As I was picking up the paper this morning, my wife said to me, it’s just like reading The Age. You may be sure she did not intend that as an encouraging sign of the times. I fear I have to agree, at least to some extent. But there were areas of redemption. The truest words on the budget commentary were by Mark Latham:

It’s all about dickheads talking about stuff they know nothing about — that’s what it’s about.

Certainly when I read (well, glanced through) the diatribe from Niki Sava, it was discouraging. Seriously, she is moving into the spot vacated by Michelle Grattan. It did take the government, and not just Joe Hockey, a year to work out that the only way to get the deficit down is to grow the private sector around it. And they finally removed the Keynesian head of Treasury and brought in John Fraser which probably has made a world of difference. I don’t know why she focuses on personalities, but with her Malcolm Turnbull fandom, nothing will satisfy her blood lusts, it seems, not even a really together budget that works economically and politically.

More to my taste was the article by the CEO of the Council of Small Business of Australia, Hockey’s ‘small-business budget’ perfect for the sector. Here is someone who know that perfection nowadays almost entirely consists of “didn’t make things worse, and perhaps made them a bit better”. I’ll give you his last two paras and you can read the rest for yourself:

The depth of announcements in the budget shows the government understands it is the little changes that make a difference. The small-business person’s capacity to start up, operate and, if desired, expand their business has been enhanced. The whole business life cycle seems to have been covered.

Overall this has been a great budget for small business and for the economy.

This is not some side-line observer but a representative of the people who are going to make the difference in how the economy goes. There is a terms-of-trade shift putting money into the hands of business. Keynesian theory also pretends that it is doing the same, except that to get the money, businesses must hand over the things they produced to people who are busy digging holes so they can be refilled. The net is not all that large for any firm nor is there any net addition to the economy. What the government has done is inject after-tax cash flow straight into the hands of producers. If you go to my second edition, right there on page 359-361 is the list of what a government should do to revive and economy. Number one reads: “priority should be to lower taxes, especially on business.”

As for the coverage by the ABC, I have only Andrew Bolt’s word for it since I never watch myself, but if his observations are anything like the reality, and I have no reason to doubt it, there are huge savings to be made on the budget bottom line that are begging to be made. If there is anyone at Cabinet level still protecting this hopeless bunch of leftists from a day of reckoning, they should be taken out, have their epaulettes removed, and sent off to be ambassador somewhere properly remote.