(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Families, small business and young people wanting to enter the workforce are the big winners in Treasurer Joe Hockey's second budget.
The government has sought to undo the damage done in its unpopular first budget which made unexpected large cuts to health education and welfare.
It has scrapped unpopular plans like indexing the pension to inflation, while announcing tax cuts for small business and a multi-billion dollar childcare package which will leave most parents better off.
Amanda Cavill reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
The government has played it safe this year announcing almost every single measure in the 2015 budget ahead of time.
As expected, the centrepiece of of the 2015 budget is a package aimed at small business, including tax cuts and spending sweeteners.
All small businesses will be encouraged to spend and can immediately claim a tax deduction on every single work-related item they purchase up to a value of $20,000.
Joe Hockey says he wants small business to help rebuild Australia's fortunes.
"We want them to have a go. Small business is going to be the engine room of innovation. It's going to be the engine room of new jobs. And when you can have businesses in this world that were small businesses, start ups just a few years ago and suddenly become the great disrupters of the global economy. We have that capacity as well in Australia and we've just got to give people the chance. And that's exactly what we are doing."
The Treasurer has forecast a $35.1 billion deficit, saying Australia's budget position is getting stronger each and every year and he anticipates the deficit will reduce to $7 billion within three years.
But Mr Hockey says there's still work to do.
"I would love to do more, I would love to do more but we've got to get the balance right between the needs of the economy and importantly continuing with a credible path to fiscal consolidation which is half a per cent a year over the forward estimates which is pretty similar to last year."
The budget also contains a raft of smaller measures.
Unemployed people have won a backdown on one of the most contentious measures from last year's budget - the six-month wait for people under 30 to access benefits.
Now people under 25 to will have to wait for four weeks and actively seek work before receiving Newstart.
This year's budget also includes a jobs package to encourage the vulnerable and young into work including young migrants.
The Youth Employment Strategy worth $330 million dollars will target people who are disengaged from the workforce.
This includes intensive support trials for young people with mental health issues and vulnerable young migrants.
And the government says it will increase the number of places available within Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program over the next four years.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says the intake will remain steady at just under 14,000 places in the 2016-17 financial year growing to just under 19,000 places in 2018-19.
Labor has labelled the budget a short-sighted attempt to save Prime Minister Tony Abbott's job.
Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen says the deficit has been doubled by the coalition government within one year.
Mr Bowen says Labor would like to be able to take a bi-partisan approach to the budget but the fundamental unfairness of what he calls last year's budget disaster remains.
"All Australians would want the Opposition and Government working together on areas where there can be genuine bipartisan agreement. But Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott think genuine bipartisan agreement is everybody else agreeing with them with their unfair cuts. I mean he unfairness and prejudice of the last Budget remains in this. There is only two measures that have been dropped, like the $80 billion worth of health and education cuts. The $100,000 university degrees and the cuts to family tax benefits are still in this Budget. We won't be supporting those measures."
Greens leader Richard Di Natale is angry Joe Hockey's second effort doesn't address climate change or take new revenue from the big end of town.
Senator Di Natale says the government has ignored many crucial issues.
"I just think it's a budget that is silent on all the challenges that we need to face. It's silent on climate change, it's silent on big environmental challenges. It's silent on the issue of revenue. I mean we've got a revenue problem at the moment and it's a budget that tries to introduce some really important spending measures. For example the childcare package. There's some good stuff in that but it links it to cuts to single mums."
And some welfare recipients will continue to have their benefits quarantined to food and essentials under an extension of the income management scheme.
The federal government has allocated $146 million in the budget to extend the scheme for another two years until June, 2017.
The scheme limits welfare spending to priority needs such as rent, food, bills and education and prohibits spending on alcohol, cigarettes or gambling.
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