Budget news

I have just read today’s tabloids – the Murdoch rag, and the Fairfax thing (it’s hard to say what it is these days), which has certainly slid a long way from quality journalism. But there is still a hint of pretence about it. I suppose we have to face the fact that quality journalism is likely to be a victim of the internet.

In any case the slide to unprofitably has meant that these tabloids are more amenable to the influence of interested parties. In the case of Murdoch it’s easy to see where the interests lie. For Fairfax it’s anyone’s guess whose vested interests they serve. They are all over the place and figuring it out is like trying to kill a moth with one hand, mid-air.

Today the subject of most interest in the Herald is the federal government budget.

The Daily Telegraph’s position is to ignore any impact of the budget; there is a small story on page 2 and the rest is on page 77 and 78. The editorial basically says that the opposition’s anti-budget stance is stupid. So we know where Murdoch stands – well we knew that already. He clearly wants more favours off the coalition.

The Herald, on the other hand, has pages and pages about the outrageous budget impact on poor people and some not-so-poor people. It also describes how the opposition parties in coalition are going to bring the government down etc etc. A slightly different position than the Daily Telegraph.

One laughable report was that of Joe Hockey trying to defend the $7 fee for visits to doctors, even for those that are bulk-billed. He claimed that it was the cost of a ‘middy’. You reckon someone in his office would have rung the Rooty Hill RSL and asked what a bogan pays for a beer eh? A schooner is about $5 and a middy is about $3.75.

There was a time once when I would have been quite interested in these issues. But in the main they are first world problems. The sense of entitlement in Australia is quite remarkable and even people struggling near the bottom of mainstream society often have the full suite of consumer goods.

Rather than just balancing the budget I would have been more interested in a story about investment in growth in the economy, and also the removal of unnecessary costs to living. The former speaks for itself but the latter does not.

In our lovely country there is a massive hidden cost to just existing. Conforming to thousands of regulations and laws includes a massive hidden cost. For example we have tax, traffic rules, business reporting, rules, safety rules, health rules, audit rules, and the list is endless. All of this adds to the cost of all goods and services. These added costs concatenate through supply chains making goods and services for consumers more and more expensive. Until we get the ridiculous situations that Australia now has the highest cost of living in the world despite that the fact that we have more resources per person than anyone other country on the planet.

The threshold wealth requirement for just being alive in Australia is quite remarkable. For those people nearer the bottom of the tree life could be made substantially easier if the cost of living was eased off. And this could be achieved very easily by removing the layers of rules and regulations that have been created by government.

But most Australians actually want all these rules. How do I know? Well whenever something bad happens to an individual (like their child gets hit at a pedestrian crossing, for example) they become passionate advocates for the introduction of new rules to prevent the thing ever happening again. Basically we are country of people that wants our government to solve all our problems. And we feel this is a moral as well as a legal right and obligation.

And that has lead to a situation where, for example, it is almost impossible to drop out of society. If you go mad and decide to live on the streets without any worldly possessions then you will immediately be in breach of a zillion rules and very likely you will end up in a series of micro-incarcerations and you will also be constantly harassed.

In our lovely country one doesn’t even have the unfettered choice to own nothing, earn nothing and to be left alone. That is, in Australia it is now an offence to be poor and happy.

And it’s this stress of existence, the minimal bar that is quite high, which leads to the existential angst over such a banal event as a federal government budget.

I can’t see things getting better. We have backed ourselves way into a cul-de-sac of moral and legal turpitude. And entropy is against us ever getting out of it.