Last week came the news that the treasurer had decided that not all debt was bad and the May budget papers would differentiate between debt for infrastructure projects and that for recurrent spending. While this is sensible, we need to be wary the new accounting measures are not used to justify cuts to spending on services and welfare payments – all in the name of reducing “bad debt”.

It’s not often the treasurer does something I have been calling for him to do. The shift to differentiate between types of debt in the budget papers is a welcome and sensible move – if incredibly hypocritical. You don’t need to be too much of a soothsayer to imagine the response from the Liberal party given their continual attacks against debt (of any kind) were an ALP government to have done the same.

When the LNP took over power in 2013, net debt was $153bn, and the latest projections have that amount rising to $363bn by 2019-20, so it makes good political sense to redefine some of that amount as “good”.

It is also good budgetary sense, but we should not be too excited about where this change will lead. Mostly it is about giving greater emphasis to a figure that is already in the budget papers.

Budget papers are not the easiest reading – as with most accounting documents, they also involve a fair degree of obfuscation. For example, when we normally talk of the budget deficit, we refer to the “underlying cash balance”. But the budget papers also include the “headline cash balance”, the “fiscal balance” and the “net operating balance”.

Each has its reasons for being, but Morrison will now highlight the “net operating balance”. Normally the figure is found in Statement 3 of Budget Papers Number 1, presumably it’ll make its way in Statement 1.

This in itself won’t make much difference – it’s not a new measure and the two balances move in line with each other. The biggest difference is that because the operating balance excludes capital investment, it is usually smaller – a good thing if you want to argue that you are getting back to surplus faster.

The big change will be how debt is counted.

At the moment, it is just one big pile. Morrison appears to be suggesting the budget will divide it into debt used to finance recurrent expenditure and that for financing capital investment – ie infrastructure.

He is hoping that differentiating between the two types will give him a better story to sell to ratings agencies about the stability of the government’s finances, and thus keep our AAA rating.

For most Australians, however, the measures won’t have much impact.

But we need to careful of getting what we wished for – that the move is sensible does not mean the impact will necessarily be positive.

The best thing about this measure is it reduces one of the budgetary roadblocks to infrastructure spending – because such spending will now be treated somewhat separately and thus not seen exclusively as adding to the deficit. But we should not fall into the trap of thinking all infrastructure spending is good or worthwhile.

We only need to look at the government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which has $5bn worth in concessional loans to give to projects. The decision-making processes of the NAIF have been opaque, and there are suggestions it is considering a loan to the Adani coalmine project and possibly a “clean coal” power plant – not exactly things you’ll find on Infrastructure Australia’s list of high priorities.

The opportunity for regional boondoggles is high – especially given the National party is a member of the Coalition. After all, just this month Barnaby Joyce dismissed the need for a cost-benefit analysis for shifting government agencies and departments from Canberra to other regional centres.

The reason of course is the cost-benefit analysis to move the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Joyce’s own electorate in Armidale found it would cost $25.6m, produce no real benefits and involve “significant risks” due to loss of key staff.

Just because the government is now happy to concede that spending can actually create jobs and improve productivity, we shouldn’t assume any greater rigour on how that investment money is spent.

But a greater issue of concern is that this will do little to shift us from the stupid “surplus good; deficit bad” narrative – it will just change what we may focus on as being the surplus or deficit. And crucially there is the danger that the badge of “bad” debt will quickly shift to include certain spending.

Debt on recurrent spending is “bad” only in the sense that it continues and is not an “investment” for which there is an expected return in some form – either to the budget or the economy.

But that does not mean recurrent spending is bad. Spending on health, education, defence, or social security is not bad – it is vital! And yet under this new labelling, I can see certain spending quickly being given the moniker of “bad”.

This is a government that has gone out of its way to demonise welfare spending – to the point of purposefully misleading people about the total cost of welfare spending and of the incomes of those on welfare compared with people in work. So we should fully expect the government will use this new measure of debt to argue that welfare payments and other recurrent government services lead to “bad debt” and thus need to be cut.

The changes to how the budget balance and debt is counted in various tables shouldn’t actually affect Australians, but they certainly will if the government uses the new tables to justify cuts to services and welfare payments – and we should all be alert to any moves to do so.