I'm reminded of the words of Malcolm X, spoken in 1964 in response to being asked whether progress was being made in addressing racism in the United States: "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made."

The feeling he expressed has been consistently echoed in the recent analysis of Australia's failure to address the unconscionable persistence of First Nations people's deaths in custody in the 30 years since the royal commission.

You could also apply the metaphor to the persistence of the neoliberal frame in social and economic policy. If, as Treasurer, you want to heal the wounds of the incremental austerity we've been living with, you've got to do a whole lot more than promise no sharp pivots. You've got to acknowledge the fact that many of us continue to live with austerity's toxic fruits in the shape of wage stagnation, unemployment, underemployment, a JobSeeker payment that keeps people below the poverty line and a retrenchment of social services and social infrastructure.

The Morrison government will fail to heal the wounds of neoliberal austerity while it refuses to address gender-based inequality. It's time, for example, to heed the calls for free, universal childcare. It's time to address the gender pay gap and the superannuation gap and to reverse the relentless normalisation of insecure work, with its heavily gendered impact, as well as the iniquitous burden women face due to effective marginal tax rates.

It will fail to heal the wounds of austerity while it shows contempt for workers by waging war on unions, restricting their right to collectively bargain, their right to withdraw their labour, their right to demand safety, and their right to be protected from wage theft and deliberate casualisation and insecurity.

If you're in low-paid or insecure work, the knife of austerity remains in your back.

If you're unemployed and unable to live on an obscenely inadequate level of income support, the knife of austerity remains in your back.

If you're underemployed or if you're doing the unpaid, or low-paid, highly gendered work of caring, the knife of austerity remains in your back.

If you're living with a disability, and feeling threatened by the government's plans to "save" $700 million through "independent" assessments; if the minister responsible offensively, wondering out loud whether the NDIS is "actually making people less functional over time", the knife of austerity not only remains in your back, but is about to be stuck in even deeper - and then twisted.

The Morrison government's idea of recovering from the Covid recession and boosting the economy must be viewed through the lens of a fanatical and unadulterated belief in the discredited trickle-down theory.

Instead of boosting wages, instead of boosting social security, instead of boosting public housing, homelessness services, public education and public health, instead of bringing down the cost of living through strong income growth and strong public infrastructure, instead of addressing the underlying structural causes of unemployment and underemployment, it appears the Morrison government is going to provide more of its preferred no-strings-attached boosts to the private sector and pray to those "animal spirits of capitalism" the Prime Minister is fond of kneeling before in the irrational hope that higher profits translate not only into more jobs but, astonishingly, into action to address the climate emergency.

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Prosperity for the wealthy few is not prosperity for the nation. An increase in income and assets for the rich does not translate into safe, secure, well-paid jobs for the many. Neither does it translate into stronger social and economic infrastructure.

And here's the rub, what the Morrison government just doesn't get: social infrastructure is economic infrastructure.

When you invest in public education, from early childhood through to school, TAFE and university, you invest in the nation. When you prevent homelessness and housing stress; when you invest in public health; when you invest in aged care, disability services, social services, when you invest in the workers in these sectors; when, for example, you ensure that there are appropriate staffing ratios in aged care, you invest in the nation.

When you support people who are not in paid work and when you make sure workers are not being cheated out of their wages or their leave entitlements, you invest in the nation. When you commit to a vision of voice and self-determination for First Nations peoples, when you commit to practical and systematic action to address the climate emergency, when you commit to gender equality, you commit to the future of the nation.

For prosperity is only prosperity when it is shared by the many. And austerity will remain austerity unless it is systematically reversed. You don't reverse austerity, and you certainly don't heal the wounds of its incremental imposition, by just pulling the knife out a little.

There's an oft-quoted line from The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa: "Everything must change so that everything can remain the same."

The Treasurer's language on deficit, debt and spending is indeed a sharp change from the language he and his government have used in the past. But am I alone in thinking that it is being wielded in an effort not to build a more just and equitable future for the nation, but to ensure that everything stays the same?