A Vainglorious PM’s Bankrupt Budget

For the past few weeks in Canberra, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been congratulating himself on how well the budget has been received. No one in the Coalition party room has yet chosen to contradict him, but that doesn’t mean he’s right.

In the wider community, the budget has been a non-event because there was nothing much in it for voters: neither wins nor losses. The handouts were all for vested interests: public schools, doctors, and the states. The new taxes were either delayed, in the case of the Medicare levy; or imposed on everyone’s favourite villain, the banks.

Among convinced Coalition supporters, though, the budget has been worse than a failure; it’s been a betrayal. Liberal Party supporters and donors at the traditional budget night fund-raisers were all shaking their heads in bewilderment at a Labor budget delivered by a Liberal government, with big new taxes, big new spending, and big new bureaucracies.

As a policy U-turn, this budget is the…