A Turnbull government frontbencher says keeping spending growth to its lowest in decades hasn't been enough to return the budget surplus.
Assistant minister for cities and digital transformation Angus Taylor says that's why the government had to stoop to tax increases, such as the bank levy, in this month's budget.
"It's a second-best solution, but it is one you have to do under theses sort of circumstances," Mr Taylor told Sky News on Sunday.
He said spending growth under the coalition was now below two per cent, slower than under Labor and even the previous Liberal-Nationals government under John Howard.
"The nature of the economic situation at the moment is that is still not good enough to get us back to surplus," Mr Taylor said.
While he would like to see spending growth restrained further to one per cent, he said the government had to deal with a Senate that was more interested in "grievance than government".
As such, the government had to find ways to contain spending without controversial legislation, such as compliance savings in welfare, combating fraud and using better technology.
"We need to keep finding ways of doing that. Everything is easy in hindsight, perhaps we should have been doing more of that from 2013," he said, referring to when the coalition came to power under Tony Abbott.
The budget has been labelled "Labor-lite" by some commentators because of the inclusion of the bank levy, the proposal to raise the Medicare levy in two years time to help fund the national disability insurance scheme, and increased schools funding.
But opposition frontbencher Richard Marles disagrees, insisting the government has still cut schools funding by $22 billion compared to what Labor had promised and that the Medicare levy should be targeted at rich people rather than across the board.
He said the result of this budget sees millionaires getting a tax cut by virtue of the removal of the deficit levy while the additional Medicare levy would see those on less than average weekly earnings getting a tax increase.
"That's just not fair," Mr Marles told Sky News.
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