This Budget is deeply offensive to the people who wage a daily battle to survive.
The government would like us to believe that this Budget is tough but fair, but for the people who struggle to make ends meet it can only be described as being tough but cruel.
There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia. These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into poverty.
You don't help young people
or older people
or people with disabilities
or single mums
into jobs
by making them poor.
You don't build people up by putting them down.
And as even the OECD acknowledges, you don't build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality.
You don't create a strong country on the backs of the already poor.
There's nothing human or humane about humiliating people because they are outside the labour market or on its low-paid fringes.
There's nothing smart about making it unaffordable for people to see a doctor.
This government has walked away from its responsibility to its people.
It has shied away from the challenge to build a broader and more sustainable revenue base so that no one misses out on the essentials of life such as a place to live, a place to work and a place to learn.
We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis but if we embark on this treacherous path of US-style austerity we will be staring down the barrel of a social crisis.
Dr John Falzon is Chief Executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society National Council and is author of The language of the unheard.