Scott Morrison’s Budget Isn’t For Us

Feeling a bit underwhelmed, overlooked or completely disengaged from the Budget handed down this week? So you should be.

Because it was a statement of this government’s priorities, and let me assure you, if you haven’t got a property portfolio or a billion dollars, then you are not a priority.

With a climate emergency and economic inequality spiralling out of control, the Liberals have decided to ramp up those problems as much as they possibly can.

Last year, while most people struggled to pay the bills, Australia’s billionaires increased their wealth by a staggering $90 billion.

And guess how much of that they were asked to chip in to pay for better public services? I’ll give you a clue. It starts with “F” and ends in “uck all”.

This budget also locks in tax cuts for the super wealthy, robbing future governments of the ability to pay for a decent life for all of us.

In the 38 minutes the Treasurer took to deliver his budget speech, the Liberals handed out $831,744 in subsidies to coal, oil and gas corporations.

— Australian Greens (@Greens) May 11, 2021

Worse still, there are over $50 billion in fossil fuel subsidies that will flow mostly into the pockets of mining billionaires and the corporations they own so they can continue to wreck the environment and cook the planet.

Their showcase derangement is the so-called ‘gas-led recovery’, a shameful exercise in corporate welfare to prop up yesterday’s technology.

Is it any wonder then that Government ministers spent budget night literally yukking it up with the billionaires at Parliament House?

That’s right, the oligarchs and big Liberal donors spent Budget Night at Parliament House, having a big old party because they’ve got everything they could ever hope for.

Oh, didn’t you get an invite? Sorry, guess you should have inherited a billion dollars or two.

With house prices hitting absurdly high levels, guess how much new money was promised for social and public housing? Another clue: it rhymes with “truck all”.

On the other hand, the budget papers show that the capital gains tax discount — that’s the huge handout that people get when they sell their investment properties and shares — will cost the budget $8.5 billion a year.

But don’t worry, as rents and the price of housing continues to climb into the stratosphere, the government is predicting that wages will fall compared to inflation over the next two years.

In effect, that’s a wage cut.

Can wealth from billionaires and big corporations trickle down to the rest of us? I poured some champagne to find the truth about this budget 🥂💰 pic.twitter.com/otgEYASzzA

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) May 12, 2021

It’s even worse if you’re in insecure work or haven’t got a job — you’ll be forced to subsist in poverty, and face punishment for failing to get a job that doesn’t exist.

And having deliberately abandoned universities during the pandemic, leading to thousands of lost jobs, the Liberals have continued to cut from higher education.

So your wages will go nowhere, rents will go up, the climate will get more unlivable, and the taxes you pay will go straight into the pockets of the people causing all the problems.

With this budget, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have made their ideology very clear.

This is a government whose primary purpose is to serve its corporate donors and the super wealthy who benefit from this system.

There is of course, a better way.

If the billionaires and big corporations were made to pay their fair share of tax, every Australian could have a secure well paid job and an affordable home, we could include dental and mental health in Medicare, and we could make education — from early childhood to University — truly free.

Instead of handouts for polluters, we could invest in making Australia a clean energy superpower, creating jobs and making our climate liveable.

But that would require a government that cared more about you than it did about its political donors.

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Nick McKim is Greens Spokesperson for Economic Justice