Richardson: Kouts goes commando
When Isobel Redmond went on her frolic against regulations banning solaria in parliament this week (t’was the process, rather the outcome, to which she objected), Labor MP Paul Caica noted that she’d “lost the plot” and admonished her repeatedly for “freeballing”.
Now, I can only assume Caics didn’t Google the term “freeballing” before he helpfully added it to the parliamentary lexicon. According to “Urban Dictionary” (which may or may not be a reputable source), it means: “Going without undershorts, said of a male; so called because his balls hang free and unencumbered.”
Caica, however, maintains the term has much the same meaning as “Freewheeling” (ie “free of restraints or rules”), so I’d urge him to write to the good folk at Urban Dictionary and demand an addendum.
It seems clear though that, as popularly understood, Isobel Redmond wasn’t Freeballing in parliament on Wednesday (in any case, Wikipedia assures me the correct term for ladies would be “Freebuffing”).
Metaphorically, though, I’m pretty sure Tom Koutsantonis was Freeballing when he delivered his debut budget yesterday.
He was letting it all hang out.
There was no lily to gild; this was a budget that dealt in pain and misery, and there was little effort to conceal it. As far as delivery went, it was quite a break with the style of Labor Treasurers past. Koutsantonis eschewed the lectern on the stage, and didn’t read from notes. His budget briefing was given extemporaneously, with the air of a motivational speaker. He was guided by facts and figures on a series of slides that detailed the raft of election pledges being delivered (which we already knew) and the slew of savings measures to offset federal cuts and a generally parlous fiscal position (which we didn’t).
Peculiarly, the Treasurer has budgeted to salvage a particular federal health cut ($332 million), even though he has no firm idea how to cover the shortfall.
You might like
He started riffing a few options on stage, in front of the state’s media corps. Should he close a hospital? Abolish the Department of Environment? Re-jig opening hours for emergency departments? Oh, the choices!
Of course, Westminster tradition dictates that rather than throwing numbers into the “Savings” ledger on Budget Day with a scrawled footnote that reads “I don’t really have a clue about this one for now, can I come back to you?”, you’re actually supposed to decide what your saving and spending priorities are and annunciate them. But this way seems fun too.
This was Budget Day the Freeballing way. It’s not really about outlining specific savings; it’s more about the vibe.
Hence a third Labor Treasurer in as many years was able to shrug off a billion dollar-plus deficit and forecast a return to surplus by 2015-16. Of course, since every successive budget ends up blaming federal cuts and falling revenues for a weaker-than-anticipated bottom line, there aren’t many people (likely not even Koutsantonis himself) that genuinely believe we’ll have a surplus in 2015-16. So he didn’t labour the point.
Instead, the budget pitch hammered two major themes: Commonwealth betrayal and State honesty. Effectively, that the feds broke all their commitments and we kept all ours.
Which is quite an effective pitch, but for one thing: if you’re going to make the sole virtue of your budget the fact that it keeps all of your election promises…well, it’d be a good idea to ensure that it keeps all your election promises.
"Unless Weatherill steps in and takes over Treasury again, Koutsantonis will have time now to temper his “Balls to the Wind” approach to finance and politics, as he waits, and hopes, that SA’s revenue situation will somehow turn again in his favour."
Make no bones about it, the decision to abandon the $100 million upgrade of Flinders Medical Centre is a broken promise. The flog-off of the Motor Accident Commission after the usual Labor sweet nothings railing against privatizations is a broken promise. The decision to again delay the poor old on-again-off-again Gawler rail-line’s electrification to Salisbury – the whipping boy of successive budgets – is a broken promise.
Koutsantonis became impassioned defending the thinking behind the scrapped hospital upgrade; the money isn’t going back to revenue, it’s been set aside for health capital spending, once a worthy use is identified. That may be; it’s still a broken promise.
There’s not, he argues, any point building for increased capacity when the Commonwealth is refusing to fund increased capacity. It’s a reasonable argument. But it’s still a broken promise.
Stay informed, daily
Along with a $17.5 million commitment to a new Flinders neonatal unit (which the Libs also supported, thought they took a wait-and-see approach to the ward upgrade which, as it turns out, was rather sensible), the hospital pledge was a major policy splash in the first week of the campaign. It no doubt helped sway votes in southern seats towards Labor. And given that just a few hundred votes could have swung Ashford or Elder, the loss of either of which would have cost Labor Government, it was a pretty decisive election gambit.
Just three months later, it’s gone. However cogent the rationale, it’s a broken promise, and a broken promise that helped seal a poll victory. Simple as that.
To insist otherwise is simply a textbook case of the Emperor having no clothes. Freeballing, indeed.
The problem for Labor and Koutsantonis is that by pushing this silly line about a budget that entirely honours election commitments, when it demonstrably doesn’t, it rather derails the credibility of the budget hard-sell, which was never going to be an easy task to begin with.
Parenthetically, the notion that this was a budget of promises kept ultimately had as much credibility as the (unsought) assurances from various ALP insiders that they wouldn’t be dropping any gift-wrapped budget leaks to the NewsCorp Australia stable, as payback (they claimed) for the way Labor was treated in the campaign. As it turned out, the Tiser received its usual bevy of drops (the projected return to surplus, an all-too brief respite for pensioner concessions on council rates, the fact that Kouts would display two sets of books, pre-and-post Federal budget), while the most significant broken pledge, a raft of scrapped hospital works including FMC, was bizarrely handballed to The Australian, proudly Labor’s most strident critic.
This strange tactic neither buried the story nor mollified his chums in the Murdoch camp, so it’s unclear what the strategy behind it could have been, except that Kouts was, metaphorically, Freeballing.
Throwing it all out there.
Putting his cojones on the line.
Going commando.
Like Joe Hockey, Koutsantonis’s first budget isn’t going to set the world on fire. Its savings measures, to put it mildly, will not be popular, and rightly so.
But like Joe Hockey, he has the advantage of a full parliamentary term ahead of him to see those savings measures bear fruit. Like Joe Hockey, he may not be everyone’s favourite guy, but he’ll still be Treasurer. And Joe and Tom have one further advantage: they have each other to point the finger at. Without a Coalition Government in Canberra, Labor’s “Don’t Blame Me” narrative would have about as much credibility as its “No Broken Promises” mantra.
Unless Weatherill steps in and takes over Treasury again, Koutsantonis will have time now to temper his “Balls to the Wind” approach to finance and politics, as he waits, and hopes, that SA’s revenue situation will somehow turn again in his favour.
There’s a fair bit left to chance here: notional public sector wage restraint, vague savings promises, an assumption that the worst of the revenue collapse is behind us.
For the next three years the Treasurer will be flying by the seat of his proverbial pants. Or at least he would be, if he were wearing any.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s state political reporter.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
