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- We never get to dream big!
Hello. Well. The election is going to be on May 3. I’ll be launching something really exciting for Zee Feed one week – as a subscriber you’ll get to see it a day before everybody else, so stand by!
Before the moment passes, I want to touch on the 2025 budget released by the Labor government this week, and the Coalition’s budget reply. This budget raised a bigger political question that is relevant to this election and what comes after. Stay with me.
Planning to keep the status quo
The 2025 budget is a status quo economic plan. There are some good things – a little tax cut for the short term, a pay increase for aged care workers, reduction in cost of medication on the PBS – all in the realm of ‘normal’, nothing groundbreaking. And there are bad things – increased subsidies for fossil fuel and gas companies, no increase to welfare payments, an extra $6 billion for those damn AUKUS submarines. But even these are the same flavour of bad that we’ve come to expect from the current state of Australian politics.
The same is true of Dutton’s budget reply speech. With the exception of his unrealistic and unserious nuclear plan, there was no big vision to reimagine how things like housing or the economy or education or even his pet topic, policing, could be done differently.
So, nothing really changes with this budget. It keeps everything exactly the way it is. Which is fine, if the status quo currently works for you. For the majority of people the status quo doesn’t work at all.
Systems change is needed now
Australia is facing significant problems that will only be solved through big, ambitious changes to the way we organise our society. We need major reform across multiple sectors to avoid the crises we already know are on the horizon (some are already here).
HECS debt is a good example of this. The budget includes the previously announced 20% cut from all student debt (including apprenticeship and VET loans), which will save the average uni grad around $5,500. There is nothing wrong with that. But it does not address whether the status quo of forcing people to incur significant debt before you earn a decent salary actually makes sense as a system. Does that achieve the best outcome? Not only for the individual student, but for the country? For the economy?
Here’s another. In the budget speech, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says: “Ex‑Tropical Cyclone Alfred could wipe a quarter of a percentage point off quarterly growth”. The budget includes $13.5b in natural disaster funding – not anything to be excited or angry about. But how does that natural disaster funding look in the context of the world passing 1.5ºC warming?
On the same day that the budget was delivered, Günther Thallinger, chairman of global financial services corporation Allianz wrote on LinkedIn: “We are fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay … [At 3ºC] risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function.”
It’s already happening. Ex-tropical Cyclone Alfred has been declared an “insurance catastrophe”. People in Lismore still have unresolved insurance claims after the 2022 floods.
They can’t keep putting these off as future problems for someone else to deal with. At some point, the “someone else” has to be policymakers in the here and now.
When do we get to go big?
I can accept that a federal budget delivered one or two weeks out from an election was never going to include major reform. It’s too politically risky. I didn’t expect any different.
But political leaders don’t seem to take the chance to use the years between elections for reform either. If not this budget, or the next budget, then when do we make the big changes Australia needs? Crikey political editor Bernard Keane wrote this great piece ($) about how budgets in election years have a short-term focus, so every three years we just abandon the idea of mid- or long-term future planning. No wonder progress feels so achingly slow.
The changing world won’t wait for Australian political leaders to feel ready to make drastic, necessary changes.
So far it looks like the Labor, Liberal and National parties will be playing the election campaign along the same lines: small tweaks in one direction or another with no major reform. Small vision only.
The big reform ideas are only coming from the likes of the Greens and some community independents (but remember, not all indies are interested in progress). If the major parties see an even bigger swing against them – as is predicted – they’ll only have their own short-term thinking to blame.
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
Why is Australian politics so boring? on Nick Feik’s substack
This is quickly becoming one of my top Auspol newsletters. “But hang on a minute, there’s a case for blandness in Australian politics. I’m serious. It goes like this: most people don’t want to be bothered by politics or politicians, and many came to Australia for that reason. We want solid institutions, which we generally have, and reasonable public health and education, which we generally have (?). We want the freedom to go shopping, take the kids to netball, relax on the weekend, and go away occasionally … Most of us want to be left alone. If the alternative is Trump’s America or governments falling over every other month, we’ll take what we have.”
Are young men really doomed? on Dazed
The nuance that has been missing from this conversation so far. “Teenagers are used to being told by adults what they should believe, how they should behave, and being punished when they don’t follow these rules. But many are more than willing to have a sensitive, nuanced conversation as long as they feel they’ll be genuinely listened to and respected. Many engage far more critically with the content they consume than we might assume. What they need is a space to engage and encourage this critical thinking, one rooted in curiosity, compassion, and justice.”
Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk: Battle of The Lizard Overlords on High Steaks podcast
Our pals at Centennial have launched a new podcast! High Steaks is a pod about famous feuds, frenemies, and falling outs (steaks = beef, get it?) and the first ep about the barely hidden tension between Zuck and Musk had me howling. I wonder what Jeff Bezos thinks about it?
The Kids are Alright on The Sunday Shot
I was on a new weekly politics show last week, the Sunday Shot, with Konrad from Punters Politics talking about the youth vote in this election and why I don’t think young Australian men are as conservative as the media is making them out to be… Spicy.