There is something seriously disconcerting in the
post-budget rumbling.
It is not that the sounds of
discontent are quiet, whispered in simmering rage. Plenty of writers—good writers—have
gone on full-frontal assaults against what is laid bare and what is implicit in
the Hockey-Abbott budget; who it will impair and who it will outright damage.[1]
It is not even that the response
has been too far skewed to a froth-at-the-mouth left. It seems generally
acknowledged that the budget has not quite dared to venture into complete
austerity economics.[2]
Indeed, people can sort of see the
long-term picture of what it is supposedly meant to achieve: return the budget
to surplus, eventually leading to decreased income-tax. It is just the means of
achievement seem rigorously shifty, framed around cuts to elements like
education and health that, otherwise left alone, contribute to a stronger economy in the long term—to
generalise: smart, healthy people make more money to be spent—alongside marginal
tax hikes (sorry, new levies) for higher earners, which unlike the changes
being made to welfare safety nets, are apparently temporary.
It is not even, beyond the print
and internet media, that social media has been mute on the topic. People have been
exchanging articles and graphs; liking and sharing; discussing and angrily
railing against. Memes pointing out the inherent unfairness of it all have
already begun their profitable circulation.
I’m sure people are even
discussing it first-hand, person-to-person, in the (now-archaic) manner of the
water-cooler conversation; that is, over a coffee or a drink, on the way to
class, to work, at work, wherever.
No, it is not that a questioning,
loudly betrayed and furious discourse around the budget has been non-existent.
It is there, in plain view, circulating through disparate groups of people primarily linked through a vast digital network.
What I find worrying—what I have
found worrying about politics in general for a long time, irrespective of
whether the politicking is coming from the mouths of Labor or Liberal
politicians—is the complete lack of surprise: in the blatant lies told; in the
disadvantaging of already vulnerable members of society; in the ultimately myopic
nature of the policies; even in our own lack of surprise in not being surprised.
Sharp-Paul writes, “it says
something about the cartoonish brutality of the 2014 Federal Budget that it was
still an ambush… even after the tough talk.” I can’t say I entirely agree with
this. It may feel like an ambush and in feeling like an ambush we
believe it is: making the surprise we don’t truly feel an emotional, reactive
reality.
Yet, this was all laid out. The
Abbott government has never shied away from its underpinning (essentially) neo-conservative ideology: small government and a blind faith in capitalism.
It cannot be an ambush if we willingly
walked into a trap we knew was there or chose not to notice.
Our apparent surprise comes from
the fact we need a sensation of being ambushed to lend some sense to our shock;
to our thick disgruntlement about the whole thing. It’s not comfortable to not
be surprised when outright betrayal should be the appropriate response.
It all comes back to what politics
essentially amounts to in our contemporary age.
Jonathon Green, writing for The
Drum, argues “this Budget marks … another decisive step in the distancing of
the political class from the interests of the public it nominally serves,
another step toward politics' slow conversion into pure performance.”[3]
This is the spectacle of
Australian politics. We should never have been ambushed, or non-ambushed,
because the budget is pure theatre with a pre-set populist, vote-driven narrative
that, unlike Hamlet or Waiting For Godot (at least on a literal
level), has the capability of encroaching on public life.
We’re always
waiting for the next performance to give one star to, the next prime-ministerial lead actor and supporting treasurer to act out their pantomimed gestures of leading the public.
It amounts to politics disconnection
from reality that implacably leads to a disenchantment with our elected figures
or, more particularly, politics in general. Surprise evaporates.
While we bluster and write
scathingly, it is tattooed with a sense of futility; with the helpless hopelessness
of being perpetually ambushed even as we see it coming.
Then why, if the state of things is so
degraded, do we fail to enact genuine, healthy, pragmatic change towards an admittedly
idealistic notion of a greater good?
Is the disconnect between the
spectacle of politics and the reality everyday life so great that we are we
just too fucking tired anymore to fight, making spectres of us all?
Has the image of protesting, of
having a say, of having your opinion heard been irreparably damaged by such
groups as the Socialist Alternative or other far left cohorts, so that committing
to a loud stance—no matter how informed by fact—now comes with the awkward
stigma of a kind of extremism?
Are we shyly self-conscious about
speaking out on behalf of other people? Speaking for ourselves? Do we value
independence too much? Has contemporary politics fostered such a transcendent notion of independence
that it seems the only viable option, despite the biological sociability of
humans that needs us to work together?
Has dialogue between the two sides of politics been so eroded as to become a merely a slanging match? Has the necessary
balance between conservatism and progressivism been rendered obsolete as each
spectrum retreats to their camps? Or has a genuine and important political opposition
come to meet, and die, in a nowhere centre where the least amount of people become
offended and little is truly accomplished beyond a maintenance of power?
I don’t know. Probably all the above in one way or another.
What I do know is that the budget
has produced an exhausted cynicism that although conducive to a certain rage,
also leads us straight down the road to no true alternative in our implicit
acceptance. Cynicism is a state that exists so much in its own cause that there is nothing beyond cynicism: it compiles its own endless borders. The challenge needs to be louder than these—mine and others’—words.
It needs to become its own
reality.
[1] Edward
Sharp-Paul nails the immediate and symbolic connotations of the budget (from a
fairly wide perspective): http://junkee.com/junk-explained-what-we-think-about-the-2014-federal-budget/34215
Matt Grudnoff notes also the attack on ‘core
Australian values’—universal education and health— http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-15/grudnoff-budget-hacks-away-at-our-core-principles/5454328
Although tending towards the hyperbolic at times, Ten
Things at thevine.com, has been foreseeing this budget coming for quite
some time and has been vicious in its attacks concerning its fractured equitability:
http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/10-things-everything-still-not-awesome-20140515-281349/?utm_source=thevine&utm_medium=featured-rotator&utm_campaign=internal-testing
[2]
Ross Gittens makes exactly this point for Fairfax Media: http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/federal-budget-2014-tough-and-unfair-its-business-as-usual-20140513-3882r.html
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