You’re hearing clever words from Canberra ahead of Tuesday’s federal budget. But behind the words, Australians can see what’s really going on. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, drops phrases like “intergenerational equity”, “resilience” and “social cohesion”. Sounds thoughtful and fair? When you strip it back, it’s doing one job: covering for economic failure.

“Intergenerational equity” is being used to justify taking more from some Australians, and giving it to others. Labor’s divisive misuse of the ‘intergenerational equity’ sets Australians against each other—young versus old, renters versus homeowners, workers versus retirees, and increasingly, country versus city.

Regional Australians live with gross inequities with weaker services, patchy connectivity, higher costs and fewer opportunities close to home. You don’t fix that divide with a slogan. You fix it by backing regional economies, building infrastructure and delivering services where people actually live.

We’re now being told that “boomers” are the problem - that somehow older Australians are to blame for housing affordability, wealth gaps and budget pressures. It’s dishonest. What about 1.3 million migrants in 3 years under Labor?

Not every older Australian is wealthy, and not every younger Australian is struggling. Blaming a generation doesn’t build a single home, lower a single power bill or fix a single structural problem - it just shifts the blame.

Energy prices are high and unstable. Business costs are rising. Productivity is flat. Housing supply is woefully inadequate. Government spending keeps growing but debt isn’t coming down fast enough.  In fact, the real intergenerational inequity is the Albanese government’s record spending that future generations will have to pay off.  Instead, fresh from a national address about removing roof racks, the PM is now lecturing Australians on “equity”.

Governments can help remove barriers and back opportunity, but cannot make everyone start the same, and shouldn’t pretend they can. Once you go down that path, equity stops meaning fairness and starts meaning redistribution without end.

The most divisive PM in Australia’s history has divided the nation on the voice, city versus country and on recognising Palestine. Now, he is dividing Australians according to the year they were born.