FED:Finishing touches to frugal budget

AAP General News (Australia)
04-29-2011
FED:Finishing touches to frugal budget

By Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer

CANBERRA, April 29 AAP - As Julia Gillard and other official guests at the royal wedding
enjoyed a lavish feast, her treasurer was back home cooking up meagre morsels for lesser
mortals.

The "wedding of the century", as it has been billed, is soon to be followed by a more
austere affair - the federal budget.

May 10 is a crucial date for the government.

The opposition has largely been successful in portraying the government as uncaring
about cost-of-living pressures, and poised to impose even greater burdens including the
flood levy and carbon tax.

Tony Abbott has spent two months touring the nation, election-style, drumming up a
"people's revolt" over the carbon tax and other imposts on their hip-pockets.

The federal budget presents a key opportunity for Labor to turn this around but with
just over a week until the document is released, it is looking unlikely.

The coalition remains in an election-winning lead in the polls and a recent survey
has shed light on why.

An Essential Media report showed Labor's main attributes were "will promise anything
to win votes" (63 per cent), "divided" (66 per cent) and "out of touch with ordinary people"

(61 per cent).

These attributes have significantly worsened since Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd
as prime minister.

But all is not rosy for the Liberals.

The same survey put the conservative party's main attributes as "will promise anything
to win votes" (65 per cent) and "too close to the big corporate and financial interest"

(60 per cent).

The treasurer and prime minister have been pitching the budget as delivering "tough"

cuts to spending necessary to ease pressure on inflation and secure a budget surplus,
overhauling welfare payments to get more people off the dole and into work and providing
vital services and infrastructure.

Their focus is not so much on it being a vote-buying budget - being less than a year
since the election - but putting in place the right settings for an economy on the cusp
of another mining boom and rebuilding from the summer natural disasters, with a serious
skills shortage and an astoundingly high dollar.

It is expected the government will introduce new caps, eligibility rules and thresholds
for payments to make savings from the $130 billion it spends on welfare and health schemes.

Welfare groups met this week in Canberra to send a message to the government that the
poor deserve a better deal and putting the boot in may only worsen their situation.

But employers are on side with the government, saying there are jobs to be had and
properly targeted training and counselling programs could get people off the dole queues
quicker and into work.

The success of another part of the budget, the recovery from the summer of natural
disasters, could pay dividends for Labor, while also being important for the economy.

Being a former Queensland ALP campaign director, and with Premier Anna Bligh facing
an election within 12 months, Swan knows how important it is to get this right.

Over the Easter break when he was acting prime minister, Swan set up his office in
the north Queensland tourist capital of Cairns which was hit by Cyclone Yasi.

He says it gave him the opportunity to not only read Treasury briefing papers on his
iPad as he took a boat trip to the reef, but talk to locals.

"The tourism industry up there has had a very tough time of it lately with the cyclone,
coming on top of the impacts of the high Australian dollar and cautious domestic consumers,"

he told AAP.

"And at the same time you've got booming mining towns not far away.

"Each budget I've delivered has been in quite different circumstances, and Cairns was
a really appropriate setting for the final stages of this budget's preparation."

While shoring up confidence in Labor in a state held by the party for the best part
of two decades will be important, the government will need to do more to secure the long-term
trust of the nation.

As governments before it have seen, voters are fair weather friends and are not wedded
to particular parties.

AAP pjo/sb/dep/de

KEYWORD: NEWSCOPE FEDERAL (AAP NEWS ANALYSIS)

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