Vikki Campion: Budget Band-Aids cover problems but don’t fix them

There was no fundamental change offered to the cost of living problem by either side in budget week. Temporary Band-Aids and subsidies cover problems but don’t fix them, writes Vikki Campion.

If Australia were a company, it would be under a microscope to avoid administration, the inevitable destination for any business that borrows what it cannot repay.

If our $1 trillion debt were divided equally among Australia’s 20.5 million tax file numbers, each taxpayer would need to pay back about $48,780 on their credit card.

And why are we drowning in this debt? Were we facing an existential crisis? Enemies at the gates, northern towns in flames, survival on the line? World War II justified borrowing to the hilt; the alternative was annihilation. What’s our excuse now? The weather?

The perversity comes in how this tax is taken from us and spent, where “funding” for all sorts of intermittent energy fallacies is now just Centrelink for billionaires.

As the ATO proudly hounds small businesses for late tax payments with ruthless efficiency, where’s that same scrutiny for how the Treasury allows our tax to be squandered?

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ budget reveals Labor is borrowing wildly for things we don’t need, leaving us drowning in debt. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

What our country needs most won’t happen during an election year when politicians flog cash splashes like a Black Friday Sale, lining up and waiting for the doors to open even though there’s no foreseeable income to clear your card by the end of the decade with this spendthrift habit.

The latest ATO data says we have more than 4.7 million active small businesses, employing almost 7.3 million employees and paying more than $91bn in income tax and $21bn in GST. To put that in context, our interest repayment on our credit card is $28bn, nearly one-third of that revenue, and now one of our biggest national expenses.

If our $1 trillion debt were divided equally among Australia’s 20.5 million tax file numbers, each taxpayer would need to pay back about $48,780 on their credit card.

And under this term of Labor government, 29,000 of these small businesses that pay the interest went insolvent. Our elected governments subsidised EVs, gifted land for water and transmission lines, subsidised wind and solar factories, and underwrote returns on subsidised investment for foreign companies while our small businesses paid a price for energy that’s sending them broke.

Both major parties have shown us this week they’re committed to more spending and more borrowing, and God help us if we end up giving the tealie-green types the steering wheel.

Like giving a five-year-old your credit card, they will borrow wildly for more things we don’t need, like university courses they never finished, leaving the little kids in childcare today paying for their own nap time with interest when they grow up, on top of student loans for courses they were never taught, and power bill subsidies because the government wouldn’t let us use our own coal, gas or uranium.

And the advertising “gurus” working for the government deceptively call these things free.

The budget reveals Labor priorities: a pittance for regional infrastructure, nothing beyond the Bruce Highway, a measly new infrastructure spend, with no droughtproofing dams, no sealed roads, no freight rail, all kept in the shadows of public wealth pumped into the climate grift.

Instead, a fortune poured into intermittent power, $2bn for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund wind and solar factories and $3bn for “green aluminium and iron”, complete with the staggering interest bill this obsession demands.

Personal income tax paid has increased 24 per cent under this government while our budget is red into the foreseeable future, our national debt will increase to $1.22 trillion over the next three years.

And the budget papers show millions more squandered on the climate bureaucracy with dalliances like the new Net Zero Economy Authority operating in the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio on top of the massive climate bureaucracy such as the $7.1bn ARENA.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton delivers his budget reply speech at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Alternate prime minister Peter Dutton gave some relief in his budget reply, offering common sense on ending Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen’s environmentally destructive $25bn Rewiring the Nation waste and green hydrogen fantasy, as well as a promise to peel back layers of red and green tape. It’s almost like he’s suggesting we stop flushing our money down the toilet.

We would not need his east coast gas reservation policy if we did not have a bewildering east coast electricity policy which pushes up the cost of living, most clearly in grocery bills.

People feel poorer because they are. There was no fundamental change offered to this problem by either side in budget week. Temporary Band-Aids and subsidies cover problems but don’t fix them.

IS TECH TURNING TEAL? CULTURE CLASH LOOMING IN TECHNOLOGY LAND

The super-smart nerds at the Australian Tech Council, advocating for our third biggest industry employing more than one million people, have been steadfastly bipartisan forever, which makes their latest Teal steal, captaining their team with Climate 200’s biggest donor, all the more perplexing.

The ATC’s membership includes the likes of Google, Telstra, META, Thales and the ASX, who have all been playing the political donation game like they’re allergic to drama.

According to AEC data, in 2023-24, Google handed out $22,000 to Labor and $22,000 to the Liberals, even-steven. Telstra $33,000 to Labor, $27,500 to the Liberals. Close enough. And the ASX balanced the books at $60,000 a piece.

Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar. Picture: Atlassian

So how will tech’s corporate members go under the leadership of the biggest donor to Climate 200, Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar, who personally donated the Teal movement $1.5m, followed by his buddy Mike Cannon-Brookes, who threw in $1.18m from his private jet and F1 team piggy bank?

And how does Climate 200’s agenda, which includes discussing aggressive climate policies like shutting down baseload power and subsidising electric vehicles while sipping champagne in luxury theatres, align with priorities of ATC members? Especially those such as weapons, ammo and drones manufacturer, Thales.

What will come for the ATC under Mr Farquhar’s Teal-tinted reign, especially with polls hinting at a minority government?

Will they pivot to lobbying Liberals for electric Bushmasters that beep instead of boom? Stampede the Nats calling for carbon-neutral explosions?

Or will they run to Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles with a call to replace our gas-powered grenade-launching Abrams battle tanks with pedal-powered artillery?

What happened? Was the head of the ACTU not around?

LIFTER

Senator Linda Reynolds doing it with class, exposing the abuse of parliamentary privilege she was subjected to by Labor MPs who wanted to believe she covered up a rape, with no evidence she did such a thing, to be uncovered in any of it’s myriad of court cases.

LEANER

The Australian Climate Foundation refilling their diesel generator with a jerry can to keep their inflatable toy waste barrels full of air in their protest against carbon-free nuclear energy on the lawns of Parliament this week.

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