In 2022 Josh Frydenberg gave the budget game away when he was reported justifying the many billions of dollars spent on Aukus by saying, “everything is affordable if it’s a priority”. Julia Gillard in 2014 also revealed the budget reality when she told the audience at the Joan Kirner justice oration “Budgets are made of choices. They make us … think about what we care about the most”.
When we put those two lines together it becomes what I call the Budget Commandment: “Everything is affordable if we choose to care about it”.
Over the next two weeks we are going to hear a great deal from the government about not being able to afford everything. What it means is that it has decided not to spend money on something because it has decided it is not a priority that it cares about the most.
This is relevant because last week the government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (EIAC) released its second report. It recommended help for those in poverty, especially those who were unemployed.
The first recommendation was to raise the level of jobseeker to 90% of the age pension.
Unemployment benefits used to be around this level but in 1997 the Howard government “benchmarked” the age pension to 25% of “male total average weekly earnings”, while unemployment benefits were raised in line with........