Joe Hildebrand: The budget has sacrificed brave and bold for beige and old
Josh Frydenberg has used basically the same strategy Muhammad Ali did for his legendary Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman: Hold steady, take the hits and hope that your younger, stronger and more aggressive opponent eventually wears himself out, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Despite all the talk about paying off debt, there is only one Bill that Josh Frydenberg is trying to cut down to size with this Budget and his last name is Shorten.
Make no mistake: This Budget isn’t a financial blueprint for the next four years, it’s an election strategy for the next five weeks.
And that strategy is basically the same one Muhammad Ali used for his legendary Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman: Hold steady, take the hits and hope that your younger, stronger and more aggressive opponent eventually wears himself out.
In other words, all the government is really trying to do with this Budget is remain standing. And given where it is in the polls and the rubble that lies in its wake even that may be no easy feat.
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As a result Frydenberg has crafted a Budget that is safe to the point where it is almost apolitical. Indeed, if the Turnbull-Morrison Budgets were accused of being “Labor-lite”, this Budget is downright Labor heavy.
Policies on everything from tax cuts to early childhood learning are a deliberate response to the ALP’s and even the language echoes Labor’s in an effort to declaw the opposition — probably not a bad idea in a campaign where the slightest scratch could prove fatal.
However this sort of strategy is now almost alien in a political environment where the best defence is considered to be good offence and the best offence is considered to be ripping your opponent’s head off and s***ting down their throat.
We saw this literally caught on camera when the National Rifle Association explained to a dopey delegation from One Nation that even schoolyard massacres could be turned around by going on the offensive.
And indeed we see the same approach from the hard left every day when they attempt to shut down any debate they don’t like by labelling it “hate speech” or “unacceptable” or “offensive”.
Yes, sometimes the best defence is to not only go on the offensive, but go on the offensive by calling everyone else offensive.
But sometimes the best offence is simply a good defence. Or, more to the point, sometimes a good defence is your only chance of survival.
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Even in the face of almost certain loss, there is perhaps a faint hope inside Liberal ranks that if they present a Budget so utterly unremarkable Shorten can’t lay a glove on it, the opposition leader may eventually overreach and stumble.
Or the aliens might land and tell us where Elvis is.
Because that is the other truth that dare not speak its name — this is a Clayton’s Budget. It is the Budget you have when you’re not having a Budget. It is a Budget that — barring an Elvis-led alien landing — will never be implemented.
Little wonder then that Frydenberg hasn’t exactly constructed a masterpiece. Why build a sandcastle when the beach bully is standing behind you tapping his foot?
Again, those on the right will say that this only proves their point. If you are going to go down, you might was well go down with dignity. Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Or at least we like to think so. In fact, if nature has taught us anything, it’s that virtually every species will do anything it can to survive at all costs. Crocodiles have been known to withstand brutal conditions by burying their heads in the mud. Their limbs may wither and die but their jaws live to strike another day.
Political animals are not dissimilar.
When the late Roman Empire was being constantly overrun by enemies, the Emperor Aurelian had an idea. Instead of defending the Roman world as a whole, he walled up its cities and let the invading armies come as they might. They ravaged the lands but eventually they got tired and hungry and the legions came along and drove them back out again.
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It was desperate, messy and inglorious but it worked. Aurelian was given the title of “Restitutor Orbis” — the Restorer of the World.
Of course critics said that world was never truly restored — the empire was no longer safe, its strength no longer impregnable, its pride no longer intact.
But it was alive.
There is not much you can say about this government, but at least there is that. It is alive and it has given itself the slimmest of chances of remaining so with a Budget that has sacrificed brave and bold for beige and old.
And when the Coalition is sent to the opposition benches it will be able to hold the first surplus in more than a decade like a sword of Damocles over the new government’s head.
Should Labor again fail to manage to produce a surplus in government or get suckered into harebrained spending sprees it may well be that the electorate looks fondly back on this most safe and boring of budgets.
Even then it will hardly be a ripping read but it might end up being a bit of a Bill-tearer.
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