…and all through The House (and Senate), plenty was stirring.

Remember last budget? What a horror-show – but what a great response from the Australian public. It was ‘on for young and old’ and people made their voices heard, spooking the Coalition backbench and leading to a crisis for Abbott’s leadership.

This year, Abbott and Hockey are coming at the Budget with a new strategy, designed to quiet those voices. It will be a ‘dull’, ‘kinder’ budget, we’re told. But make no mistake; the underlying ideology is still there, and healthcare, the pension and education are just as much in the firing line.

But with your support, The Australia Institute is shifting the national Budget conversation.

• Changing the Budget Conversation
• Join TAI in the Budget Lockup
• Negative Gearing and Rent – Facts Fight Back
• TAI in the Media

Changing the Budget Conversation

The creation of the ‘Budget Emergency’ narrative by the Coalition was coupled with an alleged cause: runaway spending. In the wake of the Commission of Audit, The Australia Institute began the long task of educating media and politicians about the revenue side of the budget picture.

If you want to change the debate it helps to have the facts on your side. The budget deficit is caused mainly by a fall in revenue not an increase in spending. Cutting spending to match historically low levels of revenue is an attempt to push small government rather than make the budget ‘sustainable’.

Commissioned by GetUp!, The Australia Institute produced a major report outlining how to raise $19.5 billion without cutting pensions, taxing fresh food or any other regressive measure. It’s the revenue stupid included the following options for tax reforms:

• Reforming negative gearing & capital gains tax concessions
• A ‘Buffett Rule’, and
• Ending the super tax concessions for the wealthy

These revenue measures not only raise revenue from those who can most afford it, they also fix distortions in the tax system.

• The Buffett rule prevents very high income earners from bypassing the progressive income tax system, setting an effective minimum tax rate.
• Restricting negative gearing to new housing stock only and scrapping of the CGT discount takes speculators out of the property market and will make homes more affordable to buy and to rent.
• Reforms to super tax concessions tackle its distortions, changing it from a tax avoidance measure for high income earners to a policy that will actually take pressure off pensions and the budget.

The budget is about always about choices. The government can choose to raise revenue or it can choose to cut spending to hospitals and schools, pensions and the homeless, crisis accommodation and legal advice for women fleeing domestic violence. But every time it cuts spending it is making a choice. It is choosing to protect the tax concessions of high income earners and instead cut funding to the disadvantaged. The Government may say that there is no choice, but in reality budgets are full of them.

The Australia Institute has been working with GetUp! to change the conversation. And it’s working:

Social Media ‘Buzz’: Expenditure vs Revenue calculated by Meltwater Inc:

Join TAI in the Budget Lockup

At 11:30am on Tuesday 12^th of May, journalists enter the ‘Budget Lockup’. Mobile phones are confiscated and strict communication blackout rules are enforced. Economists from The Australia Institute, including Richard Denniss, Matt Grudnoff and Dave Richardson will be in the 2015 Budget Lockup.

We’d like to take you into the lockup with us. So if you’d like to send through your biggest concern for us to keep an eye out for, let us know here. We’ll provide you with a blow-by-blow account, including your issues, as well as the bits that the Treasurer doesn’t want to talk about.

Facts Fight Back – Negative Gearing and Rent

The Australia Institute’s Facts Fight Back took on Joe Hockey’s claim that Negative Gearing pushes up rents. Check the facts here.

TAI in the media

Canberra Times – Joe Hockey’s budget message puree

The Drum – Here’s a path to surplus that doesn’t gouge the poor

The Australian – Reverse call on negative gearing

AGE/SMH/AFR – Tax the rich and save the budget $19.5b a year, The Australia Institute urges

The Drum TV – Ben Oquist on the new Green leadership

Newcastle Herald – Subsidy by another name

ABC Overnight Radio – Matt Grudnoff on Negative Gearing