The Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore, has picked the key political weakness in the Budget … some fudging with education figures. He has played on it on the air waves and in the press. He will extract the maximum political advantage out of it so that come next election he will be able to tell a key component of his constituency that he delivered.
Like Lloyd George he is a leader without a party. Sorry, did I write “”Leader of the Opposition, Michael Moore”? I meant, of course, to write Independent Michael Moore. How did I make such a silly mistake?
On ABC Radio this morning, when backbenchers were each given a two-minute free kick, there were no Labor Members. A Green talked about vivisection (more interested in animal cuts than Budget cuts) and Paul Osborne … need I tell you … congratulated the two footfall teams on their heroic failures last weekend. Neither can be treated seriously.
The only energy that comes out of the Opposition is when Rosemary Follett is away. And then the energy is only polemical point-scoring.
Follett’s Budget reply made one original point … that funding for the hitherto unfunded superannuation liabilities had been cut in the Budget, to which the Government responded it would be silly to borrow to provide for future liabilities.
The point about the ACT having a triple A credit rating under Labor is of no moment. James Packer no doubt has a triple A credit rating. He inherited it from his father, like the ACT inherited a clean balance sheet from the Commonwealth at self-government. But unlike James, the ACT has dipped heavily into reserves.
The other attack points were repeats of points made by media commentators earlier that day. Last Budget the then Opposition burnt the midnight oil so the next day it could come out with a coherent attack of both the figures and the philosophy. This Budget the Opposition went home early. They had become too used to the years of bureaucratic help which was not there this year.
A credible philosophic attack that would get response from the community could be mounted against this Budget. But it requires some hard yakka. This Budget moves a substantial amount of money from feel-good, do-good things into the business community. The job of the Opposition is to identify the shift with some precision, quantify the total resource shift in detail and present a convincing philosophic argument to the people of Canberra that this is unwholesome and unwelcome. Ms Follett made only a half-hearted stab at it, and the lack of homework in the exercise is self-evident.