There’ll be oodles of commentary tomorrow about Tony Abbott’s Budget Reply speech, and I’ve already added some of my own [see also Bernard Keane for a potted summary, and the full text of the address in reply here]. But I’d like to supplement my earlier thoughts by picking out one theme to highlight.
Not only did Abbott take the obvious route, for a Liberal, of public service bashing, but he also affected a disdain for the public sector which would put even John Howard to shame. Amidst his paeans of praise for small business and lauding of the mining industry, he struck another related note -
(a) that the NBN would destroy Telstra, and that communications infrastructure was a task for the private sector;
(b) that private health was a public good, and that the rebate should stay as is;
(c) that Medibank Private should be sold, no questions asked;
(d) and the doozy of the night – that the government shouldn’t build GP Super Clinics because they compete with corporate healthcare!
Make no mistake, this dude is as right wing as they come. Leaving aside the ranting about the Resources Super Profits Tax, and the drumbeat of negativity, the one theme that did emerge from Abbott’s speech was a complete disdain for anything the public sector, and public spending can achieve.
Abbott’s protracted campaign against all and any stimulus spending, echoed by his fans in the press gallery, is cut from the same cloth. What we’re seeing is a brazen agenda to discredit public purposes in favor of corporate interests, and his conservative rhetoric about government eschewing worthy causes is only the tip of the iceberg.