Adding to the burgeoning list of lies that have accompanied the Coalition government, the bosses' media have been working overtime to sell Treasurer Costello's first budget as a "fair go" which "shares around the pain".
The budget's vicious attacks on the unemployed, Aborigines, students, the working poor, young people, new migrants, parents of young children and the environment have been down-played or justified (depending on who you listen to). Meanwhile, the government and capitalist media try to convince us that a tax surcharge on future employer superannuation contributions and an additional 1% Medicare levy for higher income individuals is "the rich getting a soaking".
The reality is that this budget delivers virtually no pain and enormous gain to big business. The only blow to the real rich — the owners of the banks and big corporations — is the reduction of the research and development tax concession from 150% to 125%. Ain't life tough!
Even the much-touted superannuation surcharge has rapidly been revealed as nothing more than a PR exercise. The tax lawyers of the mega-rich are already advising them on ways to avoid it. Meanwhile, the penalty for unemployed people who attempt to avoid being placed in an underpaid, dirty or dangerous job is relegation to the charity-dependent scrap heap for at least six weeks.
The rich will not just be quarantined from the assault on living standards in this budget; they will make big gains. While the government rails against "welfare cheats", business-owners maintained almost all of their existing public subsidies (the $1.7 billion diesel fuel rebate, multi-billion-dollar corporate tax avoidance loopholes and so on). Now, the inefficient private health insurance companies, the rapidly growing private child-care businesses and private schools and hospitals will be given billions of dollars in government support — at the expense of funding for Medicare, community based child-care, public education and public hospitals.
Recognising the potential for widespread outrage at its efforts to extract $4 billion worth of blood out of working people over the next year, the government ensured that the most fragmented, unorganised, resource-poor and desperate groups— that is, those people least able to fight back — are targeted in the cuts. The unemployed, Aborigines and young people will receive particularly vicious treatment.
For the rest of the working class — Howard's "middle Australia" — the family tax package con will deliver a few extra dollars to households each week, but the budget cuts take back much more in higher costs for pharmaceuticals, child-care, aged care and more.
If this budget is passed by the Senate, it will be a significant victory for the capitalists. Combined with the Workplace Relations Bill, it will strengthen the framework developed by the former Labor government within which the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich will be extended and speeded up. The 13 years of ALP "belt-tightening" for working people will become a noose around our necks.
Worse, the August 20 package is just the first step. Even before this budget is debated in parliament, the bosses are baying for more blood, and Costello has promised it.
The opposition parties in the Senate have promised to substantially amend parts of this horror budget. They must stick to their promises. But the bulk of the proposed cuts are contained in the government's appropriation bills. To stop the worst of the attacks, the opposition parties and independents in the Senate must block supply.
It is only by completely rejecting the Coalition's budget that the ruling class's offensive against the majority of people can be pushed back. Half way will not do the job: allowing the government "only" most of its cuts may relieve a little of the pain, for a few of the people, for a period of time, but it will not derail the Coalition's fundamental agenda.
It is urgent that the massive opposition to this budget is mobilised and organised to demand that the Labor Party, Democrat and independent senators block the budget in its entirety. Unless this is done, that fundamental agenda will become harder and harder to resist as working people take more and more blows.