While almost every austerity budget results in doomsayers, usually with a vested interest in public sector spending, proclaiming that the end of days is at hand, sometimes there is a kernel of truth in their pronouncements.
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While the cut-backs in Tuesday's budget are fairly benign, consisting largely of reductions in spending that has not yet begun, the Fadden budget of 1951 which Gang Gang revisited on Tuesday had real teeth.
Can you imagine any modern treasurer having the temerity to announce an across-the-board 10 per cent rise in income tax rates? Not bleeding likely. Any government that pulled such a stunt would be out of office come the next election.
The government of which Fadden was deputy prime minister under Menzies, went on to hold office for another 20 years. This, to my mind, is clear evidence previous generations were made of sterner stuff and were able to forgo short-term gain for pain if they felt there was a need for it.
That said, the reaction to the Fadden budget was far from positive; particularly in Canberra where the reductions in federal spending were expected to hit hardest.
Clear evidence of local outrage in what was then very much a government town is provided by the photograph published on page 1 of The Canberra Times on October 5, 1951. It is of a building block, possibly lifted from the construction site of what is now the John Gorton building, and placed outside the offices of the Public Service Board. A person or persons unknown had gone to a great deal of trouble to incise the words ''R.I.P. 10,000 public servants'' into its face.
Australia had about 170,000 federal public servants at the time. Total public-sector employment came to just under 600,000.
While on the subject of budgets, it seems timely to remark on some of the great myths that have crept into popular consciousness over the years.
One of these is that cause of the Whitlam government's downfall was a succession of huge budget deficits brought about by reckless spending.
The fact of the matter is that the Whitlam government delivered at least two more budget surpluses than the Rudd/Gillard administration has managed. There is some debate as to whether or not it delivered a third with Labor adviser Stephen Koukalis recently arguing the 1974-75 budget delivered a small surplus of $181 million.
Other sources report a 1974-75 budget deficit of about $2 billion.
The second notable furphy, repeated in the popular press as recently as this week, was that the cuts to the public service initiated by the Howard government in 1996 ''pushed the ACT into recession''.
In what is clearly a case of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, the hundreds - if not thousands - of writers, commentators and broadcasters who have peddled this line over the years either do not know or do not care that the ACT's gross state product fell off dramatically in 1995 under Paul Keating and actually began to climb again after the 1996 election.
If there is a lesson in all of this it is that perceptions are rarely the reality and that tales grow in the retelling over time. We shape our facts to suit our arguments, not our arguments to suit our facts. It has been ever thus.
