EDITORIAL: Budget victory lap by Labor is pure Canberra
Inside the Canberra bubble, the Government is celebrating a Budget many Australians are still struggling to make sense of.
It’s a funny place, Canberra.
Funny as in strange.
Travel overseas and ask someone to name the nation’s capital and it would not be unusual for them to respond with another question.
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And yet there it sits, remote from the nation’s urban hubs. Away from the real action. Disconnected.
That’s also a way to describe Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday almost gloating that Labor had stuck together in the face of the backlash against the shambolic broken promises Budget and had won the debate.
It’s as if the Budget and the problems it unleashed were just politics. A game.
Maybe just like being back on campus and fighting Tories. And so all he had to do was deflect. Deny. Tough it out.
Problems? What problems? It was all a scare campaign. It was lies. It was a media beat-up.
And wait for everybody to become exhausted and move on. And then declare mission accomplished.
Perhaps he had been left giddy by the latest Newspoll which showed support for Labor had risen from 30 per cent to 33 per cent while One Nation had fallen from 31 per cent to 29 per cent, as the Coalition continued to trail behind in third place, hitting a new historic low of 17 per cent.
But here’s the reality.
The Government’s disastrous Budget was saved by the deal it cut with the Greens.
The Greens agreed to support changes to the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing in exchange for Labor limiting self-managed superannuation funds from buying residential property, as well as extending the inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme and amendments the Greens say will “firewall” some areas of the scheme from further cuts.
Trade-offs. Politics.
The idea it is all part of the Canberra bubble hits the nail on the head.
The Government sees a poll which indicated just over three in ten voters see it as their first preference as an improvement and is in self-congratulatory mode as the Coalition drifts further and further into irrelevance.
Yet the release of the minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s June 16 meeting showed concern that union demands could feed a wage-price spiral, and that inflation was expected to remain at elevated levels.
The board cited its May forecasts that “envisaged that it would be a further two years before inflation returned sustainably to target”.
The RBA cash rate was this month left on hold at 4.35 per cent, following hikes in February, March and May, but it warned of another increase if inflation wasn’t contained.
Home loan borrowers await the next hit.
And perhaps they are wondering about whether that will be the end of it or whether more pain remains ahead.
And yet Labor finds it appropriate to give itself a pat on the back for a job well done. An Albanese-led Labor Budget victory lap in the Canberra bubble.
No wonder there is deep dissatisfaction with those who claim they represent us.
Out in the real world beyond the confines of Parliament House where the rest of us live and go about our daily lives, the real struggle goes on.
It is getting harder to find proof that our voices are heard.
