The word budget has filled our screens and airwaves all week, but where does the concept come from?
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History tells tales of a string of British monarchs squandering the country's tax revenues and racking up large debts.
The office of the Treasurer began as the Exchequer during the Norman invasion of the 11th century and was responsible for managing Royal revenues and issuing and collecting cash.
Charles II put the country's finances in such a state by 1667 reform was needed to force Treasury to approve all Parliament spending.
By the 18th century an annual budget appeared in the form of a speech on the country's finances given by the Chancellor.
Once activated, the word budget swiftly become a term for any financial statement or plan.
Even this did not protect the people’s money, with the imprisonment of the Chancellor inside the Tower of London in 1720 following a complex market crash.
It would be almost 70 years before the concept of income tax would be introduced.
Even the timing of the budget comes from the Northern Hemisphere, with spring being the season land tax was collected and much of the country’s income at the time was produced by agriculture.
The word’s first meaning in English was to describe a leather pouch, wallet or bag and comes from the old French word bougette, or purse.
By 1880 budget evolved to describe a sense of planning expenditure and by 1958 it was used as a colloquial term for something cheap. Bulge and bilge are two related words remaining in the English language today.
The government defines the budget on its website as expressing “the government's social and political priorities, and how the government intends to achieve these”.
This definition shows us that working parents, university students, Indigenous Australians, public servants and climate change are not priorities of Malcolm Turnbull’s 21st century government.
“Jobs and growth” became a prominent phrase in the lead up to the budget this year, although the budget seems to dismiss recent research behind drivers of economic growth.
The International Monetary Fund said in a discussion paper in 2014 that countries with high levels of inequality suffered lower growth than nations that distributed incomes more evenly.
