CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
In his first Federal Budget as the Australian Treasurer, Jim Chalmers MP has made one thing clear. Australia’s working poor and two-income, lower-middle-class families will not see a rise in JobSeeker payments or their wages.
The Treasurer has stated clearly in the budget that “Many indebted households will be more significantly impacted … Low-income households will be more heavily affected.” – which is great news for people already treading water ahead of the swelling wave of a global recession.
The government has made it clear that they will not be putting any more money in their hands because povo people like to spend money on being alive – and that will only fuel more inflation.
This is all while Australia’s negatively-geared wealth hoarding property class enjoy another round of tax cuts from a government they definitely didn’t vote for. Australians earning $200,000 will be $9,000 a year richer when the stage 3 income tax cuts take effect.
However, in Betoota’s gentrified urban French Quarter today, one brainwashed local yuppie has remained committed to her undying support of the Not-Scott Morrison Party.
“Extended parental leave is good enough… Surely?” says Beatrice Peters, a 52-year-old event management professional who hands out flyers for Labor during a Federal Election and the Greens during state elections.
“What about childcare subsidies??” she reiterates, ignoring the fact that Labor’s new plan 26 weeks of parental leave will apply to parents earning up to $350,000. Meaning a family can earn more than half a million dollars and the government will make sure they don’t have to hire nannies.
However, as Beatrice points out… Complaining about the fact that Labor’s neoliberal 2022 budget punishes poor people is inappropriate, because things would be far worse in the fictional scenario where the Liberal Party didn’t just lose twenty seats and Scott Morrison was still in power.
“Poor people think they have it bad now… Imagine if we were literally living in a parallel universe that we are currently not living in” she says.
When asked what she thought Jim Chalmers could do to make life easier for people who don’t have the financial safety-net of two properties and an uninterrupted Pandemic savings account, Beatrice says it’s out of Jim’s hands.
“What we need is for these people to wear MASKS!” she says, as she begins rolling out a slightly Thatcher-esque argument about personal responsibilities.
“Our economy would be much better if everyone just did what they were told and showed a bit of responsibility. They should’ve stayed home like I told them to on Twitter at the time”
