Federal Budget 2017 — James Campbell analysis: Finally, Turnbull casts Abbott’s ghost aside

IT’S taken nearly two years but Turnbull has finally broken free from the Abbott era, writes James Campbell.

• Your five-minute guide to the 2017 Federal Budget
• Federal Budget 2017: What it means for you
• What the Budget means for Victoria

LAST month Malcolm Turnbull came to Melbourne and gave his party’s state council address, defending the Liberals as the holders of the “sensible centre” of Australian politics.

The party Robert Menzies founded, Turnbull said, was “not reactionary, but liberal, proudly liberal, building in a practical way, in an organic way that many would describe as a conservative way”.

The government will argue this is a sensible centrist Budget that accepts the limits of what the Senate and the public are prepared to bear.

The riskiest move politically is the increase in income tax to pay for the NDIS, but luckily for the government it won’t kick in for another two years — by which time there will have been another election. On the face of it, there is little for the Labor Party to object to though no doubt it will find something.

Treasurer Scott Morrison speaks with comedian Peter Helliar in the Federal Budget lockup. Picture: Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

If this Budget restores the government’s political fortunes it would suggest Australians want Labor policies — Gonski, the NDIS, Medicare — but would prefer the Liberal Party to implement and administer them.

The populist measures — taxes on foreign workers and the big banks — are Bill Shorten’s ideas too.

For this reason, the wing nuts in the self-styled Liberal base are going to hate it.

Nothing better symbolises the break with Tony Abbott’s government than the review of the school chaplaincy program.

The only red meat for them to get their teeth into is the attack on big-drinking and drug-taking dole bludgers.

Taxes and spending both rise over the course of the forward estimates, though government spending as a percentage of GDP will fall if the economy grows as Treasury predicts it will.

The nasty stuff from the Coalition’s earlier, more adventurous Budgets that has been giving them pain has been dumped: pensioners who lost their concession cards are getting them back; bulk-billing incentives for diagnostic imaging and pathology have been restored and the freeze on the indexation of the Medicare benefits schedule will end two years early.

In addition, $13 billion in zombie saving measures are finally being laid to rest. It’s taken nearly two years but Turnbull has finally broken free from the Abbott era.

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Originally published as Federal Budget 2017 — James Campbell analysis: Finally, Turnbull casts Abbott’s ghost aside