The federal government has been taken to task by key crossbench senators for a confused budget sales job, as Prime Minister Tony Abbott signalled a compromise deal on the $7 GP co-payment could be in the offing to ease the burden on pensioners.
The Prime Minister's comments came as the government shifted its budget narrative away from one of ''crisis'' and as it released modelling that showed only about $20 billion of $1.9 trillion of expenses over four years contained in the budget had not been passed.
Treasurer Joe Hockey stressed that most of the day-to-day budget had passed the Parliament. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said that budget negotiations would be a ''marathon, not a sprint'' and called for a ''reality check''.
But NSW Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon - both of whom could provide key votes to help ease the passage of up to $40 billion in contentious savings measures - questioned the change in political tactics from the Abbott government's key economic salesmen.
Senator Leyonhjelm said he believed there was a budget emergency but it was not time critical: ''It doesn't have to be fixed in the next two weeks - it has to be the next six months or so.''
In a letter to other crossbench senators, he backed the Abbott government's proposed spending cuts and said they should go further.
But he said Mr Hockey's warnings of a budget emergency - and even the threat last week of Queensland-style austerity measures if the budget did not pass - had gone too far.
''I think Joe was probably trying to sell the size of the problem and, in hindsight, he could have sold it a different way,'' he said.
Senator Xenophon said the government's rhetoric had clearly changed and that ''even two days ago it was on life support; now it's on a banana lounge in the Haymans instead.
''Political reality has set in, it's up to the crossbench to come up with some sensitive alternative savings. We do have structural problems but the government has gagged on its rhetoric.''
On Tuesday, Mr Abbott stood firm on the need for a $7 payment but hinted at where the government could compromise.
''We don't exempt pensioners from a PBS [Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme] co-payment,'' he told Brisbane radio. ''Their co-payment is normally a little less than the co-payment that the public faces.
''So if we don't exempt pensioners from the PBS co-payment, why should they be entirely exempted from the Medicare co-payment?''
In a shift of rhetoric, Mr Hockey said the government was ''dealing with the structural things that are going to strengthen our economy and ensure that we can maintain, maybe even improve our quality of life into the future''.
''We have had a fire in the kitchen and we've been endeavouring to put it out and we're doing everything we can to stop it spreading to the rest of the house,'' the Treasurer said.
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens weighed in and said steps had to be taken to change the structural settings of the budget.
''I think the risk of thinking that we don't have to even think about this for years yet … we would get away with that for a while, but then we will find that the day will come, and it will be much harder,'' Mr Stevens said.
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen was scathing of the government's shift in rhetoric on Wednesday, describing it as ''incoherent, illogical and inconsistent''.
