Well this week was fun. We got to talk about the Budget.
In the two days before the budget, we received some more information about what would be in it, like a pay freeze for MPs and their staff – which is essentially symbolic. Around 16000 public service jobs will go, 9 government agencies are to be either abolished or merged with others and the Mint, along with three other agencies are to be privatised. However, the media was saying on Monday and on Tuesday before the Budget, it would be a hard sell – with Tony Abbott saying they “will have a good story by the election” – I assume he means the 2016 election.
You can read what I wrote on the night here and here.
There was quite a lot of backlash from the public from this budget, with #ThreeWordBudget trending for at least the first 24 hours after the Budget and the Premiers of almost every state have responded negatively – to the point where they will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday.
It is believed that families, whether they be a single parent family, an elderly couple, or a family with three kids , could lose up to $3000, if not more. The ABC and SBS will have their funding cut, the ABC-run Australia Network will be shut down and the renewable energy sector is getting cuts too.
The catch at the moment is that Tony Abbott and the Coalition do not control the Senate at the moment – even after July 1 they won’t. The Palmer United Party (PUP) and the Greens have said they will not support the Budget through the Senate and there are people on social media encouraging the opposition parties (Labor, PUP, Greens, and the others) to block supply. Tony Abbott will now go on what ABC Political Reporter Mark Simkin called a “country-wide Budget roadshow”.
That roadshow though, will need to include universities if Abbott and his government want to convince everyone that this Budget is worth it. University students have been protesting the most in the last month about changes to university funding, with capped fees to end in 2016. The Group of 8 Universities support this change – at least the people running those universities do – but some teachers and students at these institutions, as well as other universities in Australia do not support it.
Speaking of university students, this video, from Friday shows Julie Bishop heading to an event at The University of Sydney, outside which students were protesting.
She seemed relatively ok with being yelled at and jostled as she was helped through the crowd by aides, but Christopher Pyne thinks the students were encouraged by the Labor party and should be charged with assault, and Tony Abbott called the students “revolting”. Yeah, that’s a fantastic way of trying to convince university students to accept your budget – and it’s ridiculous to think that the opposition encouraged a bunch of university students to protest, especially given that the way I understand it suggests that it was the same group that had been involved in the Q&A protests. Labor said that Pyne needed to grow up, that they didn’t have anything to do with the protest, and that the Coalition “didn’t inherit a budget crisis, they made it”. They also said that they condemn violent protest – but was it violent?
Back to Christopher Pyne though, because this week seems to be him saying or doing things he perhaps shouldn’t. He accused university students of assault, but earlier this week he called Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke what many perceived to be the c-word…
…and he may also have been making signals to the Speaker of the House, Bronwyn Bishop, adding to talk about whether or not the Speaker is biased (she’s now hit 100 ejections from the House, all Opposition).
That’s all for this week – hopefully there will be less Budget next week.
Tweet of the Week
People applauding the ABC’s Budget coverage – well, the women involved in hosting and interviewing anyway…
https://twitter.com/AdamSpenceAU/status/466198538905350145
Things I’ve been Reading/Watching/Listening etc
The Budget Lock-up for Journalists
An interactive summary of the Budget’s “Winners and Losers” – ABC Online
Alan Kohler looks at the “budget of suicidal heroism” – The Business Spectator
Kara L 