A considered assessment of the 2014 Budget

My response to this Budget has been a real slow burn. It was the deceit that got me going initially, but a Budget could be totally deceitful and still be good. So I've taken my time to read up on it, to get different perspectives about what it's done, to understand it better, to consider what the underlying philosophy is. Having done so, I've been able to come to a considered conclusion about it:

This Budget is about taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. That's the underlying philosophy, pure, plain and simple. If there's a better rationale for what they've done, I'd like to see the evidence for it. They aren't serious about cutting spending or else they wouldn't be carrying out a whole lot of additional, new, spending, most of which is of little benefit to the country and is certainly not critical!

I have common ground with the desire to reduce the Budget deficit. While it's not a huge percentage of GDP and we don't have much government debt, it doesn't take long for these things to spiral out of control, especially given we haven't had a recession in 21 years and we currently have quite a few economic clouds on the horizon. Also, there's common ground that the previous government's Budgets were going to blow out big time to accommodate additional spending for education and health. We also have a growing problem with welfare payments due to the ageing population. More people are needing welfare but a smaller proportion of people are going to be earning the revenue that pays for it.

The Rudd-Gillard governments actually did cut government spending in several of their Budgets. The primary cause of the deficits was their insane decision to match the Howard income tax cuts, it shattered the revenue base as taxation fell from 25% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product - the total value of all the paid for goods and services produced in a country over a year) when they came in to 21.5% of GDP in 2010-11, which was the lowest level of taxation since the Whitlam government! No wonder we had deficits!

The majority of the planned return to surplus is the Abbott government re-building the tax base back up to 25% of GDP. Most of  the money obtained by the spending cuts are being re-allocated to extra spending such as the health research fund so we can spend money on curing conditions we don't know about instead of spending it to treat people with conditions we do know or on preventative strategies that we know work. It's also being spent on 58 brand new, untried, unproven, fighter planes so we can go and bomb anyone who gives us trouble, like asylum seekers.

The government is also going to set up an additional Paid Parental Leave system so families earning 100 000 dollars or more a year can get 50 thousand dollars extra for having a baby and poor people having a baby can get stuff all because it's important to  make sure that wealthier people get more money for their children.

The government is also spending billions on new roads because brand new roads are the best way to get more traffic on the roads and create bigger traffic jams. A government that was serious about spending cuts would not be introducing so much new spending, spending that wipes out most of those cuts.

The cuts force the bottom 20% of people to lose about 5% of their incomes, and ask the top 20% to lose 0.3% of theirs, with that 0.3% to be removed in 3 years and to be totally eradicated if you happen to be having a baby in that time! This is not fair, just or moral! If this is "sharing the burden" I'd hate to see what not sharing it looks like.

As for the utter disgrace that is introducing co-payments to visit the doctor I would like to point out that I make a contribution to going to the doctor, it's called tax. If the tax isn't enough, raise the tax! But don't penalise people for doing what they're supposed to do if they're sick, which is going to the doctor and finding out before they get very sick. Co-payments don't even save money - they're  expensive to administer and some of the people discouraged from going to the doctor will get much sicker and treating them will be far more expensive than it would have been.

This isn't a Budget designed to reduce spending and balance the Budget, it's a Budget designed to reduce the income of people who the government doesn't approve of. I'm wary of that, for I was a child raised in a single parent family. I went to university and paid cheap, accessible fees, with financial support from the government due to my mother's low income and subsequently endured a period of unemployment, where I received unemployment benefits that assisted me whilst I waited to re-do a failed subject in my course. Without that support, my life would have been considerably more difficult. The government is now going to make life considerably more difficult for people in situations I was once in, and they seem to be keen on making it tough for people in situations I may find myself in down the track! There's very little being done to make life more difficult for those have a lot easier than the poor, however, and that's at the core of my disapproval.

I am, you are, we are Australian. That means we need to look out for all Australians, not just those who can make huge donations to our political party!