James Morrow’s Budget 2017: The view from the sofa

CAN Australia both fund the NDIS and find the sunlit uplands of surplus all while keeping the government’s poll numbers above water? The answer is to hit up the economy’s most profitable sector.

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Here at Sofa HQ, where a simple roast chicken replaces the flash catering of the lockup and instead of hanging with schmoozing Treasury boffins a terrier bursts in to announce the latest news of leaves falling in the back yard, the mood was tense even before Scott Morrison took to the Despatch Box.

James Morrow is the Daily Telegraph’s Opinion Editor. Picture: John Fotiadis

In what was in retrospect a worrying sign, as the little clocks at the bottom of the screen ticked down to 7:30, worded-up commentators at both Sky and the ABC praised what was to come. In politics, particularly when there’s money at stake, such furious agreement is rarely a good thing.

Thus before he began, we knew this going to be something: Even the terrier, named Maggie after the UK’s fierce and fiscally responsible first female Prime Minister, had picked up the mood and was looking anxious.

Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer, ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott, Commonwealth Bank CEO Ian Narev and NAB CEO Andrew Thorburn speaking during an Economics Committee hearing at Parliament House in March Picture: Lukas Coch

How, after all, could Australia both fund the NDIS and find the sunlit uplands of surplus all while keeping the government’s (lately struggling) poll numbers above water?

And, more to the point, exorcise the ghosts of budgets past and present a cuddly face to an electorate in no mood for fiscal discipline?

Easy — raise taxes, but don’t call them that. Just jack up the Medicare Levy instead.

Oh, and find one of the most profitable and least popular sectors in the Australian economy — banks — and give them a bit of a touch up. (Not only will the big five have to pay up through a new tax but their execs will be licensed by the government and see large hunks of their bonuses held back for years).

Treasurer Scott Morrison in the budget lockup at Parliament House on Tuesday. Picture: Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

Scott Morrison speaks at the dispatch box during the delivery of the 2017-18 Federal Budget in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

And in a sop to the right, subject a handful of dole recipients to drug testing, a brave and courageous move that risks all those marginal university share house seats the government needs to stay in power.

From Sofa HQ’s vantage point, it felt as if the thing was written after six months spent watching speeches by a right-wing populist like Donald Trump, with the occasional break taken to read some articles from a left-wing populist like former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Or perhaps it was the other way around.

At one point a talking head on Sky made the point that “over the last ten years, which has seen 35 or 40 forecasts, roughly 34 out of 35 wrong (governments are) consistently optimistic on growth”, suggesting that all the predictions of three per cent growth necessary to make Morrison’s predictions come true might be a bit, shall we say, rosy.

You don’t say.

Moments later Labor’s Graham Richardson made a not so bold prediction: “We won’t have nasties, we’ll just have debt blow out.”

For her part, Maggie was just glad to have seen any talk of a Schmacko Equalisation Scheme scotched for another year and was happy to retire for the evening with a generous shredded drumstick meat allowance.

The Government frontbench applaud Australian Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison after delivering the 2017-18 Federal Budget. Picture: Mick Tsikas

Surprisingly, in my furious flipping between channels, no one seemed to have picked up on the funny glide slope of the projected deficit, which remains well north of $20 billion for 2017-18 and leaves the heavy lifting of getting spending back into surplus by 2021 to subsequent years.

If that’s not a tell that the government is planning on calling an election before the 2018 MYEFO numbers come in, I don’t know what is.

Nor was there much mention of the lifting of the debt ceiling to $600 billion. While household finance analogies don’t always translate to government here at Sofa HQ they’re all we’ve got, and this felt quite a bit like planning to pay off the credit card by calling the bank and asking for the limit to be raised.

Of course, there may be some sort of mad genius to all this.

On social media — take it for what it’s worth — Sofa HQ’s conservative mates were horrified by the taxes, while those of Labor persuasion were complaining about the drug tests and demonisation of those on the dole. (How’s that for a summing up of the left-right divide?)

Which may mean that in between the two extremes of politics, Australians might wind up pretty happy with what they’re hearing.

Because when it comes down to it, there’s really only one set of numbers that counts when it comes to budgets: Newspoll.

In politics, particularly when there’s money at stake, furious agreement between the media’s left and the right is rarely a good thing. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

Originally published as James Morrow’s Budget 2017: The view from the sofa