Every year, two days after the budget, the Opposition Leader is offered 30 minutes of prime-time TV in which to offer some constructive thoughts in review.

This year, the lectern was taken by Tony Abbott in his role as Budget-Smuggler.

The document under debate didn't score all that many mentions, apart from when it was tangentially invoked as an example of the Government's fecklessness or taste for class warfare.

Instead, Mr Abbott smuggled in all the things he would rather talk about: his thoughts on what Ben Chifley would make of the modern Labor Party, his opinion that this Government ought to die of shame, a recap of his 2010 election commitments, and so on.

All of this stuff is perfectly fine, and unremarkable, and available from Mr Abbott at any of his regular stump-speech visits to canneries and fishmongers, widgetmakers and truckstops.

But Mr Abbott's case is that the Government is not to be believed. That its promises are worthless. That it's more preoccupied with desperate and ambitious grabs for electoral affection than it is with rigorous administration.

So to furnish a response built entirely from rhetorical flourishes seems cruelly inadequate, if Australian voters are as sick of BS artists as Mr Abbott assures us we are.

The Opposition Leader promised last night that there would be many more budget cuts under an Abbott government.

"The Coalition identified $50 billion in savings before the last election and will do at least as much again before the next one," he promised, sweepingly.

I was watching the speech - like most real-life viewers, apart from those cashed-up cyborgs on the North Shore - on television, and thus was unable to assess the expression on shadow treasurer Joe Hockey's face as his leader cheerfully committed him to such further Herculean labours.

"Under the Coalition, there will be tax cuts without a carbon tax because we'll find the savings to pay for them," Mr Abbott continued.

Pretending that hard things will be easy is one of the most irritating and dishonest things a politician can do. And it certainly does not square with the code of honour with which Mr Abbott last night began his budget-smuggle, assuring viewers that the duty of politicians was "to listen carefully to the Australian people, respect the hard-won dollars they pay in tax, do our honest best to make people's lives easier not harder, and honour the commitments we make to those who vote for us.

Of the specific promises the Opposition Leader made last night, many remain implausible, or at the very least super-optimistic.

"On Day One, a new government would order the carbon tax repeal," he pledged - as if the abolition of the legislated scheme, craftily booby-trapped by its Labor and Green instigators, were as easy as sending a tough steak back to the chef. Mr Abbott says legislation to abolish both carbon and mining taxes, and to overhaul Australia's system of border protection, would be before the parliament within three months of his government's investiture.

"Within a week, the Navy would have new orders to turn around illegal boats. Within a month, the Commission of Audit would be making government more efficient."

Really? A commission of audit - what Mr Abbott describes as a "once-in-a-lifetime" review of every corner of public administration and expenditure - would be in a position to improve efficiency within a MONTH?

The experience of the 2010 election reminds us that Mr Abbott can - when required - find some hugely obliging auditors, it's true. But even so, it's a screechingly ambitious promise.

"Within a year," Mr Abbott tripped merrily on, "national infrastructure priorities would be agreed and there would be more cranes over our cities."

National infrastructure priorities would be agreed? Now why didn't anyone else think of that?

It isn't all that long since another opposition leader earnestly told us that he would end the blame game, and fix public hospitals for good or just damn-well take them over. And do something about petrol prices. And end the cancerous scourge of political advertising, and so on.

And in fact, that very ex-opposition leader scored an oblique victory in the one strange little nugget of new policy detail that Mr Abbott released last night in his budget speech.

Less than one month ago, Kevin Rudd ventured back into the world of oratory with a speech decrying the steep decline in the teaching of Asian languages. It was a cause Mr Abbott last night embraced with much fervour and almost certainly a sprinkling of mischief, if not much actual detail.

The Opposition Leader's pledge is that 10 years after his election, 40 per cent of Year 12 students will be studying another language. He will accomplish this by "working urgently with the states". That's all he said.

One can only imagine what Mr Abbott's response would have been had the real budget contained a "promise" like this one, which boasts all the heft and credibility of a Miss World campaign speech.

If this Government's in as much trouble as Mr Abbott promises us it is, then his time starts soon. What's it going to look like? After last night, we're not much the wiser.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.