‘Governments get budgets through’

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Selling the budget: Tony Abbott in Sydney today.

Selling the budget: Tony Abbott in Sydney today. Photo: James Brickwood

Prime Minister Tony Abbott took his budget sales pitch to a prominent Sydney heart research institute on Saturday to extoll the virtues of a $20 billion research fund established in the budget.

Mr Abbott, visiting the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney’s east, described the research fund, which draws almost all its funding from the proposed controversial $7 GP co-payment, as “world leading” and a “significant part of this budget”.

When asked about the prospect of passing the co-payment through a hostile Senate, Mr Abbott said he expected budget measures to “gain a passage” regardless of whether they are contentious.

“Governments get their budgets through,” Mr Abbott said.