Budget highlights Aussie battle with inequality

Yachts have been floated, but not everyone has benefited from Australia's rising economic tide.

Australia is a seething mass of outrage at the moment, after Budget night. The level of dismay, anger and protest has been a surprise to the Government and observers of the Aussie in its natural habitat.

Over the past year or so, the general public have become less willing to shrug off the effects of government policy on social cohesion. The discomfort around the secretive treatment of refugees in offshore facilities plus the ongoing exposure of political rorts and corruption have been unsettling but the Budget has really got people going.

It is hard to tell whether the latent anger is more about election promises made but not kept or the betrayal of what is termed getting a "fair go" in the Lucky Country.

The Budget has come under withering attack from a wide range of quarters. A sign of the level and intensity of reaction is that state leaders are also angry with the federal government. The state premiers are riled because they will be the ones having to make the tough decisions on the cuts to health, education and social support services announced in the Budget and then cop the subsequent anger in their regions.

Many in the Australian academic, medical and scientific research sector have criticised the new health charges for GP visits, despite the tagline that a proportion of this revenue is to go into a medical research fund.

Their main concern is that it will prove counter-productive. They feel government ignored advice that the proposed fee will deter the most disadvantaged from going to the doctor - with delay risking further health complications that could have been managed better and cheaper with early intervention.

There is real concern that the young and the unemployed will be the most affected by changes to stand-downs for benefits and the rise in the cost of university fees. In the big cities with already eye-watering house prices, high rents and increasing youth unemployment there are predictions for severe social consequences.

For New Zealanders living in Australia it must seem like watching a slow motion replay of New Zealand economic policy in the 1980s. Having seen this approach applied with disastrous results in our own country, we can but shake our heads in wonder.

The rising tide of collective opposition to the Australian Budget is a sign the social body and mind is feeling the strain. The old arguments about economic performance equating to rising affluence was succinctly punctured by a new take on the economic mantra that "the rising economic tide might not have lifted all boats but it certainly floated a few yachts".

The connection between the social consequences and related economic fallout seems to be completely absent in the Australian Budget announcements. The move towards increasing inequality is being felt and it is making people uncomfortable.

The social body, like an individual person, is a complex system of functions and balances. The social "mind" processes the external influences and makes the cognitive connections that lead to responses.

If one part of the social body is ailing or injured it affects the whole. If a society does not look after its most vulnerable citizens it will become unwell, requiring huge effort and resources to rebuilt its strength.

Despite solidly researched evidence supporting the economic benefits of systematically addressing inequality it seems the Lucky Country is fast becoming a place where luck requires wealth.

Terry Sarten is a writer, musician and social worker currently observing the species Australis peoplelis in their natural setting. Feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz