The Aftermath

Finally have both the Treasurer and the Opposition Leader given their budget speeches. They were both very diferent, one looked at bring the budget back to surplus and increasing revenues over the next 4 years, whilst the other was a 30 minute speech on what the current government is doing wrong. Be that as it may, the Opposition Leader would have done more for himself had he based his speech in fact rather than fiction. Wayne Sawn has dubbed this a traditional Labor Budget and Tony Abbott has used the analogy of 'Robbing Peter to pay Paul' but in this, Tony Abbotts case 'Peter' are the mining giants and 'Paul' are the hard working australian people. He makes it sound like this is a bad thing but in actual fact familes with school aged children will recieve $410 and $820 for primary and secondary school students respectivly. The government is spending money on dentalcare and although they are cutting back spending on defence, how are we, Australia as a country, going to be able to defend ourselves if the time came? We would rely on our allies and in the current economic cliamte people are more concerned with the money they are getting rather than preparing for the future or the protection of our country. It did NOT make the front page of any newspapers, that the budget for Foreign Aid has been cut by half a percent. Why? Because really all it means is that the money that would have been spent there has been 'invested' somewhere else. If it doesn't directly affect people then nobody cares, it is a sad reflection on our society but a true one. As of tonight the Lower House will not sit again until the 21st of May, however till then the scandals that haunt the ALP (Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson included) will continue to dominate the press and will be on show for political nerds like me to discuss and debate.