The Prime Minister is seeking to create a new class, the Abbott battlers, reminiscent of the Howard battlers. Tony Abbott: This budget is designed to give him the option of calling an early election. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen He is proposing to spend an extra $10 billion of taxpayer funds over four years on this act of political engineering. This is money that he was not planning to spend before his self-described "near death experience" at the hands of his own party room in February. And the $10 billion is the entirety of the net savings that the government has managed to find in the budget.

So every cent of savings the federal government has managed to scrape together is going into project "have a go". John Howard said it was "one of the most ridiculous propositions" that Australia had to choose between having a strong relationship with the US or China. Credit:James Brickwood The Howard battlers were the low-to-middle income families in outer metropolitan and regional areas who were credited with delivering enough votes to John Howard to keep him in power. Abbott hopes that the Abbott battlers will perform the same function for him. Illustration: Cathy Wilcox

He is committing $4.4 billion for families, chiefly for childcare. And another $5.5 billion for small business, tradespeople and sole traders. You can picture the political advisers sketching the typical target family, say a couple with two young kids and a declared joint income of about $110,000. Illustration: John Shakespeare Dad can make use of the new instant tax deduction for as many assets he likes, up to $20,000 each, for his business. He could buy a car or a software system or equipment. Or all three. Mum can expect an extra $3700 a year in childcare subsidy for long day care. She may choose to work more hours, too, with the more generous system.

The new laptops they buy for the business will no longer be subject to fringe benefits tax and they can be written off on tax instantly. And if the kids just happen to use the new laptops a lot, well, it may not strictly be business related but we all know how hard it is to keep the kids away from computer screens. A boondoggle? Abbott can justify these new concessions on economic grounds. The small business concessions should boost investment, a weak spot in the economy's growth profile. And the childcare boost should help more parents spend more time at work, so it's a participation measure. On both counts, the extra government support should indeed encourage people to "have a go". This is a calculated marriage of political cunning with economic rationale. Whether this translates into political gratitude is another matter entirely. John Howard discovered late in his prime ministership that, if the people are sick of you, handing them money does not change their minds. Julia Gillard made precisely the same discovery.

The question here is whether the electorate has already made up its mind about Abbott, or whether he can appeal for a second chance. This budget is much fairer than the last. Abbott seeks absolution for his last budget and appreciation for this budget. If he sees any evidence of it in the polls in the weeks and months ahead, he will be sorely tempted to call an early election to forestall any possible leadership challenge from his own side and to catch the other side off guard. But the victim of Abbott's political ambition is fiscal ambition. On its face, the budget claims to deliver smaller deficits each year, culminating in a surplus just over the four-year budget horizon in the fifth year, 2019-20. But as the respected economist Saul Eslake points out "governments can really do what they like with their budget projections in a budget lockup and nobody except Chris Richardson and Stephen Anthony have the knowledge to pick it up."

So I consulted these two budget experts in the lockup. Neither was complimentary. "The bottom line improvement relies on stuff I don't really believe," says Richardson. Loading And Anthony was scathing: "In this budget Australia has joined the league of countries that paper over their structural problems." The government's priority is to solve its political problems. The debt and deficit problem they pledged to fix? They will have to wait for another day.