The reborn big-taxing, big-spending Scott Morrison has shown he's a much better salesman than his predecessor Joe Hockey. Credit:Bloomberg Wake up, people! Spread over 10 years, the Commonwealth is only offering $7.5 billion a year, much of it already in Hockey's numbers and a fair swag of that dating from Labor government commitments. It's less than what the state of New South Wales invests annually. Smokin' Joe tried hard to promote a "record" infrastructure investment of $50 billion in his first budget with the fine print admitting it was spread over six years. If the Abbott government had kept that promise, it would have averaged $8.3 billion a year, 11 per cent more than Morrison's stretch. No, despite the rhetoric and the gullibility of much of the media, there's no evidence of Morrison being converted to the economic mainstream's belief that it's an excellent idea to borrow big now at low rates to invest big in the nation's future with projects that will more than pay for themselves. The reality is that the federal transport infrastructure spend is being held pretty much steady. By announcing or re-announcing a number of commitments, especially three big-ticket items, Morrison has managed to make his spend sound bigger than it actually is.

And the three eye-catching announcements – Badgerys Creek airport, the National Party's marginal inland rail pet project and Snowy 2.0 - are still a long ways off costing the budget serious money. But that's actually not a bad thing as the infrastructure boom is already taking off without any help from ScoMo. As previously reported, national spending on transport infrastructure is in the process of soaring 73 per cent from a cyclical low last financial year to a peak in 2018-19. According to industry research company Macromonitor, spending on road and rail hit a low of about $19 billion in 2015-16 but is set to peak at $33 billion in 2018-19. This is the surge that's keeping economic growth from sliding with housing building approvals over the next year or so – and most of it is thanks to the richer state governments. It is at least nice that Morrison is talking the talk, even if he isn't really walking it. But, aside from the gratuitous spinning, there is a worry or two in what the money is being spent on. There's a danger that Morrison is providing an example of "good debt" and "bad debt" that isn't what he intended. The $5.3 billion being invested over many years in Western Sydney Airport looks like "good debt". The $8.4 billion promised for the Melbourne-Brisbane inland rail link could easily end up as bad debt.

Infrastructure Australia scored the $10 billion rail line as having a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of just 1.1 – and that's after including a range of claimed wider economic benefits. It's a marginal score. Under some scenarios, the BCR drops below 1, which is a less than marginal. Backflips of the budget speech Infrastructure Australia has a list of projects that score much more highly. There's a suggestion that the inland rail corridor is something that maybe should be looked at again in a few years time, but the government is charging ahead for the sake of National Party seats. Of course the National Party sees the figures differently, leaving us with the question of who should be trusted with such large investments – a body somewhat like Infrastructure Australia, or a bunch of politicians with considerable self-interest? And then there's the PM from Snowy River. There's reportedly no actual funding in the 2017-18 budget to build what's needed to pump water uphill as a means of storing energy, yet the initial talk of spending $2 billion on the idea has blown out by several billion more with the idea of buying the NSW and Victorian state government shares.

Again, it's a project that requires a de-politicised competitive assessment of pumping water versus the new battery farms. But the politics of it, the Prime Ministerial image, isn't likely to let that happen. Loading Oh well, it did provide one of the more bemusing passing backflips of the budget speech: the feigned passion with which Treasurer Morrison promised that Snowy Hydro would remain government owned. You might think the Liberal Party suddenly has an ideological problem with privatisation. Whatever will the IPA say?