Budget debate must be about our future

TO win the budget debate, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey need to change it.

They are stuck in a fairness argument they invited upon themselves but can never win.

Labor MPs must be pinching themselves. Somehow the budget is being judged by whether the reduction in tax dollars going to individual welfare recipients is equivalent to extra tax imposts on those funding welfare.

This is an inane way to assess policy that aims to reduce reliance on welfare and increase opportunities for people to become self-reliant and net tax contributors.

Tilling the ground before the budget the Prime Minister said he didn’t want pensioners to say they were bearing budget pain while others weren’t. “Because it’s got to be fair,” he said, “above all else, it’s got to be fair.”

The Treasurer echoed this theme in the budget speech. “It is only fair that everyone makes a contribution,” he said.

The debt levy on high-income earners was a blatant broken promise designed not to buttress the budget but underpin this fairness point.

Instead, it invited judgment on simplistic fairness grounds.

Do the rich pay as much as the poor lose? Never mind that one’s handout is reliant on the other’s contribution.

Sure, you don’t want an unfair budget. Governments must be seen to be fair. But that is a far cry from getting caught up in dollar-for-dollar comparisons.

Yesterday Hockey was again caught in the weeds of the debate, contesting media coverage of figures showing how much the poor would lose. “It fails to take into account pensions,” he said before listing concessions for lower-income families.

“So the information as presented is deliberately misleading,” defended Hockey, “and it does not represent the true state of affairs.”

Whether or not he is right, the Treasurer is debating from the back foot on Labor’s ground, fighting an equity battle he can’t win.

The budget should be about protecting the nation’s future and enhancing opportunity, not equalising pay packets.

In Madonna King’s recently released biography, Hockey is reported to complain about a lack of “enthusiasm” from this newspaper in coverage of his 2012 “age of entitlement” speech in London.

Apparently he complained to proprietor Rupert Murdoch.

“I said, ‘what the hell is The Australian doing?’ He was appalled,” Hockey said.

However, you don’t just deliver a speech, give an interview to your ideological enemies at the ABC and expect your arguments to take off, or complain to the boss.

You brief media, explain your aims, garner third-party support and do a series of interviews, articles and speeches.

You make your case. And you do it relentlessly — especially if you are a Coalition politician — in case most of the press gallery is antipathetic.

Abbott and Hockey have put themselves behind in the budget debate. Yet they can prevail if they reframe it away from Labor’s dollar-for-dollar fairness test and start a conversation with the public, and the Senate.

Chris Kenny served as chief of staff to former foreign minister Alexander Downer and former federal Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull.