Thread by @docbaty

Before I get onto the next article, I want to take a moment to talk about Tuesday’s Federal Budget. It is almost certainly going to be a big spending budget. Leaked snippets indicate that it’ll also include some rather useful forward estimates for GDP growth, wages & inflation...

The Coalition’s Budgets since 2013 have included the following three forecasts every time:
* strong GDP growth
* stronger wages growth
* stable inflation.

In other words, a growing economy, rising real wages, and rising standards of living...

This has turned out to be untrue every. Single. Time.

The reason they do it is that it allows them to also forecast a reduction in the deficit - maybe even a budget surplus - at some future point.

It’s like saying: I can spend more now because I’ve been promised a pay rise.

Except, year after year, the GDP growth isn’t as good as predicted, and wages don’t grow - the pay rise never eventuates. Workers - blue collar workers, service workers, minimum wage workers in particular - have gone backwards instead.

It should come as no surprise when Treasurer Frydenberg trots out these forecasts next week with the surety of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. It will be, once again, a mistake to believe the figures presented.

In particular, keep an eye out for the siren song of strong growth and tax cuts. "Putting money back into the hands of ordinary Australians”, whoever they are. [Hint: they don’t exist.]

What we need is to see those gains - if they eventuate - back into public services.

We need to see increased investment in public schools, public hospitals, publicly-run aged care facilities. Into mental health, dental health, and childcare services. Into good telecommunications infrastructure for regional Australia, and reliable mobile & internet coverage.

We need to see an increase to the social benefits that support people out of work, reliant on disability services, and the elderly, to move them out of poverty and provide a dignified quality of life.

We need to invest in public housing and tackle the root causes of the crisis in housing affordability, to move people out of rental distress and off the streets.

And threaded through it all we need to see a conscious effort - at every turn - to reduce our carbon emissions significantly and put us on a path towards a carbon-free economy.

Then, and only then, should we be thinking about tax cuts for business owners and the wealthy.

For nine years this government has personified a set of bad priorities that we need to reject vehemently, and begin the process of redress. Australia is a wealthy country with a government hell-bent on distributing that wealth to the very few. We need to change that, now.

I don’t want that to seem like an exhaustive list, although it is long. There is still the gender pay gap that sees women end their careers with lower salaries, lower retirement incomes and less chance to contribute through their work.

We need to act on the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders in this country and take up their offer of a path to reconciliation as embodied in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The list goes on. Unfortunately, our money is being spent instead on wasteful and unnecessary things - like tanks and ships and dams that won’t help…