Joe Hockey has ruled out the possibility of an early election after Independent Senator Nick Xenophon questioned whether the budget's small-business 'sweeteners' were designed with one in mind.
Speaking after the budget was delivered last night, Senator Xenophon said the government had "retreated from some of their harsher measures,” in this budget and offered "enough sweetners" for an early election.
"I think the Government is leaving their options open to go to an election by the end of this year," he told the ABC.
But Joe Hockey this morning said there was no plan for an early election.
"We're doing what’s right for Australia. We never sat down and said, 'Let's have an early election'," he said.
Senate challenge
Meanwhile Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm was critical of the government's figures.
"They're talking about returning to surplus in 2019-20. That's highly contingent on a whole lot of questionable assumptions and they're also assuming that some of the measures are already looking shaky in the Senate and are not going to get through,” he said.
Senator Leyonhjelm said Australia's economy would not be able to return to surplus at this rate.
"That's highly contingent on a whole lot of questionable assumptions."
"We are suffering seriously from bracket creep. We're going to have low and middle income earners paying high rates of tax, ” he said. “Frankly, I don't think they're going to get away with it - either side of government - no matter who's in power, [they] won't cop the kind of tax rates that we're going to have to have.
"Last year they had a serious go at returning to surplus. They got knocked back in the Senate on a lot of stuff but at least they had a go last year. This year they're not even trying."
Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie said the measures formed a "Jekyll and Hyde budget."
"I love the small-business measures however [Joe Hockey] is going to spoil it if he doesn't leave the family tax B alone because a lot of that family tax B is for lower-income families and they spend it in their local communities in small business,” she said.
“So I think that unless he leaves that family tax B there, there's going to be a problem with that.
"I didn't see anything on higher education. I found that quite daunting. I think that it's very important that we educate our kids for the future and I think that there's still missed opportunities where we could have saved money."
'A budget for an early election'
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has accused the government of creating a budget for an early election rather than for the future of Australia.
"They haven't done it for life in the 2020s," the opposition leader told Sky News.
"They've done this budget to save Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey's job, they haven't done it to look at jobs of other Australians."
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