Bill Shorten doesn’t want it because the ALP is still on the nose after the bizarre Gillard and Rudd years, and his current improved showing in the polls could be expected to melt away. Moreover, people don’t seem to like him much.

The Greens don’t want it because their genial leader, Bob Brown, has retired in favour of a shrill successor, Christine Milne. Clive Palmer is making conciliatory noises. The media have soured on him and he could expect to lose seats, maybe even his own.

Yet the fact remains that Shorten has destroyed a less than perfect but not unreasonable budget with an economic strategy of sorts. He has converted Australia, at least temporarily, into another Greece. So the Australian people have been tricked into believing a budget that is not perfect, but it is good enough, is something they should not have.

Politics in our country has unquestionably descended to an absolutely bizarre level, with the outstanding example being the racial slur directed at a great, big burly footballer.

A spectator high up in the stand uttered his foul remark, which the footballer far off in the paddock, naturally did not hear. A couple of other spectators sitting nearby did, and reported this evil deed. The spectator was banned for life from attending any more matches by his club.

So what, you might wonder. Would I care if I were banned from attending any matches played by the doggies, or the sharks, or the rabbitohs, or the power, or the storm. Not in the least. But Victoria is different. They build their lives around their loyalties to football clubs.

So the fellow, whose name we don’t know and whose offensive language we cannot judge, whose accusers are unnamed, and who was found guilty in procedures that remain a secret, has been punished to general applause by a judicial process that would seem to be identical to those in the Soviet Union in Stalin’s day, or in China in the days of Mao Tse-Tung, when people were required to report on their neighbours.

The ALP will inevitably vote against the Budget later this year. They have done it more than 160 times. The Budget has a fault or two, none of them to do with cost-saving, but the ALP has done a successful demolition to the detriment of the country.

Moreover, the economy will not go especially well. China’s own growth is easing, and we are getting less for what we export. Payments to the foreign owners of Australian assets are making the deficit in the balance of payments worse.