I'd feel better about the budget if the people who designed it acted as if they understood it.

On higher education the minister Christopher Pyne said the changes would give Australian students the "best deal in the OECD". That’s wrong. University education is free in Germany and cheap elsewhere in Europe.

More disturbing was the Prime Minister’s advice to intending students during last week’s infamous "winkgate" interview. Asked how school leavers about to enrol could possibly make a sensible choice without knowing what they would eventually be charged, he told them to relax. "If you start a course under one system, you will finish it under that system," he told the ABC’s Jon Faine.

"It’s possible they haven't quite cottoned on to that fact," he said. "If you are studying now, your conditions of study won't change. If you start next year, your conditions of study won't change. It's only for those who start when these changes kick in in 2016 that we'll have the different conditions."

Reassuring, but wrong. The higher fees will begin in 2016. They will apply to everyone who enrols from now on. The school leavers who enrol this year will indeed have no idea of what they will eventually be charged.