As Josh Frydenberg revealed his big-spending budget, Labor was roasting the Coalition for delivering its eighth consecutive deficit. In a week dominated by the treasurer, a narrative quickly coalesced — helped on by a flurry of drops — that this budget would be generous, almost “Labor-lite”.
With funding for aged care, childcare and mental health, it seemed like a pre-election budget that left the opposition with little room to manoeuvre. Its immediate response seems to have focused on the government’s wastefulness: the $1 trillion debt, the failure after eight years to deliver a surplus, the preference for a sugar-hit headline over policy substance.
But voters seem to like big spending, and in a time of global economic uncertainty the budget’s generosity could go down well. Can deficit-hawking work for Labor?
Stop talking about debt
There’s a sense of frustration in the Labor ranks. When it was last in government it was excoriated by the media and Tony Abbott for the deficits it ran up responding to the global financial crisis. Now the Coalition seems to be shamelessly abandoning that line of attack, taking on even more debt and appearing to reap the benefit.
That leaves Labor in the tricky position of trying to explain why its big spending was good big spending but the Coalition’s is bad. And that’s complicated by what Peter Lewis, director of progressive strategic communications outfit Essential Media sees as voters’ pre-written assumptions about Labor profligacy: “Regardless of performance, voters rightly or wrongly see right-of-centre parties as better economic managers.”
The difficulty cutting through and explaining the difference between good and bad spending sometimes leads to the party sounding like Abbott circa-2012, banging on about big dangerous debt. That was the substance of a Facebook post attacking the Coalition’s eighth deficit, and it’s a theme Anthony Albanese and shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers have frequently returned to over the past week.
Economist Alison Pennington, from the Centre for Future Work, says progressives need to look beyond obsessing over debt: “The Coalition’s moved on from this deficit bogyman politics, and all other organisations should move on too.”
Pennington says the response needs to be less on the size of the debt, but the conditions being attached to the funding increases in crucial areas like childcare and aged care.
Where does Labor go?
Perhaps Labor’s best bet is to focus on the quality not the quantity of the government’s big spend.
“Labor are right to point to the hypocrisy of the Coalition, that raged against small amounts of money being spent on school halls and now championing enormous amounts of money on imported utes,” the Australia Institute’s chief economist Richard Denniss tells Crikey.
Chalmers appears to be tapping into that, with a repeated soundbite about the government’s record over “sports rorts and dodgy land deals”.
Lewis says there’s ample room for Labor to look at whether the government’s big spending programs around aged care and mental health actually achieve what they set out to do, and for the opposition to try to frame the government’s spending as adopting Labor’s approach to economic management.
But all these arguments are hard to cut through during budget week — one which belongs to the government of the day who has the opportunity to frame the narrative.
The best thing for Labor could just be to wait the week out, and — shockingly — not worry too much about the budget.
Lewis said: “Treat the budget as a big news day, move on, and go after the big Achilles heel at the moment for the government which is the vaccine rollout and hotel quarantine.”
Can Labor get smart and go for the government’s Achilles heel? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
We know the second Labor get into govt (if they ever do), the Libs will talk sh*t about debt and deficit. They love spending, they just like spending money on rish people, not essential services. trickle down is still their mantra
There’s an old saying I grew up with in Ireland. I think it applies here.
‘If you get a reputation for being an early riser, you can stay in bed all day.’
Certainly, this has been a Labor Lite Budget. This is the reason Labor has not wanted to declare too much about their policies.
Best to actually wholeheartedly support the Budget but predict where this spending will not workout. With this Governments practice of splashing big announcements and then not following through there will need to be a formal announcement of close ‘fact checking’ of their promises. There will be a problem with this Government’s ‘demand’ driven funding, instead of supply, which means there will be unintended consequences that will not help the economy but certainly not the voter. The outcome will be more ‘rorts’, of the JobKeeper variety with cost increases, and the Coalition ‘mates’ taking home more money that was supposed to be for the service improvements eg. in Aged care and Child care. Targeting is a big problem with this budget but at the moment the big numbers will attract the attention of the voter, so an election will have to come quickly before the problems arise.
If I was Labor I will be reminding people of the lies, lack of follow through, poor management of the money being spent, poor history of strategic planning (quarantine, vaccinations etc), the history of not caring about small business and the worker, or about Health, Welfare, Education and Justice, and their history of policies that have increased inequality. I would be reminding people that spending is not the issue, and was not the issue during the GFC. The issue is about the responsibility about where the spending is targeted.
The Election will be about who can we Trust.
I agree (trust) .
This budget doesn’t remove the stench of rampant corruption and abject lying by this Coalition government nor its incompetence. It was not framed to make the lives of Australians better only to get Morrison and Co reelected.
I think there’s a difference in what the parties would spend the money on, hence why the Murdoch papers would treat Swan as a communist and Frydenberg as a prudent spender. Social programs or things that would benefit future generations were largely absent from the spending.
So while both parties hate the poor and want to see them suffer in perpetual poverty, If expect a Labor budget of this magnitude at least give more to health, education, and a few token attempts to adapt to climate change.
I think the ALP has moved on from thinking that the stick of providing support the unemployed that only allows them to struggle under the poverty line is a good idea. They now support a higher job seeker payment.
Further, Labor should focus its critique of the budget first and foremost on its failure to spend on a green recovery, using government money to promote green hydrogen and green gas, with all the long lasting jobs that will go with it, its failure to support affordable mass university education with its cuts to university funding, which will rule out early home buying for most university graduates, its failure to support real wage growth and its failure to fund the abc. The second string in its bow should be to ask whether the things it is funding, such as aged care, are pushed off till after the election this coming year, which seem inadequate and in any case contingent on whether they will change their mind. It is an appallingly inadequate budget for future generations and it will make our response to climate change seem even more inadequate and lead to other countries putting taxes on our exports.
Time will tell. In any case, Labor is a far cry from “By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty”, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Not while the prevailing narrative is that welfare should be a stick to get people into (insecure) low-paying positions (rife with exploitation).
Just rang my Dr to book flu shot. My asthma is bad enough to have bumped me into priority 1B for covid-19 vaccination, but I was told budget has removed asthmatics from free flu vaccination program, removing a health provision that has been available for decades. I’ve searched but can’t find any coverage of this. Makes me wonder how many nasty cuts are in the fine print.