Government help to industry is provided in four main ways: through tariffs (restrictions on imports), government spending, tax concessions and regulatory restrictions on competition. Although much rent-seeking takes the form of persuading governments to regulate markets in ways that advantage your industry, the benefit you gain is hard to measure, so it's not included in the commission's figuring. Assistance through tariffs is far less than in the bad old days before micro-economic reform, but there's still some left. However, its cost is borne by consumers in the form of higher prices. So it's not relevant to Hockey's search for budget savings. Even so, I'll give you a quick tour. The commission estimates that, in 2011-12, tariffs allowed manufacturing industries (plus the odd rural industry) to sell their goods for $7.9 billion a year more than they otherwise would have. In the process, however, this forced up the cost of goods used by manufacturers and other industries as inputs to their production of goods and services by $6.8 billion a year. About 30 per cent of this cost to inputs was borne by the manufacturers, leaving about 70 per cent borne by other industries, largely the service industries. (This, by the way, shows why import protection doesn't help employment as non-economists imagine it does. It may prop up manufacturing jobs, but it's at the expense of jobs everywhere else in the economy.)

So now we get to budgetary assistance to industry. On the spending side of the budget it can take the form of direct subsidies, grants, bounties, loans at concessional interest rates, loan guarantees, insurance arrangements or even equity (capital) injections. On the revenue side, it can take the form of concessional tax deductions, rebates or exemptions, preferential tax rates or the deferral of tax. In 2011-12, the total value of budgetary assistance was $9.4 billion, with just over half that coming from spending and the rest from tax concessions. Often people will virtuously assure you their outfit doesn't receive a cent of subsidy from the government, but omit to mention the special tax breaks they're entitled to. Think-tanks that rail against government intervention and the Nanny State, hate admitting they're sucking at the teat because the donations they receive are tax deductible (causing them to be higher than otherwise, but at a cost to other taxpayers). This is why economists call tax concessions ''tax expenditures'' - to recognise that, from the perspective of the budget balance and of other taxpayers, it doesn't matter much whether the assistance comes via a cheque from the government or via the right to pay less tax than you otherwise would. Of the total budgetary assistance in 2011-12 of $9.4 billion, 15 per cent went to agriculture, 7 per cent to mining, 19 per cent to manufacturing and 45 per cent to the services sector (leaving 14 per cent that can't be allocated to particular industries). To put that in context, remember that agriculture's share of gross domestic product (value-added) is about 3 per cent, mining's is 10 per cent and manufacturing's is 8 per cent, leaving services contributing about 79 per cent.