OPINION:
If Australians are to fix their structural deficit, every citizen must be prepared to suffer hardship: this we all accept.
But it is a very sad day indeed when Peppa Pig, a porcine cartoon beloved by every thinking and feeling three-year-old across the country, is thrown on the fiscal bonfire to burn, like a scrap of surplus bacon, as a sacrifice to the god of national prosperity.
Peppa is the star of her eponymous show and, without wanting to cause offence to Babe or Miss Piggy of The Muppets, she is this country’s favourite pig. Together with her pink parents and small pink brother, Peppa delights and educates toddlers and provides the kind of sweet relief to harried parents that no amount of taxpayer cash (or indeed strong opiates) can deliver.
And yet Peppa’s revered status did not stop ABC managing director Mark Scott from holding a metaphorical gun to her head and threatening to blow her little piggy brains out as a result of the A$35.5 million (NZ$38.6m) in cuts the government made to the national broadcaster in the budget.
During a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday,
