Rather than claim to have "brought home the bacon", they claim they will bring home the bacon through superior economic management that, for the most part, puts prudence ahead of popularity, restraint ahead of risk - and is fair. If voters are underwhelmed by what they heard from Scott Morrison on Tuesday evening, Malcolm Turnbull's task is to bring them around after he calls the election. Credit:Andrew Meares The courage is in devoting the lion's share of tax relief to medium-sized companies, rather than low and middle-income earners, when voters believe they are more deserving of tax relief than those who employ them. It is in asserting that the Australian people "have moved on from winners and losers" when an election is about to be won or lost on the strength of each side's offering to the people. Whether the four out of five taxpayers in Tasmania who get no tax relief have "moved on" will become clear soon enough.

And there is courage in leaving so little in the bottom drawer to pay for promises made during the campaign. Morrison understands the politics, but backs his ability to argue that this is the best way to underpin future prosperity. "This is not the time to be throwing money around," he declared in a half-hour budget speech that did not use Turnbull's favourite catchword once. And he hasn't. The top 25 per cent of taxpayers can choose between spending their weekly tax cut on a sandwich or a milkshake, but not both. If it all seems rather too modest and measured to stand up to the rigours of an eight-week campaign, Morrison has another card to play in the form of a ferocious scare campaign against Labor's promised changes to negative gearing and how it intends to pay for its spending on health and education.

As deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop told Coalition MPs at Tuesday's pre-budget meeting, the Coalition will also paint Labor as the enemy of small business and weaker on border protection (at a time when the situation of those on Manus Island and Nauru is more precarious than ever). Viewed in isolation, the plan stacks up, with an assault on tax avoidance by multinationals and high wealth individuals to help finance the company tax relief; long-overdue (and fair) reforms to superannuation to help underwrite modest tax relief; an ambitious attempt to get vulernable young people into jobs; and the $4.7 billion boost to the nation's coffers by stealing Labor's assault on smokers. The problem for Turnbull and Morrison is that this budget cannot be viewed in isolation. It is hamstrung by circumstance (the money just isn't there to promise more); timidity (too much fell off the table in the great tax debate that wasn't); opportunism (not tackling the "excesses" of negative gearing in order to make Labor a bigger target); and things said that now can't be unsaid. This is Morrison's first budget but this government's third, and it is hard to disentangle it from the decisions of the last two and the promises made by Tony Abbott before he was cut down, including a commitment to a far more substantial assault on bracket creep. The backdrop is three months of indecision, thought bubbles and internal unrest that have put Labor either in front or on level peging in the polls. Whether it flies will hinge very largely on whether Turnbull can deliver as the great persuader. If voters are underwhelmed by what they heard from Morrison on Tuesday evening, Turnbull's task is to bring them around after calling the election this weekend.

His main critique of Abbott was that he lacked an economic narrative. Now he has one and eight weeks to sell it. Who is buying?