Here's a challenge for the bank lobby and investors long on bank shares: if you think the big new bank tax is outrageous and unfair, tell us what would be a better, fairer way to raise a quick $1.6 billion or so next year.

The great achievement of Scott Morrison's second budget is that it drains the poison of the Abbott years, 2009-15. The period of Total Opposition (whether in opposition or government) has been ruled off. The doctrinaire edge of Institute of Public Affairs ideology has been replaced by our more traditional centrist pragmatism, something that fits with our elusive "Australian values".

What follows is belated recognition that revenue must be raised to match big spending. Yes, Virginia, it wasn't just an expenditure problem. The question then is how to raise it.

Through understandable self-interest, the Big Five banks would prefer it not to be by taxing them. They make the honest point that, one way or the other, the tax will end up being paid by a combination of customers and shareholders. That's the way it is with taxes on companies, although, when they're campaigning for company tax cuts, Malcolm Turnbull, Morrison and big business hilariously pretend it's all about wages.