The 2012 May budget can be described as a losers budget in a number of different ways. Its called a surplus but it digs a deeper hole for Australia with what it misses.

Loser – Stupid, short term behavior. See the cartoon by Leunig.

Political Losers

Firstly its a budget that has been made by the Labor party, who are seriously losing it, so badly it is actually hard to tell what is causing the most leakage of respect. The idea of a budget surplus must be the last vestige of respectability they think is left to exploit. Its a pity that few people will take that idea seriously.

They are losing in opinion polls, with something like only 30% percent saying they will vote Labor. They are losing their slim parliament majority, one by one.

Tony Crook has moved from being an independent cross bench member, to rejoin his Nationals Party in the Coalition.

The Health Services Union investigation, processed through the Fairwork Australia toilet, on Craig Thomson, and Health Services Union rorts, has finally come out of its long sewer line, and does not smell any sweeter for its prolonged journey. The evidence, however denied, paints the MP as an election loser. The longer the Labor party holds him on his seat, the worse Labor smells to the electorate.

Peter Slipper was too much even for the Liberal Party, and his baggage didn't take more than a few months to explode in Labors hands. Whatever the truth of sexual molestation allegations, before this he had already added another publicly perceived taint to the Labor brand. However convenient it was for Labor to acquire him for the speaker position, to offset the potential loss from Craig Thomson, it has back-fired. The Labor party noses must be totally desensitized to this sort of thing by now, as their stink detection senses have failed in both cases.

Independent Andrew Wilkie has a right to to hold a grudge from being fobbed off on poker machine gambling reform, when due to the Peter Slipper transfer and subsequent stink.

So the Labor government ship is sinking politically and in the polls. What a pity, as the Labor party, strongly prodded by the Greens, has done ground breaking work to get better value from mining corporations with the resources rent tax. Its social equity concerns have come through with a national disability insurance. It has started roll-out of its much vaunted National Broadband Network.

Its a pity, because it has done some ice-breaking work on acknowledging climate change, with baby steps of a carbon price, progressive public compensation and a clean energy fund. The Labor party is a divided party, with not only a left – right factional divide, but a fundamental contradiction between Australia needing to respond to climate change versus Australia as a corporate owned mining quarry. Its still Mining with a big M vs sustainability with a small 's'.

The baby steps have been small for a reason, a compromise from what the Greens wanted. The low carbon price enables a drive to invest heavily in gas fossil fuels bonanza, but will not effect coal exports, since the exported carbon is burnt overseas. The clean energy fund is handicapped so that it will not compete seriously with investment in gas fossil fuels. Exorbitant fossil fuel subsidies from taxpayers to mining companies will continue.

The quarry vision [1] is epitomized by Mining and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson. The policy direction laid out in his departments Draft Energy White Paper, is seriously intent on picking the “Climate Losers” for future energy policy. The main climate loser is from the open slather for Coal Seam Gas mining. Mr Ferguson aims to pepper the landscape with enough methane leaking drill holes and pipes to guarantee a global warming of past 2 degrees by 2050. The required spending of hundreds of billions of dollars could be better spent on zero carbon emission technology. The draft report also seriously overestimated current and future costs of renewable energy, using very old data, which indicates that its intent is purely political and very corrupt, if not seriously incompetent. Solar PV has achieved grid parity now based on retail electricity price.[2]

Opportunity Cost Losers

Secondly, the budget surplus, compared to its $44 billion deficit of last year, just indicates what it could have spent for our futures, if only the government exercised sufficient imagination. The Beyond Zero Emissions Zero Carbon Australia plan, estimated costs of $37 billion a year for 10 years, to provide Australia with a zero emissions electricity generation infrastructure. Such a scheme would be an investment boost to the economy, create thousands of new jobs, and be the keystone of a transition to a less oil dependent economy, and a boost to a clean energy manufacturing economy. As future costs of climate change, and energy costs of oil imports, will greatly exceed the value of the money spent now, this would not have been a waste of money. The Australian public are the biggest climate losers. The costs of the money not spent on sustainability will beggar us all.

Its unfortunate that the market forces, the big 3 energy companies of TruEnergy, Origin and AGL, are carving up Australia for a Coal Seam Gas profit killing, and the big coal companies are out to be digging up and shipping record quantities of the planet killing stuff. The budget is going to help this along. Its a pathetic climate losers budget, and fossil fuel winners budget.

Investment Losers

Superannuation contributions will lose much of their tax exemption status. Investing in the future is not a big Labor party thing any more.

The public loses.

The biggest losers, the Australian public, will get some socially targeted compensation, to help offset the feared carbon tax. Its a losers election bribe budget. Because that is how the government thinks about its voters. It assumes we are all easily bought off like those short term hangers on, Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper. Maybe its right about how average person thinks today, and it only has to look around its Labor party room for confirmation. But insufficient effort has been done to help the public think otherwise.

On track for election loss, each way bet fossil fuel mining wins.

Its the Labor party losers budget. If Labor expects a turn around in polls on this basis it could easily turn out to be wrong. Alas, the Liberal and National parties are also strongly influenced by the mining lobby and so have a limited quarry vision, with self induced climate change blindness. The mining lobby has placed long term bets in each party, and obviously both major parties have plenty of entitlement takers.

By almost Coincidence, May 7th 2012 saw the launch of another Club of Rome Report

2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers.

http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=703

Unpopular, but necessary recommendations:-

1. We should be reducing number of children, especially in the rich world, where the ecological footprint per person is far greater.

2. Reduce the ecological footprint, particularly in rich nations, which means “stop using fossil fuels”. Its as simple as that.

3. Construct a low carbon energy system, in the poor world, for the poor world, paid by the rich world.

4. Replace the current short term governance systems with a system for handling the long term constraints needed to be observed for long term species survival, something like a central bank.

All of these are very hard, and are made harder by unemployment and income disparities, local, national and global.

The 2012 federal government budget is a completely typical example of the short term vision and fear that now drives political policy. Paying attention to recommendation Number 4 might at least would get rid of some of this political budget bullshit. Without permanent sustainability and climate governance, in number 4, no current system of government is capable of responding adequately to these challenges

Launch of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

Part 1

Part 2

[1] Quarry Vision. Coal, climate change and the end of the resources boom. Guy Pearse. Quarterly Essay. Issue 33, 2009.

[2] Beyond Zero Emissions submission to federal draft energy white paper. http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/BZE_DEWP_Submission_march2012.pdf