BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — Treasurer Peter Costello's 2003 budget was giving a caning at a "People's reply to the budget" on May 16. At the meeting, organised by the Socialist Alliance, a range of speakers described the greater disadvantage and suffering that the Coalition's "war budget" would mean for ordinary people.
The Greens' Ben Butcher struck a cord when he talked about the need to articulate an alternative budget — based on the assumption that education and healthcare should be free and there should be no unemployment.
Instead, this budget is one for "Prime Minister John Howard's constituency, big business", said the Socialist Alliance's Sue Johnson. "[The budget] implements the policies of corporate globalisation, and we must challenge it on those terms", she said.
The budget's attacks on working-class people's access to health care and education were outlined respectively by NSW Democrat MP and former president of the Doctors Reform Society Arthur Chesterfield-Evans and NSW Teachers Federation president Maree O'Halloran.
Chesterfield-Evans described the ALP's stated support of Medicare as hypocrisy, given that Labor refused to withdraw its support for government subsidies for private health insurance companies.
"Indigenous people got nothing", Ray Jackson from the Indigenous Social Justice Association told the audience. He explained the exceptions: a new monument to reconciliation — "Just what we need!", yet another academic study on Aboriginal disadvantage, and another 1000 Indigenous work-for-the-dole places.
After condemning the government for sacrificing public education to buy armour-plated limousines, Emma To from Books Not Bombs argued that young people, excluded from the mainstream media and government, must organise outside parliament to defend their rights and future. The Books Not Bombs-organised protests against the war proves that we can do that, she said.
Labor member for Sydney Tanya Plibersek outlined the reforms to the budget being planned by her party. Labor will vote against the changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and some aspects of the Medicare changes, she said. But "we won't block supply because we live in a democracy and the opposition can't just cause chaos every time they disagree with the government".
The Socialist Alliance is calling on opposition parties to block military expenditure in the budget.
Plibersek could not be drawn on Labor's support for increased expenditure for "homeland defence" and border patrol.
Butcher explained that the Greens agree with Labor on how to deal with the budget. Butcher said the Greens would not vote for any regressive aspects of the budget.
From Green Left Weekly, May 21, 2003.
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