THE PRIME Minister's annual budget presentation to Parliament, presumably his last, had a deeply unpleasant quality to it.
He used the fact that it was his 14th to try to grind the necks of his critics into the ground. He never tires of reminding us that the electorate chose him, not somebody else, and rarely loses an opportunity to gloat in the most cunning and coy fashion.
I must, therefore, point out that the alternative was a man whose companies had gone belly-up owing hundreds of millions of dollars. Or somebody whose companies bounced cheques. Or now a new Opposition Leader who has a
problem with words and meanings.
LUDICROUS TO GLOAT
It seems ludicrous to gloat about beating weak political opponents like those. It has nothing to do with Patterson, and everything to do with them.
The Prime Minister is behaving like an aging 'boonoonoonoos' diva, who knows that the days of close-ups are over. No more awkward questions about public performance and corruption. Instead, he is promising to retire soon, at some undisclosed future date, but he is planning one last party for himself this year at public expense, one last big waste of the people's funds.
Because this is what the $5 billion about to be raided from the National Housing Trust (NHT) really means.
The Prime Minister no longer wants to be remembered as the one who gave away the most land. He wants to be remembered as the one who caused 'a revolution in social capital', by giving away money that doesn't belong to the Government. That money is held in trust for the contributors to the NHT.
'Social capital' seems to mean shovelling chunks of money that do not belong to you at this little thing and that, and having no overall focus. It means the right to change legislation to take the people's savings out of the NHT, and spend them on school furniture. This violates the principle upon which the NHT was established.
If the Prime Minister had helped his finance minister to find the $15 billion, and US$177 million for which no one can account, he would not have had to raid the NHT or the HEART Trust to give money to MPs for what he calls 'social housing'.
In this context, 'social housing' is just another pork barrel. It is the abrogation of every duty a government has towards its citizens. They might as well just put us up in trees. The Prime Minister is also looking at the $39 billion in the National Insurance scheme.
In Parliament, he said it cannot just sit there like that. The truth of the matter is the term 'widow's mite' has no connotation of debilitating old age and meagre pensions to him. To him, it's just a place where he can promise to put a new school funded by other people's money.
So deep in debt, the Patterson administration only has money when it raids other people's savings.
Even more brazen was the way Patterson introduced the subject of these billions. He turned to the Finance Minister who was seated beside him and said: "Don't juggle it". Such a public warning should not be necessary. That it was is deeply disgusting.
Next, he taunted the Opposition benches about the $1.5 billion for 'social housing' that he is raiding from our mandatory HEART tax, and dared them to criticse it.
He said MPs had to be able to provide housing for their constituents in a crisis. They and their constituents can go to the press all they want, he jeered, media wouldn't be able to give them a house.
Warming to his subject, he said
derisively that, judging from comments in media, he shouldn't even be able to get out of his gate in the morning.
But anybody with bodyguards and a security detail can get out of his gate in the morning. Indeed, he is likely to make it to work without incident. That does not mean that his policies are the right ones.
Not anymore than having the majority in Parliament means that all new
legislation introduced will necessarily be in the best interest of the country.
Last year, this Government made schools nationwide into unsupervised shelters. The result was widespread
vandalism, and the burning of desks and chairs as firewood.
It is no favour, therefore, to turn around to education with a legislatively purloined $5 billion from housing to build new school furniture and refurbish schools. This is just the grizzly logic of public mismanagement and waste.
And all this before the September term begins, and where it will be
vandalised the following summer. Or as shelter during the next storm. This is an object lesson in how to make $5 billion vanish in a flash.
SETS THE PRECEDENT
Were the Patterson administration to waste less money, manage public
projects efficiently and fairly, they would have a surplus for a crisis like Hurricane Ivan. That after all, is what the role of proper government is about.
Instead, he dips into other people's savings, brags about it, and says he will change the law to make it right.
I hope that was indeed his last budget presentation. It sets the precedent for other acts of rape upon the taxpayer, and demonstrates that Patterson has been coarsened by power, and become a
vulgarian.
What should have been his triumphant swan song degenerated into a fowl fight.
