Well, there are other fairer options,including widening the base of the GST, and then more than adequately compensating the most disadvantaged?
Also available, was/is the removal of tax breaks on the wealthiest super, a saving to the budget bottom line of around 30 billions per!
After that, repealed negative gearing, a saving to the budget bottom line of around 5 billions per!?
Then health insurance rebates could go, a further 3 billions per.
15 billions per could have been removed from states health and education funding, leaving them with no other choice, but to finally means test all Govt funded services?
Which could have started at incomes of 80,000.00 with a 1% co payment, rising to 15%, and exhausting at 180,000.00 per, who would pay for all their services.
Which would have sent more to underutilized private providers and taken some pressure off of the teetering public system!
More as bracket creep forced more and more above the free or partly free service line?
30 billions+ 5 billions +3 billions + 15 billions, is 53 billions; or around 13 billion more than the current deficit.
That said, there'd be a much fairer sharing of any pain, if we just broadened the GST to include all goods and services, and then more than adequately compensating pensioners!
And given the extra funds, this single measure would provide, pensions could be virtually doubled, along with the post code economic activity, where the majority of that demographic live.
i.e. around 80% of our small town population are old age pensioners, living here given they have had to move this far out, for affordable housing.
[I mean, Sydney rents for just a bedsitter, are currently more than a single pension?]
I would offset that enlarged generosity, with a much more ridged assets test, which must finally include the family home!
Rhrosty.

Actually this budget is indeed the sum of its parts. The Coalition has manufactured a phoney budget 'crisis' and has revealed its commitment to increased inequality by attacking people on lower incomes and undermining the so-called 'socialised' health system.
If there were indeed a genuine fiscal crisis, taxes would be raised and middle class welfare eliminated, instead the real agenda is the destruction of social democracy.

The "budget crisis" is crap.

I'm adding to James' comment about "lies and broken promises" being the norm for politicians.

What an alarming steady erosion of the moral values on which our society is formed when telling a lie can become an accepted norm!
Any attempt to argue for or against an idea demands supporting facts - the truth - not opinion reinforced by lies.

The credibity of our smarmy patronising prime minister is shot to hell by a huge doubt which surrounds any statement he makes, irrespective of whether it is a "core' or "non-core" promise.

Truth and honesty are the components of the social contracts expressed in electioneering.
Major beneficiaries of lies and flasehoods will be the advertising media companies which will be used, and over-used, in increasingly saturated, strident attempts to convince the public of the truth of lies.
What a diminution of the concept of a man's being as good as his word.
Let's shake on it.

Well you have to give them points for guts, the same type of guts that Howard showed when he took the very unpopular GST to an election.

They could have done a Labor. Bought some votes with handouts booked up on the credit card. Hell that cost wouldn't come home to roost before they have retired.

They could have tried to get their name into history, with fool projects like the NBN, or the National Disability Insurance Scheme, but they resisted.

Instead they went about half as far as needed in reining in runaway expenditure, & stuck their necks out to be chopped off. It will certainly say a lot about Ozzies when we see their ultimate reaction at an election.

Will they dig more dirt out of the debt hole Labor created that is their kids grave, or will they forgo a few handouts & fill in the hole, to put a decent foundation under their kids future. It will be interesting to see what we have become, with all the recent additions to the population.

I guess this is about all the repair work we will get from them this term. We need much more of the same medicine. If we reelect Labor we will know we just don't care about our kids future, & that are just hoping we don't become the Greece of the South Pacific before we pass on.

Good luck with that folks. I hope we have stock piled those people smugglers boats, we just might need them for all those financial refugees to use again, to search for somewhere with better prospects. Six more years of the previous & current Labor attitude will have them desperate to get back to Indonesia

Hasbeen, I suspect that the repair work is counter productive.

Sooner or later Labor will get back in, it's clear from the attitude of many here (and history) that Labor and their supporters are generally keen on far higher levels of government debt than Coalition voters generally are. They will run the debt up again at the same time retaining the extra tax/charges hits on those who actually work (or self fund).

Wondering if there is any benefit in trying to get government debt down while so many are so determined that government debt is a good thing (mostly those who I suspect find ways of avoiding the consequences of higher taxes etc themselves).

R0bert

RObert,

From the comments I have read, I don't think people support the idea of running up bigger and bigger debts. Our taxes have to pay for the interest, after all, and it diverts money from other things that we want. What they object to are the lies and the unfairness, because low and middle income earners are being squeezed hard and permanently by the budget, while the impact on high income earners is modest and temporary.

For just one example where the Abbott government could have made cuts, there is the cost of superannuation tax concessions:

"The age pension currently costs $39 billion and superannuation tax concessions will cost the budget around $35 billion in 2013-14. These concessions are projected to rise to $50.7 billion in 2016-17, an increase of around 12 per cent per annum. By this time superannuation tax concessions will be the single largest area of government expenditure. The overwhelming majority of this assistance flows to high income earners. Low income earners receive virtually no benefit."

http://www.tai.org.au/content/sustaining-us-all-retirement

The Australia Institute calculates that it would be far cheaper to eliminate the superannuation tax concessions and just have a universal non-means-tested pension, even at a higher rate. Fears that the better off would stop saving are ridiculous, as they would want a far better standard of living in retirement than can be afforded on the pension.