Budget bills Generation AA

Because of the situation in the Senate it is difficult to see Abbott managing to get anything but a big spending budget passed.

Here Labor is the problem as without its support the cross benches have no power of veto.

But unlike Howard during the Hawke years, Shorten is not interested in playing an honourable hand and allowing good reform to pass.

This is partly because it’s not his inclination (and in fact Howard is the only Opposition Leader who has put partisan advantage aside for good policy) but also because the modern Labor Party does not seem to recognise what good economic policy is.

The Rudd/Gillard style of economic management was shambolic with a huge increase in outlays which they tried unsuccessfully to fund by mugging power consumers and the mining industry, both measures which decreased national productivity and efficiency.

This budget will be criticised as “unfair”, which is code for “someone lost a benefit”. Such criticisms are without substance. You need a double entry approach to fairness. For everyone who gains a benefit there is someone who pays for it, who may well be in need themselves.

Those payers are not the current generation, but future generations who will have to pay the debt back at some stage either through cash or inflation.

This is an unfair budget, and an unfair generation (assuming its politicians are representative of it), as it is not only eating the past – the surpluses and assets laid up by those who have gone before – but it is eating the future – which should belong to its children.

Not sure what the younger generation will say when it realises what a mess its parents are making, but it could make for interesting retirements for those of us who are in our 50s and 60s.

They will not be happy, nor should they be.