Fed-up voters see the Coalition as losers – the budget was the PM’s attempt to win them back
• Federal budget 2019: follow live updates
• Morrison splashes the cash in final election sell to the suburbs
• Federal budget 2019: follow live updates
• Morrison splashes the cash in final election sell to the suburbs
Scott Morrison’s first budget as treasurer in 2016, also a
pre-election budget, offered nothing for families earning between
$37,000 and $80,000. Zip. Zilch. Zero.
This was a bold strategy given pre-election budgets generally focus on Australians in this income group because voters in this cohort tend to determine the outcome of federal election contests.
History shows the story of the federal election of 2016 was the government’s near catastrophic failure to speak to the well-founded anxieties of middle Australians enduring wages stagnation and economic insecurity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
We know how that story ended. The Coalition, favourites to win, came within a whisker of losing.This was a bold strategy given pre-election budgets generally focus on Australians in this income group because voters in this cohort tend to determine the outcome of federal election contests.
History shows the story of the federal election of 2016 was the government’s near catastrophic failure to speak to the well-founded anxieties of middle Australians enduring wages stagnation and economic insecurity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
Morrison will start the coming election campaign further behind politically than Malcolm Turnbull did in 2016, so he can’t afford to repeat the past mistake of declaring (as he did, courageously, in 2016) that voters, when assessing budgets, had moved on from the “old way of looking at winners and losers”.
The prime minister knows that many fed-up voters are looking at the Coalition, already, as losers.
Morrison has to turn around those perceptions, and fast, if he’s to have any hope of still being in The Lodge by the end of May.
So let’s cut to the chase. With the up-front tax relief promised in Tuesday night’s budget, the prime minister is reaching out to workers, principally, workers on taxable incomes of $90,000 and below, making them winners, in the hope that he won’t be a loser.
More than 4 million workers earning between $50,000 and $90,000 will get a cash rebate between $1,080 and $1,215 after they submit their tax returns in a few months’ time courtesy of Josh Frydenberg’s first budget as treasurer, and Morrison’s first as prime minister. Well, they’ll get the rebate if they re-elect the Coalition. The government isn’t proposing to even try to legislate the move this side of the poll.
If we look a bit further down the track, the “Morrison’s bold pitch for middle Australia” story changes. While Tuesday night’s budget largesse, which is actually campaign largesse, is targeted squarely at low and middle-income earners, once the Coalition’s long-term tax reform plans start to kick in, the benefit flows to workers higher up the income scale.
But before we extrapolate too far ahead (and why bother, because I’m not sure the government is thinking any further than about six weeks ahead right at this moment) we need to unpack why Morrison is making the particular pitch he’s making.
The Coalition needs to try and convince voters currently inclined to lodge a protest vote not to do that. Morrison needs to boost the Coalition’s primary vote. To do that, to convince a disaffected voter currently inclined to give you a kicking not to do that, Morrison first has to recognise you exist, and then feel your pain. Your mortgage stress. Your power bills. Your frustration at being stuck in traffic (new commuter car park anyone?)
In addition to “no marginal outer suburban marginal electorate will be denied a commuter car park and a fist full of dollars”, Morrison is offering some more funding for health, mental health and aged care in an effort to blunt a gathering Labor ground offensive on funding for services.
Speaking of Labor, Tuesday night’s tax cut from the government is basically what the opposition is offering voters. Morrison has had to eliminate the point of difference.
When the government bowled up a cash rebate in last year’s budget ($530 for 4.4 million taxpayers on incomes between $48,000 and $90,000), Labor promised by the end of budget week to double it.
Morrison and Frydenberg are hoping that by minimising their differences with Labor on services and tax cuts with electoral appeal, they will able to focus voters’ attention on the taxes Labor is proposing to increase. The budget is both preparation and dress rehearsal for those election campaign lines.
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