In the runup to each election, federal treasury produces a “blue book” and a “red book”, with advice tailored to the priorities of the two alternative governments.

One of these is given to the incoming government and the other is never released. Freedom of Information requests have generally resulted in only heavily redacted versions of the incoming government brief being made public.

But this week, the table of contents was accidentally released, revealing treasury’s view of how the government should be handling the economy.

Treasury suggests more tax should be raised. This is unsurprising – there is bipartisan support for more defence spending, and an ageing population means more spending on health and aged care, only partially offset by less spending on education.

Read more: The 2025 budget has few savings and surprises but it also ignores climate change

The government is hoping to slow spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme but it is still projected to grow much faster than government revenue.

No one wants to default on government debt. So higher bond yields and the deficits incurred during the COVID pandemic, and projected for the........

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