Prime Minister Scott Morrison (left) and Treasurer Josh Frydenburg earlier this week on Budget Night. Photo: Getty Images
The budget in all its glorious, tawdry bribery has thrown up a question.
When I come to stand at the voting booth in a few weeks, do I cast my vote for myself or my country?
If I follow the money, then I vote for what’s good for me, and for the mob who are offering the most for me. One’s self-interest merges into another’s. It’s a pretty simple exchange.
And if there’s one thing we like in this country, it’s keeping it simple. Last election result was a fine example. One miracle was all it took, and there you go, Scott Morrison won. A miracle worker among a nation moving increasingly to secularity.
The Coalition can’t surely be banking on another Morrison-induced miracle. But then perhaps they are. They’re a shambles in NSW, the Liberals can’t even agree on who should represent them in numerous electorates.
It’s not as if they have the luxury of time. The election has to be held by end of May. And you’d think they couldn’t possibly put up the excuse, cripes, is that the time? Didn’t see that coming.
The budget, in this case, should have been a springboard from which they’d leap into the campaign, yelling as they dived, we have a vision for this country. Follow us and we will lead.
What did the country get instead? A few bucks and distant promises to be collected on the never never.
Some in the political commentariat, and political circles, think Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has to do more than be a small target and not be Scott Morrison. Not being Morrison should be plenty enough to get the job done.
The budget also leads to another question: are governments, well specifically this one, and altruism mutually exclusive?
It’s naive of me to ask, I know. But to borrow the phrase from another democracy, isn’t government of the people, by the people, for the people? Yes, the speaker was Abraham Lincoln and it was 1863. But in a democracy, it is a universal truth.
Such a government is driven by the welfare of all the people for which it governs, surely. And this is altruism, that is, a “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others”. Or in zoological terms, which seems appropriate in matters political, the “behaviour of an animal that benefits another at its own expense”.
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It would seem by those definitions altruism and the Coalition are as close in aspiration and achievement as the Earth is to Pluto. Rorts affairs, anyone? But then perhaps the rorts were just a manifestation of Morrison’s “can-do capitalism” at work.
This philosophy, which appeared earlier in the phrase “if you have a go, you get a go”, (there must be a book in the offing in the future of the PM’s philosophy, perhaps entitled (italics)I Don’t Hold a Hose, Mate(italcs)), surfaced with his comment recently on renters.
While there was a morsel in the budget for first-home buyers, the lack of assistance to renters was more noticeable, a point raised in an interview on morning TV. Morrison responded: “This is about Australians getting into homes. The best way to support people renting a house is to help them buy a house.”
Allowing people to borrow 95 per cent of the property’s value without mortgage insurance was their way of helping. People buying houses were renters, he said. Perhaps not all people, Prime Minister. Here’s a thought, perhaps negative gearing has helped investors buy houses, too.
Dr Chris Martin, a housing policy expert at the University of New South Wales, was reported as saying Morrison’s comment was “a real let them eat cake moment. Thirty percent of low-income people on the private rental market do not have $500 in savings for emergencies, let alone a five per cent deposit for a home loan.”
Still, there’s this: for six months, the fuel excise is being cut, for a saving of about 22 cents a litre of petrol. I wouldn’t want to be trying to fill up six months, plus one day.
Of course, millions of Australians can think as they wait to get to the bowser how they will spend the $420 the government is throwing at their tax returns. Others, such as pensioners and concession cardholders, can hail the miracle that is a $250 one-off payment.
One might ask, what does the government expect in return for this throwing of crumbs? Ah yes, the gratitude of a vote-casting people.
Depressingly, it’s not altruism, but another truism perhaps fits: the punters know that the horse named ‘Morality’ rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named ‘Self-interest’ always runs a good race.
Gough Whitlam said that.
