Poor Bastards...

Further to Tony Abbott's budget reply speech, comes these letters in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Spare us bleatings of $153,000-a-year 'battlers'

I was concerned to read that the Hadfield family, whose household income of $153,000 puts them well and truly in the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australian households, struggle to pay their bills ('''Rich' family struggles to meet living costs'', May 12).

Perhaps, like indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, they should be put on income management until they are able to function without welfare.
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Bronislava Lee
Newtown

Households living on $150,000-plus a year are, in fact, upper, not middle class. Just 40,000, or 3 per cent, of Australia's 8 million households fall into this bracket. Average annual earnings are about $65,000, and there are many more wage earners on minimum wages near $30,000 than at the high end of the McMansion or gentrified inner-city market.

The federal budget ''hits'' on the ''new rich'' are a feather duster when compared with other candidates, like means-tested childcare rebates and pharmaceutical benefits, and tax concessions on superannuation and capital gains, none of which found their way into the budget.

On fairness and equity grounds, the $150,000-plus club are doing very well. Yes, in Sydney, with its supercharged housing market, there is some discomfort with mortgage levels and the prospect of future rising interest rates for these households. But it is nothing compared to the struggle of households with minimum to average weekly earnings, whose rental or mortgage housing costs, utilities, food and transport bills consume massive proportions of the available funds.

This budget does little to transform the economic and social well-being of Australians. However, it's a bit rich for the new rich to make out they are doing it tough or shouldn't be paying a fairer share.

Gary Moore
Leichhardt

Couples on $150,000 a year may not be rich, but they are not battlers. People in the middle shouldn't expect middle-class welfare. Those of us lucky enough to have a reasonable income need to understand that government handouts should be reserved for the genuinely needy. I exclude essential services such as public health, education, disability and aged care from this category.

Janet McNeill
Redfern

Note where the authors of the letters live. Newtown, in the Greens voting seat of Balmain, Leichhardt, which would have gone to the Greens had they focused more on their own electorate rather than trying to boycott the Jewish state, and Redfern, a perpetual disaster which recently re-elected political disaster Tanya Plibersek.

The sneering inner-city green-left can't stand the idea that some Australians would like to have a small backyard, drive a car and be able to spend their own hard-earned money rather than have it ripped from them by an incompetent government.

Geez the latte shops would be doing a good trade around there...