Steve Lewis has declared in The Australian that tomorrow’s Budget will be “an ode to middle Australia”. Actually, that ode has already been written.

Lewis
says the Budget will be “a faith-keeping statement, reassuring families
that the Coalition is in tune with the frailties of contemporary life
in the ‘burbs.”

C J Dennis
was a master of Australian idiom. Barry Humphries has confessed to
borrowing extensively from the poet to create his own spectacular
vernacular.

And a lengthy verse of Dennis’s that appeared in The Bulletin in 1915, The Glugs of Gosh, seems to be the perfect reflection of life in the ‘burbs as we await the Howard Government’s eleventh Budget:

So the Glugs continued, with greed and glee,
To buy cheap clothing, and pills, and tea;
Till every Glug in the land of Gosh
Owned three clean shirts and a fourth in the wash.
But they all grew idle, and fond of ease,
And easy to swindle, and hard to please;
And the voice of Joi was a lonely voice,
When he railed at Gosh for its foolish choice.
But the great King grinned, and the good Queen gushed,
As the goods of the Ogs were madly rushed.
And the Knight, Sir Stodge, with a wave of his hand,
Declared it a happy and prosperous land.