Federal Budget 2019: Scott Morrison fires his one shot in the election locker
Early this year, as speculation swirled about the possibility of an early election, a senior Liberal figure kyboshed such talk with a simple observation.
The budget was Scott Morrison's one shot in the locker - the Prime Minister's only hope of recasting the narrative and reversing years of bad polls for the Coalition.
On Tuesday, we finally saw what that looked like, and it was a classic of the genre: huge tax cuts, mounds of infrastructure spending and very few nasties to rock the boat.
Even one of the "major savings" measures, which looked at first blush like an $80 million cut to refugee welfare, turned out to be a tweak to give refugees an extra six months to start looking for work.
So entwined with each other are this budget and the election that the government will not even start to legislate its new, $158 billion income tax cuts before Morrison goes to see the Governor-General.
"It's a package. We are taking that to the Australian people," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters inside the budget lockup.
And the question he will be asking the Australian people for the next five to six weeks? "Who do you trust to deliver lower taxes?"
No matter which measures Labor pledges to match from the government's taxation giveaway, the Coalition believes this is one issue where it has the political capital to prevail.
How soon could Morrison call a poll? Finance Minister Mathias Cormann appeared to give the game away by suggesting it could be sooner than we think.
Asked why the government won't try to legislate its tax cuts this week, Cormann said: "We're just not prepared to haggle with the Senate in the remaining 24 hours."
The massive expansion of the urban congestion fund also looks like ripe picking for election promises. No doubt buoyed by the Liberals' recent success in NSW, Frydenberg promised more cranes, more hard hats and more fluro vests.
Cormann even made a pitch for stability - an audacious step for a government that has twice dumped its prime minister.
"This is not the time to change direction," he implored. "The job is not finished, there's more work to be done and we stand ready to do that job."
Election-year budgets are known for their overt friendliness. But this time the two events are inextricably linked. It was not just a budget designed with an election in mind - it is an election campaign designed with a budget in mind.