By ABC's Annabel Crabb Tuesday 3 March 2015

Photo: Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey found themselves having to defend a budget perceived to be harsh and unfair. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

The decision to abandon the Medicare co-payment is another step back towards Square One, from which the Government hopes, on its second attempt at a budget, to build an argument that will help Australians forget about its first, writes Annabel Crabb.

Finally, the Great Autumn Budget Inoffensive has begun.

After months of dodging and feinting, training exercises, drills, dummy runs and exhibition barnacle-scraping, the Abbott Government has decided to get rid of the Medicare co-payment.

In military terms, it's the most telegraphed campaign ever undertaken by the Abbott Government. It's been nearly nine months since the Treasurer delivered the announcement, in the 2014 budget, that the Government would charge Australians $7 to visit the doctor.

This in itself was a modified proposal from the recommendation of the Audit Commission that non-concession patients be charged $15 apiece for their first 15 visits to the GP in any year, and $7.50 for subsequent visits.

To say that this announcement was a shot across the bows, last May, is an understatement. In the budget, it leapt out from the page, and a deeper read revealed the Government's projections that the Federal Government intended to withdraw many tens of billions of dollars from health spending over the coming decades. Together, these disclosures did not square very well with the Prime Minister's pre-election undertaking that health and education spending would not be cut.

Taken with the other most socially-noticeable undertaking in the budget - the decision to make young people wait six months before becoming eligible for the dole - the Medicare charge immediately established the overall impression of the budget as not only harsh (historically forgivable in a Government's first budget) but also unfair.

For the first few months after the budget, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey found themselves having the wrong argument. This is an awful problem to have in politics; you front up to explain why you think spending on Medicare needs to be reined in (not an unreasonable proposition), and you find yourself pole-axed by the obvious and entirely unskirtable preliminary question: "Why are you doing this, when you said you wouldn't?"

This is a problem entirely of the Prime Minister's own making, of course; nobody put a gun to his head and made him promise he wouldn't cut education and health spending, and one suspects - given the state of the Labor Party at the last election - he could realistically have afforded to be a lot more frank. But that is the timeless conundrum of opposition leaders; the closer they get to victory, the more convinced they get that they're about to lose, and the more they chuck at it. Happens every time.

This horrible hair-ball of defensiveness and unfairness choked all attempts to begin the argument about containing Medicare costs; by the end, poor old Joe Hockey couldn't even mount the argument that he, the Treasurer, on an annual salary of some $366,000, should be paying more to see the doctor, without people hissing, "you… BASTARD!"

Plus, the Senate was opposed.

There is a great scene in the 1980 movie Flying High in which Lloyd Bridges, playing a flight controller, hands a printout to "Johnny", the high-typing control tower assistant, and says, sternly: "Johnny! What do you make of this?"

Johnny, seizing the paper, crumples it over his head. "Why! It could be a hat! Or a brooch!" (he gathers it at his lapel) "Or..." (he scrunches it again) "a pterodactyl!"

I've thought of this scene several times in recent months as the Government hastily reshaped the Medicare co-payment into a price signal, then an optional fee collected by doctors, then a "value signal", which - along with "competitive evaluation process" went straight to the Government's pool room to join the burgeoning "Concepts That No One Can Readily Explain" collection.

The latest proposal, unveiled by Peter Dutton while he was health minister and postponed by his successor Sussan Ley just days before it was supposed to take effect, was an optional co-payment of $5 to be extracted by GPs, whose rebates were to be sliced by the Government in order to provide a little added incentive for them to become tax collectors.

This proposal itself was a survivor of Mr Abbott's promise in November last year to remove some "barnacles" from the hull of the Government, an announcement that was - the PM's office briefed - intended to include the GP co-payment. (Little did Mr Abbott's colleagues know, on that jubilant day, that their leader had already sneaked down in a wetsuit and affixed Prince Philip - a large and particularly explosive stealth-barnacle - just below the Ship of State's waterline. But I digress.)

No matter what spectacular acts of legislative and rhetorical origami the Government performed on the Medicare co-payment, the Senate - as I said - still wasn't buying it.

And so, today's announcement that it will be abandoned does have that tell-tale whiff of enforced epiphany - like the smoker who theatrically quits, 20 minutes after finding their partner has ripped up every fag in the secret stash.

And it will be replaced with… what? Health Minister Sussan Ley was not especially forthcoming on this point today. More consultation, and less money for Medicare in the interim, as the minister will continue with plans to freeze Medicare rebates.

Still, it's a public concession, and another step back towards Square One, from which the Government hopes, on its second attempt at a budget, to build an argument that will help Australians forget about its first.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.

Budget 'inoffensive' hits Medicare co-payment - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)