I hate to burden you with a topic as earnest as the budget deficit so close to the holidays - I had hoped to write about the idea of giving someone a goat for Christmas - but the saga of whether the Gillard government will manage to get its budget into surplus this financial year has reached farcical proportions.

A few weeks ago we learnt from the national accounts that the economy's rate of growth slowed to 0.5 per cent in the three months to September. When some parts of the media concluded the most significant implication of this news was that it increased the likelihood of the budget balance not returning to surplus (which it does) I realised the public debate was running off the rails.

Contrary to the impression we are being given, the budget balance is a means to an end, not an end in itself. We don't run the economy to balance the federal government's budget. And when we get our quarterly report on how the economy's travelling, the primary question is not what it tells us about the government's performance or it political prospects.

The budget was made to serve the economy, not the other way round. And the economy was made to serve us. So the primary question to be asked when we receive the quarterly report card is what it implies for us. Is our material standard of living improving more slowly than we'd prefer? Is inflation getting worse? Is the economy growing fast enough to stop unemployment rising?