Australia's longest-serving Treasurer says the problem facing his successor Wayne Swan is what to do with the budget surplus believed to be between 17 and $22 billion.
With Labor's first budget under Kevin Rudd being handed down tonight the Government has continually warned that there will be unpopular spending cuts to curb inflation.
Peter Costello now a back bencher says Mr Swan is the luckiest treasurer in the world and he needs to be very careful with the extra revenue.
Mr Costello, making a rare appearance before the media since the coalition lost office at the November federal poll, said his Labor successor had inherited, without doing anything, a budget surplus of $15 to $20 billion.
"All the hard yards were done by the coalition, opposed by the Labor Party and inherited by Mr Swan, the luckiest incoming treasurer in Australian history," Mr Costello told reporters.
"Inheriting probably the strongest economy, certainly of any of the G7, and any of the developed economies in the world."
