This budget week Australians could be forgiven for thinking they had tumbled down a rabbit hole and ended up on a mushroom with Alice smoking a hookah in Wonderland.
How else do you explain a Liberal Treasurer, formerly best known for prematurely claiming "we're back in the black", effectively declaring debt and deficits don't matter and all is going to be for the best in this best of all possible worlds, thanks to soaring resources prices and an ever-expanding "magic pudding" economy based on the impossible assumption of endless growth?
And, on the other side of the ledger, what is to be made of a Labor Opposition Leader who has not only signed off on what he describes as cynical bribes by his opponents with an alacrity rarely seen in Canberra, but has committed the party of the poor and the down trodden to pitching billions of dollars at a largely for-profit aged care sector so private corporations can give their long suffering workers a pay rise? While aged care reform is meritorious and overdue this would suggest future dividends and executive bonuses will be subsidised by taxpayers.
The only possible explanation for all of the above, and so much more, is there is an election looming. Politicians from the left, the right and the centre are doing their best to bribe voters with their own money.
This has not been the finest hour for either the LNP - rightly condemned for delivering a budget that does not look beyond the election in May - or the ALP which is promising to deliver its own version of Lyndon B Johnson's "great society" while remaining reticent on how it intends to pay for it.
Although there is much the average voter will like about what Mr Frydenberg and Mr Albanese are offering neither man is taking meaningful action on the issues that matter. These include housing affordability, wage stagnation and paying down Australia's national debt.
Throwing more money at first home buyers will never solve the affordability issue. The problem is one of supply, something nobody will address because that would hurt existing home owners.
Wage stagnation won't be fixed by targeting the gig economy and waiting for supply and demand to do the job. Productivity needs to increase. This can only be done through well-thought-out industrial relations and tax reforms that encourage businesses to upskill workers, making them more valuable.
Neither the ALP or the LNP have the stomach to go there. WorkChoices played a big part in the defeat of the Howard government in 2007. Proposed changes to taxation, including the abolition of negative gearing, cost Bill Shorten dearly in 2019.
Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese would rather fight the 2022 election on the cost of living and the rising price of petrol rather than on what should be done to set Australia up for the next decade and beyond.
This is despite there being only shaky evidence a majority of people are in financial hardship. The budget forecasts household consumption will grow by 5.75 per cent, retail sales have increased by almost 10 per cent since February and consumers have trousered more than $200 billion in savings since the start of COVID. It's also likely the oil price increase will be temporary.
While, on the face of it, voters seem to have a choice between some short-term largesse from the LNP (which Labor is now also committed to) and Mr Albanese's stirring vision of a better world based on the hope people will ask themselves "is this really as good as it gets?". The truth is we are seeing two variations on the theme "a chicken for every pot" pioneered by the Republicans in 1928.
And why? Because experience has taught politicians the electorate will fall for it every time.
