending spree then quick fixes to try and pay for them?
Treasury and others have various predictions for the short and longer terms. Why even a number of pundits get the RBA interest rate changes a bit wrong at times.
Now factor in politics.
It's a case of using the past to predict the future. Experienced investors warn against blidly following that for good reason.
Review of Treasury Macroeconomic and Revenue Forecasting if you want to dig deep in to the subject. It's an art that can easily go wrong.
On to another thing about the Labor party - Rudd sees himself as the Messiah. We know that is evidently not true. Rudd is a reasonable salesperson so he will be used to do a lot of PR. Problem is he wants to have a finger in everything and seems to want to be seen as so. Looks like he is the same as before - has issues delegating. For someone relatively politically smart he fails to properly learn from past mistakes.