For all the complexity of the budget papers and pious theatre of the lock up, the Morrison government’s final throw of the political dice had a single objective: converting tax cuts into votes.
With enthusiastic amplification from its legates in the Murdoch press the “cash splash” would blind a disillusioned electorate who, devoid of any greater sense of purpose, would settle for “tax relief” (as it is so odiously framed in conservative quarters).
To be fair, “free money” has worked as a political strategy in the past. The Howard government built its success on recycling investment in our social fabric into direct cash payments, giving a cynical electorate something concrete to hold on to.
But despite some margin of error triumphalism over at the Australian, the first round of post-budget polling suggests any budget rise is, at best, flaccid. Tuesday’s Essential Guardian poll has barely moved; Labor remains in the same election winning range it has occupied for the past two and a half years.
Behind these top-line figures there is a wealth of data that suggests that confronted with this budget, voters are wallowing in a gumbo of competing responses – self-interest, cynicism and a sense of fairness.
This is not to say that in general terms the budget hasn’t been well-received, with a majority of respondents say they approve – the best reception to a federal budget since the Coalition took power in 2013 and significantly better than the previous two efforts.
But it’s below this surface satisfaction that questions begin to emerge, with far fewer people (just one quarter) seeing the budget good for them personally. Even with the promised tax rebates from 1 July and longer term flattening of the tax rates for higher income earners, the majority of even high income earners see the personal impact of the budget as neutral.
This reluctance to convert broad approval into a personal investment in the product can be read in a few ways.
The first interpretation is that in an age of disengagement with politics and distrust of our public institutions, the public sees the budget as just more cynical positioning. A series of statements around the budget reinforces this theory with a strong majority questioning the government’s motives and accepting to an extent the government’s own narrative that the budget is actually a re-election document.
But there’s an alternative story embedded in the bottom line of this table that suggests there is another reason for the budget’s lack of political salience, embedded in the two major complications to the government’s sales effort last week.
First, the long-term plan to introduce a flat 32% tax to higher income earners delivers much larger savings to higher income earners, who unsurprisingly are more likely to embrace the end result. Juxtaposed to this are the revelations that the budget surplus and, by implications, the capacity to offer tax cuts come at the expense of a $1.6bn underspend in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
These responses help to explain why despite the generally positive reviews only a few respondents say the budget even “might have an influence” on the way they vote.
Perhaps the real truth of this year’s budget is that for all its noise and fury, the federal budget stands consigned to just another photo-op that reinforces in voters what they already want to see. If you value the idea of economic management, you will see a government doing its job; if you want to see a government that invests the national wealth in services, you will be looking for an alternative.
At least when it comes to maintaining the political equilibrium, the treasurer may have actually delivered a balanced budget.
• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and a Guardian Australia columnist
