Take your pick. Wayne Swan's budget was either a savage attack on hard-working Australian families, an act of class warfare by an incompetent government devoid of ideas and out of touch with ordinary people. Or it was a true Labor budget, offering a generous helping hand to those very same hard-working Australian families while brilliantly positioning the nation to take advantage of an unprecedented economic boom.

Ho hum. As ever, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Not that anyone really bothered to look for it. We in the media did what we usually do: the ABC told us, as it always does, that the budget had produced ''a mixed response''; the serious commentators commentated seriously, in furious disagreement; the schlock end of the trade raced about in its traditional search for victims and, as usual, found them. Lindsay Tanner's uncomfortable point about the dumbing down of our democracy was proved yet again, in spades.

The mantra about struggling Australian families is numbingly tedious. The notion is that no matter what we earn, we all feel poor. We are all battling along in such dire economic straits that a hit of even another $20 a week will send millions of us crashing into ruin.

This is what the British philosopher Richard Dawkins defined as a meme, which is an idea or belief that spreads through a culture, replicating itself like a virus. A meme may or may not be true, but that's not the point. Either way, it takes unshakeable hold.

All politicians of all parties pay lip service to the battling Aussie meme because they dare not do otherwise. Oppositions particularly like it because, well, if yer doing it tough it's all the government's fault, innit? Can't afford the latest android phone? Knocked about by the private school fees? Blame bloody Gillard and Swan.