Busted Budget - Hockey Goes to Ground

What matters, Joe Hockey, are the words you haven't yet uttered. You're sorry about the interpretation. You're sorry about the words. In short, you're sorry about the impact that the budget and its failed sales pitch is having on you, you and you.

• Permit me to outline what you omitted to say you are sorry about. Still not a word about being sorry for the inequality of opportunity for those directly affected by the budget. 
• Nor any sorry for the family and friends who attempt to mitigate its worst effects. 
• Nor any sorry for the organisations and community groups who seek to provide various forms of support. 
• Nor any sorry for the business sector's adverse implications for sales and for employment decisions. 

In short, no sorry for the increased personal hardship, the dashed education plans and the despair for self, offspring and ageing parents which have already started to fill the space that hope and aspiration used to occupy.

This (unsaid) sorry state of affairs is of real concern to Australians irrespective of their own economic circumstances. If the best you can do is whinge about how bruised you feel and resort to argumentum ad hominem, then step aside for someone with genuine empathy for those who experience relentless (often inter-generational) hardship even at the best of times.

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