By Mark Kenny
- Budget 2016: Full coverage
- Winners and losers
- Jessica Irvine: Pennies for the rich
- Michael Gordon: Time for the great persuader to sell it
Never before has a federal budget – especially one crafted in such tricky fiscal and economic circumstances – been called on to do so much of the political heavy lifting.
Gone now are the messy policy thought bubbles such as a higher GST, cracking down on negative gearing excesses, or major income tax changes. Most of those "bubbles" have been comprehensively pricked although some have survived in deflated form, with the modest arrest of bracket creep for middle-income earners, being the main one.
By lining up the federal budget and then the federal election in such rapid succession, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison have chosen a manoeuvre with a high degree of difficulty. The risks are real because failure in stage one begets a potential disaster in stage two.
But the rewards can be high too, providing a surprisingly disorganised government with a single unifying narrative with which to fight that election. This script will be vital in the coming contest because it will facilitate the message discipline that has so often eluded the nascent Turnbull administration.
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox.
Turnbull's poll dive in the first few months of 2016 reflected a combination of factors from voter disappointment, to an opposition setting the agenda. But it was Turnbull's perceived policy dithering and the differences playing out publicly with his Treasurer that made the government look bad. This budget should fix that.
What this budget shows is that at heart, Turnbull can be calculating and strategic. He was not panicked into a new strategy when Tony Abbott teetered in February 2015, resisting the urgings of some to step forward and challenge. The risk of waiting, Turnbull's backers warned, was that it might prove his only chance. He waited and prevailed.
And Turnbull has not panicked now, resisting the temptation to spend his way back to the electoral safe ground. The modest changes in his pre-election budget have been designed to mark the new government out from the old – to debride the scar tissue built up from Abbott's first budget that politically, was limiting its movement, hampering its agility.
This budget is quintessentially political, but not in the normal pre-election way. Rather than splashing cash around buying votes and salving key demographics, the Turnbull-Morrison formula is about restoring credibility. Credibility in terms of the Coalition's motives, and credibility in terms of the Coalition's traditional strength of economic management.
The government wants this budget to do less on the surface than most budgets but more underneath. Its primary task is as the backbone of the government's re-election pitch. Take the income tax cut for example. It will provide a very modest $315 annual boost to wealthier taxpayers which works out to less than a hamburger and a milkshake on a weekly basis.
To that extent, it leaves the government exposed to the claim of looking after the well off first. That's a weakness likely to be exploited by Labor, although it will have to decide if it will stand in the way of the cut – to apply from the day before the election, or wave it through. If Labor does support it, the weight of its "unfairness" critique of Turnbull's budget will be reduced.
The judgment here is less about the quantum of the tax cut and more about the government's long-standing political promise of addressing bracket creep. That is the message. And that goes to its subliminal function as a budget designed to demonstrate restraint, middle-way politics and economic competence.
This is the task of redefining of the Turnbull-led Coalition. The government wants to be seen to have "gone after" its own base before ordinary taxpayers. Expect to hear this argument put in coming days. The clampdown on generous superannuation tax concessions will hit the wealthiest exclusively. Ninety-six per cent of superannuation account holders will experience no change.
Indeed, this is the story of the entire budget. Ask ordinary voters if they are better or worse off as a result of this budget and the answer is likely to be "no change". Unlike 2014, the only people targeted for pain are at the top end – multinational corporations, and the ultra wealthy.
Will it be enough to ensure the re-election of the Coalition for a second term? It at least has done no harm – another key difference from 2014. But Labor is not without hope. Between zombie savings measures booked but blocked from 2014, and the income tax cuts for the rich, the fairness question remains debateable.