The Australian 17 May 2011
Apparently the PM is going to be making a mighty effort to get out and sell us the budget this week on the grounds that there has been less dancing in the streets than expected.
The budget strikes me as mostly reasonable. It’s kind of nice that there’s at least some sort of idea that perhaps households on $150,000 a year shouldn’t be mucking about with Centrelink on the grounds that, well, they just shouldn’t be needing to, and we’ll see how the tough-love getting people back to work thing goes over time. It seems potentially a bit mean, but Australians do seem to like to see the underdog getting a good kicking these days.
Top marks for finally slinging some money to mental health, rather poorer marks for slinging more money at godbotherers in state schools, and the whole pissing contest about who’s going to get us back into surplus fastest no matter how much services get buggered up is pretty embarrassing, but that’s either the fault of the media, the politicians, the general public or some combination depending on which one/s you aren’t. Getting back to surplus involves digging stuff up and selling it to China, so it’s not like we’re really in that big a hurry because we do have boundless plains to dig up, though I hope some people are kicking themselves for squibbing the mining super profits tax which would have sped things up marvellously. You know who you are.
Like I said, the budget seems mostly reasonable in the half-arsed, mildly disappointing sort of way we all knew it would, and Tony Abbott’s constant shrieking about pretty much everything all the time is starting to grate a bit, so rather than try and compete with that and hard-sell everybody something they’re buying whether they like it or not, Julia’s probably better off just getting on with the job in a dignified working kind or way and trying something a bit more ambitious next time around, hung parliament willing. I have a sneaking suspicion that people are more bored with the bullshitting than anything else.
If she really wants to do a stunt, a quick plank on the budget papers would get her on the news, it’s cheap, quick and most likely quite good for toning the abs.