Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey says he cannot promise that the Coalition will go to the next election with a promise to bring the budget back to surplus.

Yesterday Treasurer Wayne Swan dumped the Government's long-standing commitment to a 2012-13 surplus, after new figures showed a $4 billion write down in cash receipts during the first four months of the financial year.

"Obviously, dramatically lower tax revenue now makes it unlikely that there will be a surplus in 2012-13," he told reporters in Canberra.

The statement was welcomed by economists but savaged by the Opposition, which called it "humiliating" and a "betrayal of trust".

FOR you and I this potential deficit means three parts of nearly nothing.

It will not impact the taxes we pay or the services we receive (in fact on the latter front they are less likely to be cut).

At best it may take some of the gloss off the Australian dollar (yet financial markets basically yawned at the news yesterday).

It will also take some of the pressure of the Reserve Bank to use monetary policy to combat a grumpy economy.

That's good news for the growing numbers of net savers in Australia, and perhaps not so good news for mortgage holders hoping for rates to plumb even deeper lows.

Really, though, the headline is that this is the deficit we had to have.