Now I’ve said many times that comparing a federal government’s budget to a household is slightly ridiculous exercise. But – as nobody seems to take any notice – I’ve decided to ignore my own ideas and just use other people’s in order to demonstrate one of the fundamental problems in Australia today.
In this allegory, I’d like you to think of the man as the head of the household and the woman as the person in charge of the housekeeping budget. I know that’s a bit sexist… well, a lot sexist really. However as I’m trying to use traditional analogies in this little dialogue, I though it would be too radical to reverse these roles and might lead to a whole lot of discussion about how I’m far too woke to be taken seriously and next thing you know this household will have genderless bathrooms…
Moving on, I’ve decided to call the man Charles because that’s a good, upstanding traditional name and the woman “Charlotte” for no other reason than I couldn’t be bothered thinking of any other name. Any other name will simply be the names of the children and any connection to any actual human is pretty remote so just because you think I’ve called a child “Rupert” because he’s meant to be some newspaper mogul, then you’d be wrong, because the children are just meant to a vehicle by which I can drive my point home.
So here we have the family meeting. Charles is speaking:
Charles – Charlotte has informed me that she needs to have an increase in the household budget because there isn’t enough to make ends meet.
Tony – Well, she just needs to spend less on all that gardening stuff.
Charlotte – Tony, that “gardening stuff” is for the vegetables we grow in order to keep our grocery costs low.
Tony – But I don’t like vegetables. Wouldn’t we be better off just eating meet?
Charlotte – Meat’s expensive.
Tony – But we’ve got lots of animals in the backyard and…
Charles – I don’t think anyone wants to eat the possums. Besides they’re protected…
Tony – That’s ridiculous. This is meant to be an allegory of the government which means you have the power to…
Charles – Tony, you’re just being difficult. If you keep interrupting we’ll never get to the point of this…
Tony – Perhaps if she stop wasting money on clothes. I know that she spent hundreds of dollars buying a school uniform so that Julia could go to school and there’s no point in that because Julia’s a girl…
Charles – Can we move on? This is all about how we get the budget back into the black and start paying off the mortgage. So the question is: Do we need to cut back on spending or do we all put in a bit more money? Or possibly a bit of both.
James – Well, I can’t see any way we could be expected to contribute any more. I’m saving so that I can buy a place of my own and that’s why I haven’t been able to contribute to the mortgage lately.
Charles – But you already own several places…
James – They’re just an investment and I’m losing money on them which is another reason that I can’t afford to put in any more.
Charles – Well, why don’t you sell them and then you’d…
James – Ha, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then I’d have to hand over some of my money to you and…
Charles – Ok, ok. So what do you propose?
James – Well, can’t we just economise. I don’t see any reason why I should be contributing to the solar panels when I have an ICE car and don’t use them to charge my electric car like Julia does.
Julia – If James doesn’t contribute to the solar panel fund, I don’t see why I should contribute to repairing the pothole in the driveway.
Tony – You don’t contribute anything. You’re just a schoolgirl.
Julia – That’s not true. I work weekends and I’ve been putting in…
Charles – This is getting us nowhere. I’m just going to make some decisions and balance the budget myself.
Tony – But you’ve never been able to balance the budget. I think what you need to do is find a way to do that without making us pay more or cutting down on the things we need.
Charles – That’s impossible. We need to do one or the other… Or both.
Rupert – Face it, Dad. Whatever you do, I’ll criticise you. And I’ll encourage everyone else to do that too.
Charles – So what can I do to escape that?
Rupert – Just give me all the money. And the power and then I’ll leave you alone… Oh, and Gina just sent a text saying that she wants to bulldoze the backyard.
Mm, the household budget really doesn’t work when you’re talking about a country, does it? Anyway my basic point still stands: the same people who go on about our debt are opposed to any measure to fix it.
And, at least we can relax knowing that Pauline’s election is almost a sure thing now that she’s leading the opinion polls. It’ll be a relief to know that all those women who insist on carrying a baby for the whole nine months only to abort it on the last day will be forced to make their decisions earlier… or not at all if Malcolm Roberts gets his way. Although I would have thought there’d be a problem when all those lazy workers realise that she has a plan to make it easier to sack them and – let’s remember that she told us there were so many of them – they decide not vote for her. They might join up with all those women ripping off their bosses by getting maternity leave who’ll surely object… But apparently that’s what these people want.
Still after the success of Pauline’s Party, I’m think of starting my own and using the same outrage model as she did. I’ll call it:
Modelling Outrage Replicating One Nation’s Style. For simplicity sake, his can be reduces to the acronym: M.O.R.O.N.S.
When young I did some seeming, as you did, no doubt, and it seemed we owned a few things, though bank loans, hirepurchase, laybyes, were not easy to grasp. But clearly I had born into a world with the “bridge” (Sydney) and hospitals, schools, roads etc, which were obviously ours, community usefuls. Dad struggled over tax, bills, accounts, etc, mumbling, but “it” all seemed to work out. The Snowy Scheme kicked off, big money, “reffos” came, Australia matured, progressed, and, money in and out of somewhere did it. We changed, modified, grew, and few grasped the secrets. Let us be aware, open, inquisitive, generous, givers if and when…and let us ignore loud defectives, greedites, misfits, egonuts.