Senator Christine Milne Budget Reply 10-05-12
What is the role of a federal budget?
Is the budget just a spreadsheet of numbers, dollar figures, where some allocations go up and down? Have we come to the view that the federal budget is only an event where we gather to find out who are the winners and who are the losers, who will receive the cheques in the mail? Is it now a reflection of the massive ideological shift described by Eva Cox as a shift ‘from the politics of social change to the veneration of the market that focused on an economy of individuals’, rather than a society working together for better outcomes for all of us collectively? Is it an occasion for a managerial report on our economic credit card and its status on the debt-to-surplus trajectory, reporting that it is in the black while hiding behind our backs the ecological and social credit cards that we have put into debt to achieve that black line?