Budget was a missed opportunity

Some in the Goulburn Valley had hoped from more from last week’s federal Budget.

Those hopes were dashed, equally, by the Opposition reply.
Both the government Budget and the Opposition reply painted effectively the same picture, using pretty much the same colours with nothing more than a change of emphasis on some brush strokes.
Prime Minster, Kevin Rudd, and the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, both gave us little more than rhetoric about building a financially strong and socially vibrant Australia, but neither acknowledged, sadly, that the Australia of tomorrow will be decidedly different from the Australia of today.
Our district once had a serviceable rail network, but that has been sacrificed on the altar of individualism and privatization and so has been allowed to deteriorate, while our road network has been maintained and funded with what appears to be a blank cheque.
Last week’s budget was, almost without exception, about business as usual.
That mindset breeds consumption (it troubles me too), the accumulation of goods (guilty again), a misunderstood desire to protect our contentment that leads to massively expensive war mongering, the maintenance of the idea that private is best leaving the public realm to linger in constant want and the idea that the wellbeing of all is linked inextricably to the economy.
South Eastern Australian, that obviously includes us, is already at the sharp end of climate change and while things such as the refurbishment of our district’s irrigation system that is about saving water warrant applause, it will be of no use unless we take serious steps nationally, and globally, to address what is happening to our climate.
PM Rudd has put climate in the too hard basket and Abbott believes climate change to be “crap”.
The federal Budget was, and is, the perfect place to initiate changes that will lead us away from being the worst per-capita greenhouse gas producing nation in the world to become a group of people who can demonstrate that they actually care.
Last week’s Budget was a missed opportunity – that moment when Australians would be encouraged to join the conversation about how we should cope in a post-petroleum future with a changing climate.