Budgets are an exercise in revealed preferences – those choices that a person, or a group of people gravitate towards when faced with alternatives.
Technically there are no right or wrong answers to what a budget should do. But every dollar allocated represents an opportunity cost to areas to which it was not allocated.
In this extraordinary year we have been presented with a budget of small-government, more tax cuts for the wealthy, more private sector investment, and a post-COVID plan contingent on trickle-down economics.
COVID has highlighted disparities in our economy – particularly around equity and the challenges facing the most vulnerable in our communities.
More women than men have been affected by job losses resulting from COVID-19, and recent stats show older women are the fastest-growing cohort of Australians facing homelessness. So it is important to consider this budget’s effect on half the population.
If you’re a woman, here’s what this budget means for you.
The good: Women working in male-dominated industries...
The budget offers $240 million of funding over the next four years to increase jobs for women in male-dominated industries like construction and start-ups, and a focus on encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in STEM. Funds were also announced for a Respect@Work council to tackle sexual harassment in workplaces.
In academia, women researchers are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 in terms of decreased publications, research outputs, career development, public exposure, knowledge generation and being overlooked in the provision of public policy advice.
Universities lobbied for greater support to access to career-accelerating research grants for women. It appears that these were considered and taken on board.
… and women with ovarian cancer
The drug Lynparza, used to help with treatment of ovarian cancer, has been listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in this budget.
The bad: Everything else
Women have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and none of the stimulus spending or tax concessions are coming their way.
Tax cuts have been the big-ticket item in this budget. But the overwhelming benefit of tax cuts go to high income earners who are, overwhelmingly, men. The top 20 per cent of earners reap 91 per cent of the cuts, while the bottom 20 per cent receive nothing.
Not only are the higher earners mostly men, they are the least likely to spend their gains to stimulate the economy. With the material needs of the wealthy already met, they are more likely to use additional money to save or invest in generating wealth for their own future.
The stimulus offered in the budget is similarly skewed. Construction, energy, agriculture, and defense have received the lion’s share of stimulus, yet these sectors have increased their total work hours since March. The hardest hit industries have been in the women-dominated services sector, where investment would return many more jobs: $1 million invested in construction results in the creation of 1.2 jobs, whereas the same investment in healthcare, education and other public services would create ten times as many jobs.
Appetite for reform
Australians are hungry for economic reform. Results in this week’s Essential Report shows an astonishing 78 per cent of Australians – with remarkable consistency across the different party supporters – agreeing with the statement ‘The pandemic has exposed flaws in the economy and there is an opportunity to explore new ways to run the economy.’
Australians are being forced to embrace the fact that the future of work is changing drastically. COVID-19 accelerated some of those changes and highlighted the inequalities behind many of them. Technology is changing the way we work, live, and interact. It is changing the typical career trajectory, and greatly affecting things like job security. What will the future of the gig economy look like in Australia? Will we plan for it, or allow market forces to drive the change?
Instead, they have chosen to outsource our post-COVID recovery to the private sector and allow structural inequities to grow more entrenched.
As the Grattan Institute put it, ‘The Morrison government seems to think economic stimulus is all about high-viz vests and hard hats. It’s a narrow and dated view of the world of work … women seem to have been relegated in this budget to an afterthought in the form of a A$240 million “support package”, which offers no meaningful economic support.’