Budget 2016: We’re smoking for Australia. Cough.

We’ve had fifty years of public health warnings. We know smoking is dangerous, despite the Don Draper’s best efforts to suggest otherwise.

On a quick flick through the Budget papers I can see I am going to have to smoke a lot more.

I’ve got three gaspers going in each hand and two smouldering in the ashtray right now but I’m worried it might not be enough.

I’m certainly not smoking at a rate sufficient to pay for Labor’s Gonski education funding so I may have to start smoking a pipe in between the gaspers. I guess I could pass a glowing meerschaum off as a sort of literary affectation but it’s going to cost me a packet just to keep the thing on fire.

Treasurer Scott Morison’s first and possibly last budget is tough on European carp and smokers. The only difference is the carp are expected to die horribly, presumably from the embarrassment of sporting enormous canker sores on their gobs, while smokers are required to hang in there against the odds in order to make the government’s sums add up.

Last night the Guardian website put out one of those tedious lists of winners and losers in the budget — the sort of stock post-budget fare you see from most media organisations. Scrolling down the list of losers I came across a predictable entry regarding those of us who put our lives and our lungs on the line for the good of the nation.

“Smokers — but, to be honest, they were already losers.” No analysis, no commentary, just a rather rude condemnatory one line entry.

Where is the gratitude? I’m basically paying for their kids’ paediatricians.

Clearly the Guardian has no sympathy for smokers. The really odd thing is if I ditched the durries and started injecting black tar heroin into my left eyeball, the good people at the Graun would portray me as a victim of society. “Look at that poor drug-addled bastard, climbing out of my living room window with my MacBook Pro under his arm. When is the government going to do something about it?”

But if you’re a smoker, engaging in a lawful albeit insanely taxed activity, apparently you deserve everything you get, including a random visit from the adenocarcinoma fairy.

Concerned smokers are a burden on the public health system? Worry no more. Smokers actually bankroll Medicare. Smokers already kick in around $8 billion a year and in four years, it will be almost $13 billion. By 2020, smokers will be irreplaceable contributors to the Commonwealth’s accounts which is ironic given we’re literally dropping like flies and drowning in our own mucous.

It’s a heavy load for sure but if we dedicated gaggle of fume-shrouded nicotine addicts who discretely go missing from the workplace every couple of hours decided we’d had enough and started chomping on carrot sticks instead, where would that leave the nation?

The ScoMo budget does hold out an opportunity for smokers with a bit of entrepreneurial flair to make a few bob on the sly. If I understand the back to work subsidies for Australia’s jobless ‘yoof’ correctly, I could employ a bunch of kids at $4 an hour and get ‘em on the coffin nails. If the kids bring their own, it becomes a rock solid business model plus we’d all be doing the government a huge favour ‘moving forward’ as those on the treasury benches like to say.

Jobs and mucous growth. Let this be our mantra.

Peering through the pall of delicious blue-grey smoke last night, I picked up a little gem in the Budget papers.

“Decisions taken but not yet announced — $1.69 billion” Hmm. I wonder what that could possibly be.

Call me cynical but it sounds like a good old-fashioned pork barrelling is on its way in the next couple of months, funded in whole by the humble Australian smoker. By gar, it’s been a while. Well, three years anyway.

But wait. In the 2020 forward estimates that lazy $1.69 billion of unannounced spending decisions turns magically into a $1.9 billion saving.

Never mind that entry would be frowned upon by any cardiganed suburban tax accountant. The unexplained, indeed inexplicable $3.7 billion turnaround possibly points to a time in the not so distant future where smokers may be held in high esteem and rewarded for their selflessness and sacrifice. Or it could just mean ScoMo has become a disciple of the Wayne Swan advanced arithmetic forgot-to-carry-the-one method.

In the meantime smokers will struggle on making what used to be called an informed choice when informed choice was something that was encouraged by governments. We’ve had fifty years of public health warnings. We know smoking is dangerous. We get it already. Nevertheless we remain willing to chip in billions for the good of the nation.

Don’t thank us. We’re just regular hard working Australians. Cough.