Treasurer Joe Hockey’s defence of the Abbott government’s budget does not pass muster with us. Mr Hockey says it is ”misguided” to believe the government’s budget initiatives were unfair or that they exacerbated inequality. While we agree with Mr Hockey’s contention that there are some serious structural problems in terms of government expenditure, this is not the way to address those problems.

The government’s plans weaken, rather than improve, the economic position of the most vulnerable people in our community: the unemployed, the sick, youth, young adults and the elderly. The weight of cuts to government expenditure, including unemployment benefits; the requirement to pay more for government services, including for basic medical care; the imposition of higher eligibility thresholds for welfare; and the burden of deregulated higher education fees – all fall disproportionately on these groups of people.

While Mr Hockey has been content in the past to argue that such cuts were necessary to alleviate a budget ”emergency” or ”crisis”, he has not satisfactorily explained why the burden for rectifying this purported crisis must fall on the most vulnerable and on low to middle-income earners. Indeed, he belittles them as ”leaners, not lifters”. More could have been demanded from higher income earners, and tighter rules could have been imposed on a range of corporate and personal tax concessions (superannuation, negative gearing, diesel fuel rebates to name a few).

It is neither appropriate nor sufficient for Mr Hockey to ask, even rhetorically, if it is fair that 2 per cent of all taxpayers contribute more than 25 per cent of all income tax: they do so because they happen to earn significantly higher incomes than the rest of the community. Similarly, it does Mr Hockey no credit to point out that one-third of all company tax is paid by just 12 companies. He could improve the ledger by ensuring global multinationals that source billions of dollars of revenue from Australian operations actually pay their share of income tax here.

The government also could have altered its absurdly generous paid parental leave scheme and, we argue, retained the mining and carbon taxes. But for ideological reasons, the government instead hit those on the lower incomes hardest. Indeed, it unfairly stigmatises them by implying they are not doing enough to help themselves.

Mr Hockey’s defends his budget by saying governments are duty bound to provide equality of opportunity for all, but not equal outcomes. In so doing, they must ensure there is ”a fair and comprehensive support system for those who are most vulnerable”, but it is nevertheless ”up to individuals in the community to accept personal responsibility for their lives and their destinies”. In his view, governments can help people get started, but the rest falls to the individual and we must accept that ”some will run faster than others”.

We do not agree. We concede that equal opportunities do not lead to equal outcomes, that much depends on the individual, and that governments can do only so much by wielding carrots and sticks via welfare and taxation. But we do not accept that governments should abandon people at the starting gate.

Outcomes do matter, and in some circumstances it is the duty of the government to improve people’s outcomes, not just provide them with equal opportunities. Sophisticated communities do not leave the worse off behind, not even in a crisis. If governments do not intervene to achieve more equitable outcomes, then income differentials will continue to widen, inherited opportunities become more vital generation after generation, and our community will become captive to the merciless ideal that only the fittest in terms of skills, wealth and cunning will survive. It is a beggarly objective, one that would impoverish us all.