'What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?' — Isaiah chapter 3 verse 15
The Budget was one of most vicious attacks on ordinary people that we have seen in recent Australian history.
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.
We will be facing a social crisis if the people who bear the burden of inequality, especially the people who are forced into poverty and even homelessness, are made to pay so that the generous tax concessions enjoyed by the wealthy are preserved.
We will be facing a social crisis if the Government seeks to grind down people's lives, humiliating them and hurting them instead of helping them.
But make no mistake. In the face of the social crisis we have a secret weapon. It is called solidarity. And don't worry. It remains a secret weapon even though we name it openly and proudly. It remains a secret weapon because those who do not practise it can never understand it.
Solidarity is growing strong. It is being taught by the experts; by the people who suffer most from the toxic fruits of poverty and inequality, from the First Peoples of Australia to the most recent arrivals who seek asylum in this beautiful country and everyone in between, all who are attacked, all who are derided and despised.
These are the ordinary people, the great people, who have achieved on the ground the greatest and most progressive social change by analysing and agitating under the guiding stars of struggle and hope. Good social policy might be formulated and legislated from above but it is always created and fought for from below by ordinary people who will not allow the purveyors of injustice and inequality and greed to grind them down.
Our struggle is for a society in which no one is oppressed or humiliated by structures of inequality. It will be a long struggle, a hard struggle. But just as our struggle is enormous, so too is our hope.
As Brecht put it: 'The most beautiful of all doubts is when the downtrodden and despondent stop believing in the strength of their oppressors.'
This Budget will not discomfit the comfortable, but for those who struggle to make ends meet it will cause great suffering. This is not a Budget that repairs