It's a Budget night tradition for the treasurer to address the house, closing the speech by "commending the Bill to the House".
On Tuesday night, Scott Morrison, handing down his first Budget, inserted a political line that made it very clear that this wasn't just a budget. This was the Liberal Party's campaign manifesto.
"Mr Speaker I commend the Turnbull Government's economic plan for jobs and growth and this Bill to the House."
Morrison couldn't help himself. The "jobs and growth" mantra is quite literally stamped all over the 2016 Budget.
Yes, surprise, it's another three-word slogan from this Coalition government. It's the one the Liberal Party has chosen to take all the way to a historic double dissolution election this July.
What's in the Budget, though? There are the big tax cuts for the top end of town, submarines if you're South Australian and partial funding for schools and hospitals. A crackdown on multinational tax avoidance (watch out Apple and Google) and tax cuts for people earning over $80,000. All the line items have been flagged in recent weeks; many of them are about pouring cold water on Labor's hot electoral issues like education and health.
But there was a surprise. Morrison pulled out of his hat a massive youth jobs program with a comical name.
It's called PaTH (an acronym for Prepare, Hire and Trial - the 'a' is silent apparently) and Morrison proudly told a packed room full of journalists before giving his Budget speech that it was all about his belief that "the best form of welfare is a job".
"It's just not another training program, what it is, is something more serious that leverages things like Newstart to put them into real jobs, get them real work experience," said Morrison, suggesting he came up with the idea when in his previous job as social services minister.
PaTH will see young people working 15-25 hours a week and pulling in $200 a fortnight on top of the dole.
"At the end of the period of time the employer can say, 'I can see that young person has a future at my organisation and now I am going to take the risk on them," the treasurer said.
Morrison was then peppered with outraged questions from tabloid journalists who couldn't get past the fact that there were no income tax cuts for people earning less than $80,000.
The treasurer had found time to cut the corporate tax rate, dump the deficit levy for the rich and then, when it mattered, couldn't see a way to give some relief to Australia's low-income workers.
"What we are doing in this Budget is what we can afford. What we can commit to."
It was Morrison distancing himself from Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott, who had handed down two Budgets that fell like lead balloons. According to Morrison, the Turnbull government had a "more sober, more measured" approach.
Malcolm Turnbull has a phrase that he's used and appropriated so many times, it's now well and truly beyond political parody: "There's never been a more exciting time to be an Australian."
A quick scan of this Budget shows that's fundamentally untrue. Wage growth has slumped. There's a $37 billion deficit. There were more exciting times, and they were in the past.
Morrison took it upon himself to inject a healthy dose of realism to the situation facing the Australian economy.
"This is a very sensitive time," he said to open his speech. "At such a sensitive time none of us could put our successful transition at risk. There is too much at stake."
The economy, sure. But also the election, which is now most certainly just 59 days away.
