What's New in the 2016 Budget?

Last night, Treasurer Scott Morrison handed down the 2016 Budget, and it was a budget of some sharp contrasts. After nearly seven months in the job, Morrison was still stuck between a rock and a hard place. And both of those things were former Treasurer Joe Hockey.

Morrison remains in a tricky position. He has to both run on the track record of his predecessor, and simultaneously distance himself from Hockey. If he fails to do either of these completely opposite things, he'd be leapt on from all sides, and particularly by Abbott loyalists who are still lurking in the shadows like persistent Stannis Baratheon followers. God, it's good to have Thrones back.

On Monday, by any measure the day before the Budget, Morrison made a small but significant stumble. In Parliament Question Time, he confidently claimed it was two days until the Budget. Labor front benchers pointed out it was only one day, while Morrison committed to his claim by listing Monday and Tuesday as two days, even though Monday was basically over at that point. Seeing him double down on what was clearly a mistake in simple arithmetic did not inspire confidence in the man in charge of the country's finances. Luckily, by Morrison's own measurement, he had an entire day left of Question Time to address his error.

By Tuesday night though, he'd sorted his rhetoric. And it was the same rhetoric that comes in every Budget: a speech that vaguely refers to innovation, investment, tax relief, and living within our means. A paperclip icon with Peter Costello's face soon popped up in the corner of the screen. "I see you are trying to deliver a Budget speech. Would you like help with that?"

Then we got to the meat of it. And if you're a small business, you had a very good night.

Small businesses will now enjoy a tax rate of 27.5 percent, one that is expected to drop to 25 percent over the following years. The previous threshold to qualify as a small business was an annual turnover of $2 million. That's been quintupled to $10 million. Even the word "small" is suffering from inflation.

But this was only the beginning of the tax cuts. First, they gave them to the small businesses. Then, the mid-sized businesses. Then, the big businesses. Morrison's big fail here was not delivering this news in Al Pacino's Scarface voice.

The government's hope is that these businesses will reinvest their profits in jobs and provide a boost to the economy. But this is not a plan that's born out by Treasury, which in 2014 ran a model showing that corporate tax cuts lead primarily to profits for companies in the short term, then profits to companies in the medium term, then finally a 0.3 percent boost to wages over the very long term.

These cuts will be offset by a targeting of higher-end tax evaders. Multinational tax evaders will be targeted, as will wealthy retirees who have been enjoying tax-free superannuation.

The ABC has suffered a cut of $20 million, which is going to sting. It will likely cut into the Enhanced Newsgathering Program, which bolstered regional reporting, local digital news, and the Fact Check unit. And the First Tuesday Book Club will now have to share a paperback each month.

Smokers will also be hit hard, with four annual rises of 12.5 percent in the tobacco excise. By 2020, almost 70 percent of the cost of a cigarette pack will be going to the government. And in 10 years, a carton of smokes should single-handedly pay down the national debt. Smokers, do your duty. But do it downwind.

If you're on a $80,000 per annum wage, and you're nervous about your boss trying to force a pay rise on you, then A) fuck you a little bit, and B) good news! The middle income tax bracket has increased to $87,000. Although, defining 80 grand as "middle" is also pushing the definition of that word: the ABS puts the actual average individual wage at less than $60,000. But still, more power to you.

Ultimately, this was a Budget that was blisteringly aware that it was the prologue to an election campaign. There was a hell of a lot riding on it. Gone was the austerity of Joe Hockey's 2014 "Hey, we just won an election, we don't gotta give you nothin'!" halcyon Budget. Every announcement from Morrison was carefully designed to deflect anticipated attacks from Labor. There was funding announced for science, health, and education, but these were all designed to (partially) offset all the funding that the government had stripped from those all sectors over the past two years.

But did Morrison's speech itself restore the faith that he'd lost when he forgot, just the day before the Budget, the difference between "one" and "two"? Maybe not. The best line of the night went to this oxymoron: "We must try new approaches, not just keep doing the same old thing. And we must keep trying until we get it right."

This government, which is trying to both run on and run from Abbott's legacy at the same time, wants us to know that the only way forward is to do things that have never done before. And to do them over, and over, and over again.

If that isn't Continuity With Change, I don't know what is.

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