South Australian Budget 2013: The political strategy
Jay Weatherill’s predecessor as Labor Treasurer, Jack Snelling, spent his SA Budget 2013 morning at a boxing gym – and invited the cameras along.
The Right faction member found the fighting image was all too apt as his final Budget led to a downgrade in South Australia’s credit rating.
A year on, and Weatherill didn’t invite the cameras along to his morning activities, but judging on this afternoon’s performance one could imagine him in a yoga pose by the pool – perhaps saluting the sun.
The quietly spoken Premier and Treasurer has produced a moderate, almost soporific, Budget – moderate new spending measures, moderate vision, moderate forecasts, moderate cuts. Debt is another matter, of course.
Weatherill even used the “m” word himself – saying that his new spending measures were very moderate, particularly given this was a pre-election budget.
But, as always with Weatherill, don’t believe for a second that there was no deep political strategy behind the Budget – there is, and it goes to the heart of how he believes he can win the next election.
Most Treasurers in the past, notably Kevin Foley, tried to use the Budget to paint a broad economic narrative – where we are financially, and where we’re going.
Weatherill by contrast only talks about the economy in the soft light of society.
While it suits his soft Left predilections, he also believes it will give him an angle to work against Opposition Leader Steven Marshall.
As a result, today’s media “lock-up” at the Convention Centre, was peppered with the kind of soft Lefty catch phrases that haven’t been heard in Adelaide since the days of macramé and body shirts.
Weatherill said the reason he took on the dual jobs of Premier and Treasurer was about “integrating our social decisions with our financial decisions”.
Time and again he returned to this theme: the state can choose to move quickly or moderately back to surplus. To move more quickly would jeopardise the economy and services to people.
His political point is obvious and, as if it wasn’t clear enough, he hammered it home.
There was, he said, an “ideological struggle” looming – the Liberal approach, which he characterised as favouring harsh cuts which would damage the economy, versus Labor’s supportive, moderate approach. The “m” word again.
“If you want me to describe the budget, I think it’s both responsible and progressive,” he said.
Weatherill even held up the Britannia Roundabout redevelopment as a model for what his Budget tries to do – inexpensive, smart solutions to problems.
As the ABC’s Matt Abraham pointed out during the press conference, a traffic roundabout metaphor doesn’t seem likely to raise the heartbeats of potential international investors.
The un-Treasurer like rhetoric then reached new heights.
When challenged about continuing blowouts in the health budget, he said: “We like to call spending in health ‘looking after patients’.”
His Budget documents, with a soothing leafy green logo, included a “Message from Jay” which said that budget decisions “speak to our fundamental beliefs and values”.
No hard sell. No promises about a bright new dawn or dire warnings about economic ruin to support savage cuts, as is traditional for Treasurers.
Overall, this is now, very clearly, the approach that Weatherill will take to the election.
It won’t be difficult for the Opposition to raise serious questions about the Budget position, or question the credibility of the forecast return to surplus, about which there must be serious questions.
But they will need to step carefully to avoid the trap that Weatherill has set.
For Weatherill, his major challenge may be getting his soft message through.
After all, it’s likely that most of us remember only one thing from last year’s Budget – the image of Jack Snelling smacking a punching bag.
More Budget Coverage:
See the full budget papers here.
