Last week’s Federal Budget was irrelevant.
The idea of a budget is not irrelevant, but a list of financial
strictures that pander to life as we know and understand it, is wholly
inappropriate.
Life in Australia ranges in extremes from damn difficult to
obscenely prosperous, but beyond our daily difficulties, most people live
relatively happy and expansive lives.
Those who profit from what exists stand with the advocates
of more and lament any budgetary changes that limit their opportunities to
further boost their bank balances.
Contrarily, those on the other side of the scale and whom, for
various reasons, have seen much of the country’s wealth bypass them, equally
lament changes, with their protests being almost unheard.
Australia is unquestionably the lucky country; well, for the
moment.
Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces a collision
of events that any budget built around existing economic dynamics is
fundamentally flawed.
The world is changing, no surprises there, but it is
changing in a way that is publically unacknowledged by the world’s financial gurus,
among them those who are calling the shots with regard Australia’s future, be
it economic or otherwise.
There is a rude immediacy about how the world operates with
liberal democracy holding us hostage to the next election and more
colloquially, to the next episode of television’s “The Block”.
Rather than piece together a budget, good or bad depending
on personal situations, ideology or political adherences, that responds to
populist needs that further fuels business as usual, we should be endorsing
courageous decisions that prepare us, for the shocks ahead.
The workings of the world, and by implication Australia and
so the Goulburn Valley, depends almost entirely on oil or some derivative of it
and with more than half the world’s easily accessible oil already gone, it is
going to become increasingly expensive as it becomes more difficult to extract.
To counter that, the government needs to enthusiastically
invest in the public infrastructure and discourage private profiteering that
arises from exploitation of the public domain.
The issue that will trump all concerns our changing climate
and although there should have been a budgetary response three decades ago, it
is still not too late, although any effective response will now need to be
innovative, bold, courageous and be an immediate break with the “business as
usual” paradigm.
Australian society will need to be seriously decentralized;
public transit systems massively refurbished and upgraded, while there is an
equal divestment in the private infrastructure (roads); community
infrastructure and resilience needs to be bolstered; food security needs to be
localized; and while work is psychologically important, it needs to be
re-imagined and restructured allowing people to work fewer hours, live closer
to their work and spend more time strengthening communities.
