The Anthony Albanese government has handed down its first budget, and it’s a shocker. Even Labor’s taxpayer-funded media wing, the ABC, concedes that “The poor will pay” while “the rich […] will do fine”. Grabbing particular headlines is Labor’s turn-around on power prices: after promising no less than 97 times that they would cut power bills, Labor admit that power bills will rise by a staggering 50%.
But that’s just the headline horrors. There’s a whole lot more buried deep in the fine print of the budget papers that is starting to ring alarm bells.
First, the race-baiting.
The government’s preparations for an Indigenous voice to parliament will be supported with $75m to start setting up the referendum, as well as extending tax deductibility to donations to a leading constitutional recognition group backing the change.
The Albanese government’s first federal budget also contains millions for Indigenous birthing practices, to set up a Makarrata truth-telling commission, and to mark the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations.
Yet there’s nothing for groups — many of them led by Aboriginal Australians — opposed to the referendum. Which makes a mockery of the legal requirement to present opposing arguments impartially. And “millions for Indigenous birthing practices”? Anyone can go and squat under a gum tree for free.
In his budget speech the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, trumpeted a $1.2bn spend “in practical measures to close the gap for First Nations people and communities”, and to begin preparations for the voice.
So, we’ll add that to the $34bn+ Australia already spends, every year, on Aboriginal Australians — with absolutely no “closing the gap” to show for it. You’d think even a dimwit Labor Arts grad would eventually start to tweak that maybe money isn’t the issue.
The budget papers also state the government will explore a mechanism for the real-time reporting of Indigenous deaths in custody.
The Guardian
Every other race doesn’t matter apparently, even though more non-Aborigines die in custody. Will the government also set up real-time reporting of women and children murdered in Aboriginal communities? Communities which are statistically less safe for Aboriginal Australians than police custody, it might be pointed out.
Another hidden shocker in the budget is a secret gambit in pursuit of Klaus Schwab’s de-kulakisation agenda which has rocked farming from the Netherlands to Uruguay.
A secret sum set aside to buy water from farmers so it can be used for the environment has sent a “shiver down the spine” of agricultural communities, farmers say.
This is on top of Labor signing on to the “methane reduction” campaign, which, as Barnaby Joyce points out, in practical terms means culling herds. At least, though, Labor is openly telling us they’re going to liquidate millions of productive livestock and farms. Starving them of water will apparently be done by stealth.
The Albanese government’s first budget shows funding has been allocated to meet environmental water-saving targets, but the figure has not been not published “due to commercial sensitivities”.
The ABC has confirmed the funding has been set aside so water could be purchased from irrigators willing to sell their entitlement to the Commonwealth, something that has not happened in the Murray-Darling Basin for almost a decade.
ABC Australia
The only beneficiaries of this will be the wealthy institutional investors who bought up big on water allocations a decade and more ago.
Everyone else will just have to watch crops die and fresh fruit and vegetables vanish from supermarket shelves alongside meat.
You will eat your mashed crickets and recite the Welcome to Country in the dark and be happy.
