Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: steady as she goes isn’t enough. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Remind me. It was a Labor government voters elected last year, wasn’t it?
It’s just a bit puzzling because, of late, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between this lot and the last, apart from some obvious changes in tone and personnel.
It seems to have accepted that the clothes of credibility and responsibility are conservative blue.
A government committee recommends boosting JobSeeker payments. No, says the Treasurer.
The government’s plan for a $10 billion investment fund – that means it will have to make money to do anything – to build 30,000 social and public homes over the next five years is shown to be inadequate for the task required to fix the housing crisis. Better than nothing, says the PM.
Gazillion-dollar nuclear subs? All the way with the USA, says the Defence Minister.
Stop the handouts to property investors? We don’t talk about that anymore.
Axe the Stage 3 tax cuts? That’s not our position.
OK, Albanese has inherited a shitty hand.
Chinese expansionism, post-pandemic deficits, soaring inflation and spiking rising interest rates aren’t fun.
But tell that to people on JobSeeker expected to get by on $50 a day.
Economists have argued for years that the payment is too low and actually prevents people from getting a job.
Even former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry joined the Greens, crossbenchers and most fair-minded people in urging the government not to turn its back on Australia’s most vulnerable.
PM Albanese has hurled the ultimate insult at the Greens, calling them illogical for saying the housing fund won’t do the job and asking for more.
What does he say to National Shelter, Anglicare, ACOSS and every other welfare organisation having to deal with the pain and suffering caused by a housing crisis long in the making that will only get worse without government intervention?
They say we need hundreds of thousands of social and affordable homes.
I know, where’s the money coming from?
Well, it’s all about choices.
The government can continue to hand out tax concessions to property investors that the Parliamentary Budget Office says will cost the government $157 billion in forgone revenue over the next decade.
It can provide $240 million for a stadium in Hobart, incidentally one of the hardest places in the nation to find affordable housing.
It can give Defence a blank cheque.
Is anyone not terrified at the eye-watering amounts being thrown at the military in coming years and what restrictions that will place on future budgets?
Yes, Labor is finding extra money for housing and health, but after years of neglect, just tweaking things will not be enough.
It seems like Labor is doing a bit here, a bit there, carefully calibrated to look like it is doing something without really rocking the boat.
Steady as she goes. Can’t have any headlines suggesting Labor is fiscally irresponsible – it will get them anyway – or not being prepared for that inevitable war with our biggest trading partner.
After nearly a decade in Opposition, Labor should know what needs to be done but orders policy reviews anyway.
The fact is there are going to be winners and losers – and it’s about time that those who have lost out most have a win.
By the way, it looks like we’re not so poor after all. The government is now expected to post its first budget surplus in 15 years, albeit a small one, as surging tax revenue from iron ore, coal and gas, and record numbers of people in work deliver Treasurer Jim Chalmers a financial windfall.
That’s an $80 billion big turnaround since the Coalition’s pre-election budget.
Chalmers will want to bring home the bacon, but a positive Budget headline won’t make the inherited structural problems in the nation’s finances go away.
Or the housing, health and climate crises. Or an economy that is leaving too many behind.
Labor shouldn’t waste power for the sake of respectability defined by its opponents. Get on with it.
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