Budget 2017: Find out where the money is going
This isn't just a budget of which Labor would be proud, and the Greens can hardly grizzle either. It taxes big, spends big, builds big, looks after the needy – and belts the banks.
The pinching of David Gonski and his needs-based funding model has shamelessly taken from Labor one of its core policy pitches.
The government has gone even further in health. Three things Bill Shorten promised more than anything in the last election campaign – to legislate to guarantee Medicare, reverse a freeze on rebates to doctors, and scrap bulk-billing cuts to radiology and pathology, have all been taken care of by the pragmatic ScoMo.
As for the increase to the Medicare levy to fully fund Labor's National Disability Insurance Scheme and the new guaranteed Medicare – Julia Gillard lifted the levy by the same amount to help fund the NDIS four years ago. The Coalition supported that.
As for the banks, the Greens have been regarded as kooks for running around for the past few years demanding a big bank tax. Enter ScoMo with a thumping $6.2 billion major bank levy on the big four plus Macquarie.
This revenue will cover almost half the cost of dumping those welfare and higher education cuts that Tony Abbott tried unsuccessfully to foist on the nation in his two and only budgets. It will race though the Senate.
No longer will the needy be targeted.
"The banks can do more to support the job of budget repair, given we have got a $13.5 billion bill from the Senate," said Morrison.
As for the ongoing calls for a royal commission, evil bank executives have had the book thrown at them. Regulators will have the power to sack or disqualify them and take back their bonuses. The banks face fines of up to $200 million for dodgy conduct. And there will be more to come in the run-up to the next federal election once the Productivity Commission hands down its report on the inquiry, also announced in the budget, into every aspect of competition in the sector.
And the budget still hits surplus in 2020-21, albeit a slim one.
This budget is hard to critique from a Labor, Green, One Nation or Senate micro-party point of view.
It does almost all they have been baying for for years. And the ever-restive Liberal base has no cause for concern. Negative gearing deductions have taken a trim, and the Catholic school issue needs to be sorted, but there is nothing to compare to the raid on their super from last year.
The ratings agencies will have little beef with the credibility of the revenue measures given they are essentially two naked tax hikes, supported in a minor role by heroic integrity measures with their nebulous revenue estimates.
This budget is an overt political exercise and a clever one. It solves problems for the government and creates them for the opposition.
Shorten has been ahead of the game so far and should be flattered by the imitation. But his budget-in-reply address on Thursday night is now eagerly anticipated.
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