BUDGET 2011 OPINION: A budget out of the box? No way

By 2013 no Australian pensioner will be living without digital TV.

With apologies to Bob Hawke, children in poverty and all political rhetoric, this is as close to an aspirational mission statement as the Gillard government's first budget gets.

Those seeking a nation-defining blueprint, let alone an "I have a dream" moment, will be disappointed.

It is a nuts and bolts budget that seems designed to mark time until the new mining boom kicks in like a mule.

It's nowhere near as tough as promised, either.

If you warn us to expect tough, give us tough; we can take it.

Despite $1.50 a litre petrol, GFCs, floods and cyclones, we live in one of the most prosperous nations on earth where the future looks rosy and the unemployment rate has a lowly four in front of it.

A government's first budget is supposed to hurt, isn't it?

It's two years until Julia Gillard has to present an election budget, all being well for her.

The prime minister denies this budget was designed to buy votes or was drafted with a view to the next Newspoll.

Well, it looks like she plans to peek with at least one eye.

It's the budget of a government which rules in a minority, lags in the polls, and is hurt by cost of living pressures on families and detention centres being burned down, with an unpopular carbon tax still to hurdle.

It seems crafted to minimise pain rather than dish any out.

It's a transition budget, as the government swings from the deficits of harder times to a hoped-for small surplus next year.

It doesn't seem sure how to balance the needs of mining towns riding high on the hog and farming towns swamped by floods, between businesses rejoicing in the sky-high Australian dollar and others like tourism and manufacturing feeling the pain of it, between the well-to-do and young people scratching to find a job.

It tinkers with all manner of things, including $308 million worth of digital TV boxes for pensioners who may well be just as happy if analog wasn't being shafted in two years.

Treasurer Wayne Swan is critical of budgets being treated like magic acts, one-night shows where rabbits are pulled out of hats.

David Copperfield need not worry.

The real magic is that Australia is sitting on precious ground full of hard stuff that will fuel the factories of the "Asian century".

But Swan should still hang on to his hat.

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