What else can you get for 60 billion bucks?

The government overestimated how much JobKeeper would cost by $60 billion (for reference, that’s just under a bajillion). What could it buy with this sudden state budget-sized windfall?

Off the top of our heads, it could:

• Chuck the 2 million or so workers — largely visa holders and casuals –excluded from the program on to it and still be $35 billion to the good.
• Pay Stuart Robert’s home internet bill 1,578,947 times.
• Make up some of the difference between the estimated $50 billion it was going to cost us to build that fleet of French-designed submarines and the estimated $225 billion it will end up costing us by 2080 (of which Defence Minister Linda Reynolds promised 60% would be spent in Australia).
• Build 10 gas pipelines from Western Australia to the east coast that will for sure help Australia’s COVID-19 recovery and for sure won’t benefit members of the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission pushing for it.
• Pay for the Safe Schools anti-bullying program (remember that?) 7500 times, or the school chaplains program (remember THAT?) 242 times.
• Renew all the money cut from the ABC since the Coalition took power and still have just over $59 billion left over.
• Raise Newstart and the youth allowance by the $95 a week the Australian Council of Social Service is asking for, for the next 15 years.
• Pay for disloyal ministers’ flights for the next 1 million prime ministerial knifings.
• 600 more programs that can be used to buy votes female change rooms for sports clubs that have no female members and other treats for Liberal Party friends.