Josh Frydenberg’s Budget Takes From the Poor to Give to the Rich
Instead of providing sorely needed stimulus, the 2020 budget from Australia's Coalition government transfers wealth toward millionaires and big business and away from the poor, the unemployed, women, and the government’s ideological enemies.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. (Photo by Sam Mooy / Getty Images)
The Morrison government would like to present its 2020 budget as a bold attempt to spend its way out of Australia’s pandemic recession. But once you drill down into the figures, the “stimulus” amounts to tax cuts, worth tens of billions of dollars, for big business and the wealthy. For the poor, unemployed, women, and those working in sectors that the government doesn’t favor ideologically, the budget delivers long-term stagnation and economic pain.
Neoliberal Hangovers
A decade ago, the Labor government of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard ran a much smaller deficit to help Australia’s economy out of the global financial crisis. The Liberal and National parties, then in opposition, called it a “debt and deficit disaster,” and the mainstream media assiduously presented the deficit as proof of Labor’s supposedly poor economic management.
The budget deficit is $214 billion this year, with national debt set to reach $1 trillion. The budget papers say the budget will never return to surplus, with Australia’s national government still scheduled to be 1.6 percent in deficit by 2030–31. The government rightly claims this is “unprecedented.”
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