For starters I doubt itll explicitly say "the federal budget". More likely to be a question on fiscal policy in Australia and give you a source such as a graph of growing government debt or other relevant stats. When I did my fiscal policy essays last year, and specifically for macro policy, I would ha e a specific structure. First the intro, basically just rewording the question and outline your structure. Second, dive into a theory set up for fiscal policy. I.e explain what it is, explain aggregate demand, expansionary/contractionary fiscal and draw an AD increase/decrease graph and explain it. Now after theory setup is done, what I did is split it up into history of Australian fiscal policy, starting from GFC. (Some may start from mining investment boom during howards period, but I believe that's too far back to be talking about now). GFC, explain impact on internal stab, external stab, what fiscal policy was implemented during that period, and reference explicit numbers and policy. Then next period, mining investment boom 2, and then same with the current period post mining investment boom, slowing down of trade etc. Depending on the question, for each period link governments policy to impact on the economic issue/s which it is asking you to. This should be very structured, then finally some figures from current budget, what economics issues (ie economic growth) the policies are hoping to have an impact on. Then finish with conclusion, I emphasize this structure strongly. It helped me get a 20/20 in last years hsc question on current period just by following this structure, although make sure to only talk about the period which the graph shows. I.e if it starts from 2008 only go from gfc onwards, and if it starts from 2013 only 2013 onwards etc.
