Andrews Vic Labors 2nd Scret China deal., page-38

could not cut spending in the areas he wanted to

As a reminder below are the unlegislated measures that you refer to.
They became known as the zombie measures because they remained in the budget forecasts for so long.
Higher education and family tax benefits feature prominently.

Notice the savings were deliberately loaded towards the latter years so as not to overly depress the economy.
The Government were able to eventually pass (according to Treasurer Morrison) 70% of those measures.
Some because Labor used them in their own 2016 pre-election budget figures and were contained in the 2016 omni-bus Bill.
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016B00115

Also Cormann was able to bypass the Senate to introduce some related measures via regulation rather than legislation.

That 2014 Budget ended up consuming most of the Abbott Governments political capital with the public.
Perhaps they should have outlined the proposals before the election rather than outsourcing to a committee after the election.

The remaining zombie measures were dropped and replaced with other cost saving measures which also upset other segments of the citizenry. i.e. Save our Super and pension change related.