Treasurer Scott Morrison admits there is no quick fix to a budget surplus, likening it to a cricket Test match rather than a Twenty20 bash.
"There are budgets and budgets and budgets and budgets required to fix that problem," he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
He also emphasised in his first address to the club since becoming treasurer that without the $30 billion from raising the GST to 15 per cent, tax relief for income earners would be modest.
Three months out from his pre-election budget, he said there must be spending cuts to be able to cut income taxes.
Treasury modelling shows if nothing is done to counter bracket creep - where middle income earners will be pushed into higher tax brackets just through wage inflation - the average tax rate will rise from 24.4 per cent to 26.6 per cent by 2020/21.
That would wipe 0.55 per cent off economic growth.
Mr Morrison described it as "a job killer, a growth killer".
He echoed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's comments from a day earlier that a hike in the GST would not be taken to the election, saying "the time is not right".
But that does scale down what the government can do to tackle bracket creep.
He said when there isn't a surplus you need to look at spending cuts and other tax measures to fund personal income tax cuts.
"You are looking at far more modest measures," he said.
Otherwise, his address was light on specifics, saying all would be revealed in three months' time.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described the address as "very waffly".
"It takes real skill to talk for an hour and say nothing," Mr Shorten told reporters in Perth.
"Today was D-Day for Scott Morrison, you don't turn up at the National Press Club with just the same old, same old ... what are their plans?"
Chief executive of accounting body CPA Australia Alex Malley said controlling costs is not the only solution when revenue growth is shrinking at "alarming rates".
"A meaningful response to the revenue problem would require strategic tax reform but it is now clear we'll get no such reform, as was promised," he told AAP.
KPMG tax partner Grant Wardell-Johnson agreed that tax reform is "essential sooner rather than later".
He said it was unfortunate that GST reform has been taken off the table because it is the only way to get sufficient revenue to make other necessary tax cuts.
"But it needs to be done by addressing the tax system in its entirety," he said.
Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke said at a time when governments around the world are struggling to raise funds to provide the basic services people need, Australia's focus should be on properly clamping down on corporate tax avoidance and tax evasion.
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