Budget 2015: Are we looking at an election budget?

By ABC's Barrie Cassidy Tuesday 12 May 2015

Photo: Coalition MPs worried about losing their seats will like this budget a lot more than the last. (AAP: Sam Mooy)

The imperative now for the Government - after a miserable 12 months - is to get back in the political game. As a political document, this budget just might work, writes Barrie Cassidy.

If you take the view that three years is a reasonable timeframe in which to deal with an emergency, then Joe Hockey has just produced a credible budget.

And you need to embrace as well some heroic assumptions that lead to a budget deficit of just $7 billion three years from now.

All this while Australia's economic growth barely flat lines for two years and those of our major trading partners gather pace.

We have known for months now that this was going to be a retreat from a full on assault on the debt and deficit "crisis"; that major structural reform was on the back burner. But still, boldness to boredom in a single year was a bit of a stretch.

The document was so different to last year that journalists in the lockup were asking each other what Joe Hockey would have said had this been introduced by Wayne Swan. Presumably another socialist document that ignored reality.

The imperative now though for the Government - after a miserable 12 months - is to get back in the political game, and as a political document, this budget just might work.

The Coalition, after all, trails on average across the polls by just four points - 48 to 52 per cent, two-party preferred. A budget that stabilises the situation - and maybe even gives a bit of a kick - will be of great comfort to a government that was on its knees embroiled in a leadership crisis just three months ago.

Still the government is asking a lot of the electorate to accept that the numbers outlined in the budget by themselves represent a credible and believable return to surplus and that China will not falter and throw all calculations out of kilter.

That's partly why it feels like the last budget before the next election. That is not to suggest an imminent election or even one this year - but there has to be at least a 50-50 chance now of one before May next year.

In the meantime though ministers will need to do a whole lot better in the coming weeks and months than they did in the 48 hours before the budget was released.

Putting out a child care policy paid for with money they most likely will never raise was one snag. And then accusing mothers who simply took advantage of two complementary parental leave schemes of "fraudulent" behaviour was another.

One thing is certain: a host of Coalition MPs desperately worried about losing their seats will like this budget a lot more than the last.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a weekly column for The Drum.

Budget 2015: Are we looking at an election budget? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)