Beazley’s budget broadside

Seems I’m always way too late in weighing in, but Beazley’s stirring budget response has received quite a few plaudits from our good blogger friends. Still educating myself on economic matters, but Beazley claims that the nation’s current wave of wealth owes more to a minerals boom than to any Conservative Party policies, and that the government is squandering the opportunities this bounty opens up. Their tax cuts indeed are damaging the nation, being targeted more towards those with less need of them, thus further opening the rich-poor divide and promoting the politics of envy [well, he didn’t say that, that’s my spin].

The speech, after initially focussing on the tax cuts and tax thresholds and how Labor would’ve set them and balanced them, looks at various areas of reform that have been neglected by the incumbents, such as addressing the skills shortage and targeting infrastructure development. To me he sounds convincing on this, especially when pointing out that it has been Labor governments who have put ideology aside and addressed real and much-needed reforms in the eighties and nineties, such as market deregulation, compulsory superannuation, the movement away from protectionism and so forth. The Tories have long had a policy of non-interference if not downright neglect. A matter of ideology breezily aligned to sheer slackness. And surely it’s true that this is a populist budget [Beazley insinuates that it’s a ‘get Costello elected PM’ budget] which evades all the hard decisions, hurts the impotent few on welfare benefits, neglects crucial areas such as education and training [particularly apprenticeships], child-care and labour market reform [to make real part-time work available for those being pushed onto the dole].

Our foreign debt is astronomical, complains Beazley. Presumably this is about a poor import-export ratio, though it’s not clear what Labour plans to do to redress this, if anything. Still, it’s an eloquent response, even inspirational in places, as it adumbrates a few positive policies, as well as firmly imprinting on our minds the difference between the two sides of government, against those who like to claim there isn’t any.

Tim Dunlop does as good a brief summary of the budget as anyone:

Ten years of populist conservative government and this is what it boils down to: tax cuts for the highest paid, no real investment in the future, and a Treasurer more concerned about shoring up his leadership ambitions than delivering necessary reforms.