Priorities wrong and petty (and - again - Abbott is a complete policy flake)

Again, I find myself pretty much in agreement with Bernard Keane's take on the Budget.

The Budget represents a re-arrangement of priorities which end up doing nothing much different in terms of getting to balanced budget any faster than Labor could have.

What few deserved things it does achieve in terms of welfare and revenue reform (regarding the indexing of pensions, for example, and indexing petrol excise) are outweighed by some clearly undeserved hits on the poor, youth in search of education, science, clean energy, health and public broadcasting; a lifting of existing taxes on many companies, and giving city road construction priority (with no real assessment as to which projects are most economically deserved) over public transport.

It is, in fact, when you look at that list, a right wing ideologically driven set of priorities which is  stuck in the past.  And no, an increase in tax on the relatively comfortable wage earners does not make it alright.  I am also not so impressed with the medical research fund, when there is evidence that even a modest co-payment will make the poor get treatment at less than optimum times for some conditions, as well as cost shift to State run hospital outpatients departments who are having their funding cut by the Commonwealth as well.   Medical research should always be funded at some level, but not at the expense of existing good use of money for treating the presently ill.

Have a look at what St Vincent de Paul says about the budget (he's livid):

ST Vincent de Paul Society Chief Executive, Dr John Falzon, says this Budget is deeply offensive to the people for whom every day is already a battle.

"The government would like us to believe that this Budget is tough but fair but for the people who struggle to make ends meet it can only be described as being tough but cruel.

"There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia.These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into deeper poverty.

"You don't help young people or older people or people with a disability or single mums into jobs by making them poor. You don't build people up by putting them down.

"And as even the OECD acknowledges, you don't build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality.You don't create a strong country on the backs of the already poor.

"There's nothing human or humane about humiliating people because they are outside the labour market or on its low-paid fringes. There's nothing smart about making it unaffordable for people to see a doctor.

"We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis but if we embark on this treacherous path of US-style austerity we will be staring down the barrel of a social crisis."

Let us remember - it's only a couple of years ago that even Judith Sloan was suggesting that Newstart should be increased, using words Falzon would endorse:

If we are to expect the unemployed to search for employment with confidence, there is no point pushing them into grinding poverty.  

The Abbott government is not even following her advice, then.  Not Tea Party enough?

And as for Abbott being a complete and utter policy flake:  I was reminded on Radio National this morning that under Howard, Health Minister Abbott was pushing hard for the Commonwealth to take over all funding for State hospitals.   Now it's "well, it's up to you States", with the pretty obvious agenda that this will mean the States beg for GST to be increased.  OK, so I have said before GST almost certainly needs to be increased, but that doesn't mean that I have to be happy about the crappy tactics that Abbott engages in to get there.

I expect the budget (and the government generally) to be deeply unpopular with youth, especially when you have Christopher Pyne as education minister developing a sudden interest in changing universities.   But it will also not be popular with their parents, or pensioners, drivers, welfare workers, hospital staff, CSIRO scientists, the Catholic Church, or (of course) Canberra real estate agents.  On the other hand, I expect miners, banks and road construction companies will be quite OK with it.

I wonder if we can have a double dissolution by virtue of Clive Palmer?

Update:  Lenore Taylor on the "sharing the burden" line:

First, the pain is not really shared, not in the long term anyway. We are not actually all schlepping this economic burden in equal measure, no matter what the sound grabs say.

A young person who can’t get a job will no longer get any unemployment benefits for six months and will still have to pay $7 to go to a doctor and an extra $5 for medicine. That’s pretty painful.

A single income family on $110,000 with a couple of school aged kids will from next year lose more than $120 a week in family payments, more than 5% of their current income. There may be good reasons to try to encourage the stay at home parent into the workforce, but that kind of cut also has to count as painful.

But a backbench MP, by contrast, earning $200,000, would pay $400 extra year because of the deficit levy, or 0.2% of their annual income. Even with a few $7 hits as they visit the doctor, that’s not much more than a graze. And the government is promising the levy will be gone in three years anyway.

By contrast the freezing of the rate of thresholds for a whole range of government benefits has a compounding impact over time.

Second, the proceeds of the “pain” are not entirely directed at budget repair. They go to roads funding and the new medical research fund and the new emissions reduction fund.