Budget a "Last straw" - Leunig

I asked a while back the question, is this budget a bridge too far? Looking at the reaction to it one would have to think it is. A reaction that took the gov completely by surprise; they weren't counting on the fact that Australians care about each other, the sick, weak, poor, unfortunate. Australians are not prepared to follow the capitalist pied piper into a harsh dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, society. Abbott's vision for Australia is not one we share.

Cartoonist Leunig has some pretty interesting stuff to say about the current political situation in Australia. In reading through it, I'm reminded of that question I asked recently and consider that yes, it is a bridge too far.

Leunig believes the Abbott government's budget delivered last week will be the catalyst for unprecedented social change. 

"A lot of people looked upon the coming of the Abbott government with dread and doom and gloom. And I said, 'Yes, but let us be brave and accept what is inevitable'. But it's going to be a catalyst for something of which we know not what at the moment. 

"I think this budget is a flashpoint for something that has been building for a long time in the spiritual and philosophical sense of the nation; there's a sense it's the last straw. 

"Whether it's the last straw or not, it feels as if some sort of critical point has been crossed and people have put up with a lot for a long time. They have a sense of losing their participation in the political process. 

"There seems to be a coldness in politics now." 

"I'm starting to observe in a younger generation and in the very old a common resistance to and a revulsion about the heartless quality of politics, the pugilistic quality that Tony Abbott would seem to represent, this desire to take people on, to punch the wall behind their head and to intimidate. 

"There's a sense of punishment and this is how people are feeling it. And we have to watch out for breaking the spirit of a people.

"It's too narrow, too hard, too heartless." Read more

There is a sense of complete frustration with the gov's of both major parties, that we have given and given for the sake of "business" in the last decades, that working conditions and pay rates are constantly under threat, that there's no trickle down, that the mega rich pay fuck all tax whilst we struggle, that the TPP wants to turn Australia into a US corporation, that we're a rich country but we're supposed to accept homelessness and poverty as the consequences of capitalism, that the mega rich just about dictate to the gov it's policies, and on and on........

This frustration in Australia now has been building for the last 30 years. Australians and Kiwi's were always very wary of Reagan and his nomics. I don't remember anyone here thinking that we should all chuck our society out and replace it with Reaganimic bullshit, nailing the unfortunate to a capitalist cross. Yet both the New Zealand and Australian gov's embraced this new economic mantra. The Labor Hawke gov in particular was instrumental in "modernising" the Australian financial system and floated the dollar for the first time. They were sucked in, like a lot of the rest of the western world. Hence our gov's, both Labor and Lieberal, have becoming increasingly unrepresentative of the people and more representative of big business.

And now here we are. The budget is the biggest and most encompassing attack ever on our Australia that we know and love. After a mass Australian "WTF?" the hatred of the budget started. It was too much, unnecessary, targeting unfairly, yet another attempt by corporations to fuck over the Australian people.

I think Leunig is right. Australia is at the crossroads. Our frustration is already boiling over in marches and the like. We've had enough. It's time to push back. However that works out.