A Federal Budget loaded with irrelevant numbers

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.

Noisy 'hurrahs' and a chorus of criticism meets Budget

A "business as usual" Budget
 from Australia's treasurer,
 Wayne Swan.

Noisy hurrahs matched by a chorus of criticism greeted last week’s Federal Budget.

None were right, none were wrong, but missing was the long, long, long view; something that in the contemporary conversation is called “sustainability”.

Business as usual, seen from whatever political view you favour, is no longer appropriate and that, even allowing for a difference in opinions, is what our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, delivered.

That approach to, and acceptance of, the fact that we live in an unchanging world is problematic in the extreme.

The realities of last week’s Budget infiltrate our economy and the lives of most fundamentally change little, maybe we shift from one foot to the other, but change to a different lifestyle is foreign to all but a few.

The Swan Budget went to extremes to ensure we could live life as it is – more hurrahs and applause – but it overlooked the reality that our nation should be building and preparing for a distinctively different future.

Global warming is a gathering storm on the horizon and coupled with impending world food shortages, an imploding world economy, an exploding population, oil scarcity and climate difficulties, of which we have as yet only seen the leading edge, Mr Swan’s Budget should have responded to those unfolding dilemmas.

Rather that concerning himself with the much touted surplus, Mr Swan, supported by his Labor contemporaries, needed to demonstrate courage in delivering a budget that created a platform from which Australia could easily step to address those aforementioned difficulties.

The unfolding circumstances are hitherto unknown to the human project and with the ego-driven individuality of the past millennia being obviously not appropriate, the budgetary process should have addressed those excesses.

Rather than sketch out a scenario that allowed Australian’s to continue as being among the worst in the world on a per-capita basis at pumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, Mr Swan should have helped us understand numbers, and actions, that would have eased, if not stopped, that behaviour.

That, of course, would not have been easy as recent surveys have shown that Australians concern for their environment, and after all climate change is an environmental issue, has disappeared almost entirely from their list of worries.

With a deep breath, Mr Swan should have used his economic tools to shape a new look Australia: one whose strength lies in simplicity as opposed to complexity; the need to switch from growth and consumption to resilience and conservation; and an Australia that understood the dilemmas of our unfolding world and was prepared to bond to address those challenges.

Fine ideas, but waiting outside the door to mug us all is “reality” and there is our first challenge, untangling ourselves from that pseudo reality and addressing irrefutable truths.

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.