Treasury loses the plot when it comes to budget analysis

Instead of analysing Budget measures to help ease the cost of living burden, the Treasury department seems more intent in reforming language and pronouns, writes Caroline Di Russo.

Cost of living is a headline issue for Australians across the country.

We are all, in different ways and to different extents, affected by food inflation, increasing interest rates, skyrocketing rents and hefty energy bills.

All the while we look down the barrel of 2023 and wonder whether economic conditions will worsen, whether interest rates will keep rising and whether unemployment will creep upwards.

The federal budget is the one occasion each year that the electorate gets to look under the bonnet at Australia’s economic engine.

Not only do we see where the economy is at and where it’s (probably) going but also where money will be spent and where money is (hopefully) saved.

While the Budget details the financial policy settings of the government, it’s largely put together by the boffins in Treasury.

Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy. Picture: NCA NewsWire

And you’d think with the economic challenges facing Australians that a laser focus on the Budget would be the top priority for that particular department.

Apparently not.

Last week, it was reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy recently signed off on a 26-page document containing the department’s new guidelines on the use of gender-affirming language.

When I say “recently”, the document was signed on May 9 2023, the same day as the federal budget.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The guidelines contain the typically vacuous twaddle we have come to expect from government departments: suggesting the avoidance of exclusionary language like “mother” and “father”, suggesting you announce your gender when meeting unfamiliar colleagues and using pronouns in email signatures.

Columnist Caroline Di Russo.

Frankly, I’ve never understood this “pronouns in email signatures” caper.

They are as pointless to syntax as the proverbial ashtray on a motorcycle.

Why?

Because we write responsive emails in the second person (you/your) and never actually use the third person pronouns dangling off the email signature in the earlier email.

Now, my gripe is not with the LGBT community. I will do me — and by all means — you do you.

And we should all be capable of using our common sense in interacting with colleagues; kindness, understanding and respect should be mutual and as a matter of course.

But I do take issue with a government department whose primary role is ‘to anticipate and analyse policy issues with a whole of economy perspective, understand government and stakeholder circumstances and respond rapidly to changing events and directions’ indulging non-core business at its busiest time of the year.

While these types of guidelines are totally superfluous, if Treasury is determined to bludgeon their staff with re-education on gender ideology, do it in the off season.

By engaging in this administrative fluff around the time of federal budget, it signals to the electorate that Treasury is not focused on its actual job but rather at the periphery.

It’s fair to say most Australians are not losing sleep over whether public servants are using apparently disgusting terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in the workplace.

They are sweating on making ends meet and worried about what the rest of the year has in store economically, politically and financially.

When the Treasurer Jim Chalmers was quizzed about these glossy new guidelines, he didn’t rush to publicly celebrate them.

While his department is clearly feeding the unicorns at the bottom of the garden, I suspect the Treasurer is acutely aware of the chasm in pain points between the punters and prigs.