A class war budget? If only! – Victorian Socialists

If you believe the Murdoch press, Jim Chalmers just delivered something akin to a socialist revolution. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph called Labor’s budget a "big taxing communist manifesto". Sky News was apoplectic. The landlords and the bosses, apparently, are under attack. If only that were true!

The image shows the front page of the Daily Telegraph which includes a picture of treasurer Jim Chalmers and the headline 'Your capital, his gain'

The stock market barely flinched as a response, a sure sign that this is not a radical budget. The modest tweaks to capital gains tax and negative gearing gesture in the right direction but leave the capitalist class almost entirely untouched.

If you actually wanted to tackle inequality you could start by taxing wealth, corporations, and gas exports. You could increase tax rates for the highest earners. You could stop subsidising fossil fuel companies and other big corporations and start funding essential services that make our lives more liveable - healthcare, education, childcare, aged care.

Behind the budget hype around housing, Labor have also committed themselves to making cuts to the NDIS at a historic scale, throwing hundreds of thousands off the scheme and plunging millions into anxiety about whether they will continue to qualify for what is already often inadequate support.

A graphic with the headline 'Labor's priorities summed up in two recent headlines'. One headline is about increasing military spending by $53 billion over the next decade. The other is about cutting the NDIS scheme.

The mainstream commentary has also almost entirely ignored the military spending blowout: another $15 billion over four years, $53 billion over the decade, and a $368 billion blank cheque for AUKUS nuclear submarines. At the same time there is little or nothing for public schools, hospitals or public housing.

With inflation running at 5 percent and wages growing at barely 3 percent, workers continue to go backwards. A $5-a-week tax offset won't even touch the sides.

Victorian Socialists stand for a very different approach: a huge investment in new public housing built and owned by the government; publicly operated and funded disability support services, public aged care and childcare services; taxing the rich to pay for it, and not a single cent for AUKUS.

At the state election in November, we have an opportunity to put these demands on the political agenda. We want to build a fighting left that actually challenges the status quo in the ballot box and in our communities and workplaces.

An image showing a group of VS candidates for the state election and the words 'We'll take on the billionaires'.

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