A Budget forum in Bathurst last night was told the electorate's political aspirations and expectations are too low.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) Associate Professor in political science Dominic O'Sullivan told the audience the market for philosophically different and contestable public policy has been undermined.

Professor O'Sullivan, from the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Bathurst, spoke at a forum convened by Dr Jess Jennings, a councillor with Bathurst Regional Council, to hear concerns about the 2015 federal Budget. The Member for McMahon, Mr Chris Bowen, MP (Labor), also addressed the forum, but the Member for Calare, Mr John Cobb, MP (Nationals), declined an invitation to attend.

"Budgets are about political management, as much as economic policy, and politics is the balancing of ideology with pragmatism," Professor O'Sullivan said.

"The 2014 Budget's austere concern for fiscal balance contrasts with this year's more immediate concern for re-election. Comparing the 2014 and 2015 budgets illustrates the point, and explains the Prime Minister's insistence on a 'fair and boring' Budget.

"In 2014, the government pursued a mandate to balance the Budget. It was a point of distinction, rhetorically positioned to privilege fiscal responsibility over recklessness. But in practical political terms, the mandate was for an abstract concept and its translation to policy was a political step too far.

"Political judgement requires working out the difference between what voters say they want, and what they actually want. So by 2015, balancing the Budget had lost its political urgency. The 2015 Budget speech avoided discussion of health or higher education, the two policy areas attracting most derision the previous year.

"In 2015, the only budgetary urgency is to position the government for re-election; it was a Budget focused on the redistribution of wealth for political gain. Thus, politics constrains principle, and pragmatism trumps principle."

Professor O'Sullivan said the Coalition's view has shifted significantly in the space of a year, and he asked, "Is that good for democracy?". Further, he questioned whether it was good for democracy that a member of the government was not there to defend the position.

"Whose interests do we wish Budgets to serve?" Professor O'Sullivan asked. "What should governments do and what should they avoid? What should they do in regional Australia, in particular? Are there special interests that rural and regional members of the government ought to support? What are the views of the Member for Calare?

"What is the relative importance of balancing the Budget, not as an abstract objective, but as one that has immediate and obvious social implications and raises deeply philosophical questions about what governments ought to do and what they ought to set aside. These are questions that are insufficiently 'boring' to provide 'political safety'.

"Safe and boring policy challenges democracy, but it is us the voters who have created the demand for safe and boring politics," he said.