Budget 2017: Brazen Bill Shorten wants it both ways

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten after delivering his budget reply address. Picture: Getty

Bill Shorten is so brazen he can’t blush. The Opposition Leader’s budget reply is every bit as political as Scott Morrison’s document and then some.

Labor wants it both ways. Shorten has signed up to all the popular bits of the budget, accepted all the optimistic forecasts, ignored contradictions and inconsistencies created by previous Labor policy and accused Malcolm Turnbull of betraying Liberal Party values.

What’s more, while Shorten is prepared to adopt the popular policy­ of belting the big banks with a $6.2 billion levy and vote it into law, he also demands that the Prime Minister and Treasurer and Coalition government “end” if the banks pass on a single dollar of the tax to “families”.

Shorten will pocket the $6.2bn and pass on the blame.

The real inconsistencies forced on him by the budget are acceptance of the Medicare levy to pay for the NDIS and a final commitment to match the government’s $22bn in Gonski school funding.

While continuing the charade that government tried to “privatise Medicare”, Shorten says Labor will adopt the increase in the Medicare levy to pay for the NDIS but will insist those on “modest income­s” be spared the hit and the levy threshold should be lifted to $87,000 because a worker on $55,000 will pay $275 more a year.

So, first, Shorten finally admits the NDIS was never fully funded as claimed by Labor for years; second, what the government intends to do is unfair yet it wasn’t unfair when Julia Gillard and Shorten as a cabinet minister made people on salaries down to $21,000 pay the same rise in the levy to fund the NDIS; and, third, the “extra revenue” in the “medium term” from those in the top two tax brackets is meant to come from bracket creep as those on lower wages move up.

Likewise on Gonski education funding, which Labor also insisted it had funded, and the Liberals “cut”, Shorten agrees to commit to the $22bn extra for the first time.

For the rest of it, except for some hits against Cayman Island investors and accountants, Labor sticks with its argument about continuing the “millionaires’ tax” and dumping the corporate tax cuts to fund its promises.

It’s more class warfare, with those in the top tax brackets in their sights as a political sop to lower-income earners on a ­Medicare levy that Labor introduced and has insisted was not necessary

Debt reduction is also back in Labor’s lexicon, with Shorten ­offering to use funds he’s already used to “pay down debt” and without offering substantial savings.

His speech last night, harsh in voice and threatening in nature, was all about millionaires and brickies, foreign corporations and nurses, and big banks and workers and Labor values.

Shorten’s assault on the budget was given a political boost when Turnbull and Morrison were not prepared to answer a basic question during question time on the 10-year cost of corporate tax cuts.

The old parliamentary tactic of asking a simple question, already trialled successfully on Wednesday about the peak national debt, worked perfectly for Labor again yesterday.

There is no room in parliament for a Prime Minister and Treasurer to appear unprepared in the days immediately after the budget, and particularly not on the day the Opposition Leader can use the confusion to bolster what was otherwise a tough challenge for a Labor leader renowned for brazen campaigns based on spurious claims.