7.32am BST

Guardian Australia's political editor Lenore Taylor has now filed our night news lead on the economic statement. You can find that here.

Here's a taste.

In its pre-election economic statement, Labor announced $8.1bn in net savings to make up some of (the budget) shortfall, including another "efficiency dividend" for the federal public service – cutting an additional 2.25% from the bureaucracy in each of the next three years to save $1.8bn. But, with an election campaign possibly just days away, the statement was also a political document, careful to spare households from any direct imposts and including in its fine print several hundred million dollars in “decisions taken but not yet announced”.

Here's my quick analytical take on the document.

You can see the fingerprints of the government's internal dialogue over the past couple of weeks about whether to cut hard to return to surplus as promised, or whether to strike a middle course.

The end result is in the middle of those two polarities: this statement creates explicit losers with tax hikes, risky so close to an election. But it's not austerity without an eye to the political consequences - the return to surplus will take longer and require bigger debt for a period of time. Labor has had to post a deficit in a year where balance was forecast, and bigger deficits than the figures foreshadowed in May. That would have hurt - and it will fuel the Coalition's critique about Labor's economic management.

It sets Labor up to enter the election campaign without having to brace itself for a nasty shock from the treasury ten days in - and the waft of gloom in the document possibly presages an interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank next week (the bank has already sent a big hint that a rate cut is on the cards.) That would not be unwelcome news, say, in the first week of an election campaign.

But I reckon Laura Tingle is dead right on the substantive challenge - the statement just shows the country can no longer coast. We have to make some important choices about how we tax and how we spend. Pity we won't get that deep debate in the election campaign - pity everything in the current political and media cycle seems to work against that.