OPINION

THERE’S one comment you can always count on after every Federal Budget is handed down: “So, I get nothing.”

Invariably, this lament comes from singles and couples without kids. SINKS (single income, no kids) and DINKs (dual income, no kids), especially those on decent incomes, are a huge bloc of the citizenry (and of eligible voters) who never get any sweeteners thrown at them — not in budgets and not at election time.

Last night, as inducements were handed down by Joe Hockey for families (and in pollie speak, families always mean those with children), for low-income pensioners and for small businesses, the childless took to social media to again let the world know just how cheated they felt.

“What do single people get apart from the pride and joy of supporting everyone else??” and “Nothing here for people 30-49 no kids [sic]. Just take our taxes and give it to everyone else”.

People who don’t have kids are a growing group in Australia, one that is due to overtake households with children by 2020, though older couples with adult children make up a huge proportion of this. So there’s a lot of people asking (or singing, in true Moving Pictures-style) “What about me? It isn’t fair. I’ve had enough, I want my share”.

But here’s the problem: As one of my colleagues aptly puts it, the Budget isn’t a bribe sheet that needs to have something for every person. It’s supposed to make the country function and prosper.

Sure, we pay our taxes and we should expect a reasonable amount of government services in return. But that’s what we get. We get roads to walk and drive on. We get public transport that sometimes works. We get healthcare. We get customs officers who swipe our passport as we go on holidays. We get police officers that show up when we get mugged and posties that deliver our online shopping.

That’s what you get for your taxes. Sure, the system isn’t perfect, there are those who rort and exploit it and a lot of these services could be better and more efficient but we still have a system that functions.

You say you didn’t get anything in the Budget. But what is it you wanted? Subsidised gym memberships?

We’re clearly not in an economic position to be giving out widescale individual tax cuts, and the Government did miss out on an opportunity to address housing affordability in any significant way.

But the problem with SINKs and DINKs (and I count myself among the DINKs) is that we are a disparate group. There’s not one unifying issue that we can all get behind — especially from a policy perspective. I might want more funding for clean energy technologies and public education, but my neighbour might want to see funding for cancer research and the arts prioritised. SINKs and DINKs are a demographic that has no common thread other than being childless so there’s no one easy way to please all of us.

The grievances of many SINKs and DINKs are loudest in a debate about childcare and parental leave. “If you can’t afford them, don’t have them. Why should I support your lifestyle choice to breed?!” is the favourite rallying cry of the most outraged. But what they seem to forget is the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child.

And it really does. It’s easy to ignore in our increasingly individualised world, but raising the next generation and the one after that is not the sole responsibility of the parents or even their extended family. We all have a responsibility to fund and invest in education, if for nothing else, then for the sake of social cohesion. Do you really want to live in a world where taxpayer-funded education is not a universal right? Just imagine the crime rates.

By the way, other taxpayers paid for your education. Even if your parents shelled out for private school, the Federal Government still funds private education in the billions, so you didn’t get to where you are without a hand.

Why should you pay for someone else’s kids? Because one day, one of those kids may find the cure for dementia, or invent a revolutionary technology to combat a global food crisis, or even become a doctor who will work in the aged care home you end up in. These are all things that could directly affect you.

So you did get something in last night’s Budget. You got funding to help the kid down the road grow up to be a responsible future taxpayer. It’s not just about fairness, it’s also an economic argument. Look at societies like Japan where a perilously declining birthrate has made demographers seriously concerned about the country’s future sustainability.

But you know what else you got out of last night’s Budget? You also got medical research funding that might lead to a scientific breakthrough which could mean you won’t be plagued with arthritis when you’re older. You got tertiary education funding (albeit reduced) that will produce the next cohort of nurses, engineers and teachers. You got funding that will be used to combat the social media presence of terrorist groups like IS.

So how can you say you got nothing from the Budget?