This year has highlighted two things – it is easier to govern when you have a lot of money to play with, and when you have a lot of money to play with you no longer worry about debt and deficit.

Throughout the entire time the Liberal party was in opposition you could scarcely go a day without hearing them mention how the ALP had blown the surplus and how the Howard government had left “money in the bank”, and that now we had record levels of debt.

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The inability to counter the fixation on debt and deficit was perhaps one of Wayne Swan’s biggest failings as treasurer. The problem was not that he acted inappropriately during the GFC by delivering large budget deficits – for that was absolutely the right thing to do in the circumstances. The problem was the fear of admitting it.

And so despite employment, inflation, economic growth, inequality and any number of things being much more important than the budget deficit or surplus, we still hear the deluded narrative that a budget surplus or deficit is the key indicator of economic management.

So deluded is the narrative that even those who continue to spout it don’t even bother to adhere to it.

For all the talk about needing to cut spending, the reality is budget surpluses are primarily driven by revenue. When you have rivers of tax revenue flowing into the government’s coffers a surplus is almost unavoidable.

Over the nine years the Howard government delivered a surplus (including 2007-08) government revenue was never below 24.5% of GDP. In the past 10 years it has never been above that level.

Over those nine years of surpluses, government expenditure averaged 24% of GDP – only once in the past 10 years (2017-18) has revenue been above that level.

In the US​A​ the result of their massive company tax cuts saw company tax revenue fall nearly 30%

After nearly a decade of blather about government surplus and paying off debt the May budget finally revealed a projected surplus in 2019-20 when government revenue will be a rather hefty 25.3% of GDP.

By that time government net debt of $344bn will be more than double the $159.6bn inherited by this government.

Consider as well that in that year government spending is projected to be 25% of GDP – a level that would not have delivered a surplus in any of the past 10 years.

The lesson being it is much easier to boast about being good at budget management when the revenue does all the heavy lifting.

And with this revenue rather coincidentally comes the lack of care about the necessity of budget surpluses and the need to pay off debt.

We saw this firstly with the government’s policy for a company tax cut. The big cost of the cut from big businesses was forecast to occur in years beyond the budget parameters so there was no need from the government to pretend they were offsetting the drop in revenue with spending cuts.

And the drop in revenue will come. Over in the US the result of their massive company tax cuts saw company tax revenue in the first quarter of this year fall nearly 30%.

The same case applied with the recently passed income tax cuts. It will cost the budget just under $8.5bn a year to abolish the 37% tax threshold and raise the top threshold to $200,000. Has the government – so worried in past years about responsible budget management – told us how this will be paid for?

Of course not. The flowing rivers of revenue over the next few years hide all manner of budgetary sins – let those still around in 10 years worry about paying for it.

And thus we come to the GST and the government’s proposed fix.

When the Productivity Commission last year recommended changes to how the GST was distributed the problem was always going to be that every state was being made worse off to improve the share that went to Western Australia.

It was a political nightmare – the GST is a finite thing – slice the pie up differently and if someone gets more then someone has to get less.

And so what did the government do? They threw money at it

It is that reason why governments have struggled to come up with a solution because the option of increasing the size of the GST by broadening the tax – such as including education – has been political poison.

Just throwing more money at it was not workable because that is not really a fix, but just spending your way out of a political problem – and given debt and deficit were evil any move to do that would have been met with loud criticism from a conservative opposition. Any extra money spent would mean either adding to debt or having to make cuts elsewhere.

And so what did the government do?

They threw money at it.

In order to ensure no state is worse off under the new changes and to ensure WA gets up to the floor of 70 cents per person per dollar of GST and then 0075 cents, over the next 10 years the government will top up the GST grants to the states by the order of $9bn.

Wow. If only someone before had thought before to just spend money.

To be fair to the government, political realities being what they are, this was about the only way any changes to the GST carve up could be done. Politics is after all the art of the possible, and it is not possible when facing an election in the next 10 months to cut funding to key electoral states like Queensland and South Australia.

And yet how did Scott Morrison sell it? He suggested that “this problem has been kicked down the road for too long and it is time we now got on and fixed it”.

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Fixed by spending more money, with no concern or details about how such money will be offset – will the government reduce spending on schools and health and in effect force the states to devote more of their share of money to those areas? Or will it just add to debt?

We don’t know, and no one in the government is all that bothered with explaining.

The ALP for its part is suggesting it would get WA to the 75-cent floor earlier than the 2024-25 time-line proposed by the government. So yes, we now have a bidding war.

And all of this will occur while we go to the next election with the standard lines spouted about the need for budget management and living within our means. And we’ll all nod and pretend that the government actually cares about such things.

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist