Tory Shepherd on Federal Budget 2017: Scott Morrison faces the music in tough political Arena

ANALYSIS: Quizzed on his Budget while walking through the lock up, Treasurer Scott Morrison made a left-field musical recommendation — a song by Tina Arena that he said encapsulates his master plan.

QUIZZED on his Budget while walking through the lock up, a jovial Treasurer Scott Morrison made a musical recommendation.

Journalists should listen to Reset by Tina Arena, he said.

No one could summon the lyrics to this fine tune off the top of their heads, but the title was pretty catchy.

The song, properly called Reset All, includes the lyrics: “Reset all, Holding on, Just let go, Open eyes, reset all.”

“We’ve decided to reset, realign, and go forward,” Mr Morrison said, later singing his new chorus: “Fairness, security and opportunity”.

Where the 2014 Budget was all about punishment — it was the End of the Age of Entitlement, you know — the 2017 Budget is about discipline. Not the lashing we got from former Treasurer Joe Hockey (you’re a lifter or a leaner, with us or against us) but the need to all pull together for Team Australia.

The accepted wisdom within government is that, back then, they failed to properly make the case for severe Budget action.

They reversed $80 billion in promised funding for health and education, and made other unpopular decisions. But those decisions were the answer to a question Australians didn’t understand because the almost incomprehensible size of deficits is a peripheral issue to paying for schools and doctors.

Mr Morrison is trying to chart a course away from the bad news of debt and deficit and towards hope. Australia has been through the storm but there is sunshine and safe land ahead.

As long as we make the “right choices”, we’re headed for “better days”.

“As we’ve talked to Australians and listened to Australians over the past 12 months in particular; as we have observed what’s been happening around the world; what we’ve observed is that the Australian economy has done extremely well against extraordinary headwinds,” he said.

But, he cautions, not all Australians have felt that. They are victims of globalisation, of new technology, of drifting wages.

And as they rub up against those difficulties, they develop an “acute sensitivity” to the cost pressures of health, education, energy, and so on.

The Federal Government wants to be the balm, but it has some complicated recipes to soothe the acute sensitivities.

They have to concede that housing affordability measures are no “silver bullet”, that there will always be people unhappy with both school and university funding changes.

They might just relish the fight that is sure to come from the big banks, who will be opened up to more scrutiny as well as more competition.

And they’ll probably be OK selling the trajectory back to surplus; as long as the ratings agencies stay calm.

Mr Morrison’s biggest vulnerability in this Budget is the $8 billion he hopes to get from taxpayers to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Of course everyone wants the NDIS. And the hospitals package. And other spending measures.

But they probably don’t really want to pay for it.

Mr Morrison wants Australians to picture looking in the eye of someone who needs the NDIS.

How do you look at them and say you can’t agree to fund it?

“Yes, it’s an insurance levy on all Australians,” he said.

“But it’s all our responsibility. We can all potentially be a recipient.

“That’s the fair thing to do.”

He may call it “fair” but he was also manoeuvred into it because the Senate wouldn’t pass his other “unfair” savings.

He’s right, though, that the NDIS has been bipartisan and that it must be funded.

That could all go wrong if the public mood swings hard against it. If the opposition — including that of the Opposition — to the plan builds up a head of steam, that could start swaying Senators.

This is a much more soothing Budget than it was in 2014, but that doesn’t mean it will be to everyone’s taste.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Morrison wanted everyone to join in the “reset” chorus, but not everyone will like — or even know — the words.