This year's budget looks good because last year's was so bad ("Abbott's budget bounce", May 18). The measures to stimulate small business and to provide fairer childcare funding are to be welcomed, and the federal government deserves appropriate commendation for responding to public opinion. But we must also remember that many aspects of last year's draconian budget are still in place — $80 billion cut from funding for schools and hospitals, drastic cuts to community support agencies, the proposed "reform" of the university system, etc. The jump in support for the government may indicate the first symptoms of collective amnesia.

Rob Phillips North Epping

Why is more not being made of Tony Abbott's broken promise to the Australian electorate? Tony Abbott went to the election with a specific paid parental leave scheme — his "signature policy". Did he sign this promise in invisible ink? Is this broken promise the true sign of contempt in which he and his party hold women's rights?

Stephen Bowhill Manly

Well at least the Herald editorial seems pleased with the government's "fair and economically responsible budget" ("Budget reversal passes the fairness test," May 18).

Because community legal service providers, the Australian Medical Association, young people waiting to access Youth Allowance (with support from cranky Nationals), women seeking action on domestic violence and those of us desperate for real climate change policies are less than satisfied.

Mark Paskal​ Clovelly

Does the Coalition's second budget pass the "fairness test"? A moment's reflection on the major stimulus measure in the budget — the $5.5 billion small business allocation for tax relief with its wide-open scope for tax rorts and exporting jobs through spending on imports — should be set against an opportunity to deal with possibly Australia's greatest social problem: the difficulty for low and middle-income earners to buy or rent their first home. 

If the $5.5 billion had been spent on building homes for rental or purchase it could have built around 22,000 homes, assuming the government provided them at cost. It would therefore have made a major contribution to solving this huge social problem. But it would also have provided a far greater economic stimulus with a more substantial increase in employment with little export leakage and much greater multiplier effects. However, it might have been less immediately popular politically.

As employment increased and therefore unemployment payments declined and tax revenue rose it would likely pay for itself. 

Harold Levien Dover Heights

Peter Hartcher has missed two more essential lessons that Tony Abbott has just learned from his predecessors ("Tony Abbott is the Steve Jobs of the Political World", smh.com.au, May 18) . There are plenty of votes to be won in crass cash handouts and there are lots of voters with short memories. Peter Costello used the same old trick of appealing to short-term self interest with handouts in the form of tax cuts to keep John Howard in government when Treasury was receiving shiploads of money from an unprecedented natural resources boom.

During the Howard years a golden opportunity to finance much needed infrastructure in transport, health, science and education for our future was sadly ignored and Australia is much the poorer for it.

Tony Abbott is in the same mould.

Bruce Spence Balmain

Are we that easily bought? 

Robert Pallister Punchbowl

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/poll-a-sign-of-an-electorate-with-amnesia-20150518-gh45a3.html

See toon at top

The budget seems to have miraculously achieved what it set out to do: restore the political fortunes of the Prime Minister and Treasurer. It's done so by playing upon a couple of popular myths and carefully targeting some spending.

The way Peter Hartcher figures it, the $10 billion headlined on the small-business package and childcare reform works out  to be about $16,700 a  vote won by these initiatives. 

Little wonder then that Nikki Savva, conservative commentator and Peter Costello's chief of staff when he was treasurer, put it thus on the ABC's Insiders yesterday: The budget was a political document, it was not an economic document.

Aside from the absolute stupidity of accusing new mothers of rorting and fraud when they were doing no more or perhaps less than the Assistant Treasurer and Finance Minister had done, one way or another, the politics clearly worked.

That was mainly because the tabloid media and some who should know better swallowed the "Tony's Tradies" line about the small-business tax cut and cash splash that would pump prime the economy.

Well, maybe, but probably not a lot. Ross Gittins has already nailed the budget lock-up media circus and put the small-business impact in perspective.

How the politics of it work, though, is largely thanks to two popular myths  – small business drives the economy and small business is doing it tough.

The reality is that small business is important, but no more so than medium or big business. Small business is just part of what drives the economy. It's arguable that it's more along for the ride than providing the bulk horsepower.

Secondly, some small businesses are, of course, doing it tough, they always are as the Darwinian nature of capitalism has its way, but by no means is small business per se in trouble.

Start-ups mostly are by the very nature of start-ups and most fail. 

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/small-business-myths-work-budget-miracles-20150518-gh42qq.html