Putting his case: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott speaks at a public meeting in Hamilton, Victoria, during his ''Pollie Pedal'' bike ride. Credit:Pat Scala And having laid the trap for the Opposition Leader to shoot down the proposal, Tony Abbott turned his back on his steadfast reputation as ''Dr No'' and gave his conditional support. His traditional support base at the big end of town was already in a lather - Bernie Brookes, the boss of Myer, came under sustained fire in social media circles for criticising an increase in the Medicare levy to fund the scheme , saying the impost was money that would otherwise have been spent at his store. Abbott, wisely, didn't bite. Instead, he took the only option to nullify the issue, and embraced the program. Gillard's attempt to wedge Abbott between the disabled and his traditional support base didn't fly. But Abbott now finds himself owning two substantial social programs, an NDIS that must be paid for, alongside his already proposed levy on the top 3200 companies to pay for his paid parental support scheme.

Snakes and ladders: Potential policy winners and losers. In a hostile Parliament where every move and win is calculated in the 24-hour media cycle, the big winners appear to have been forgotten - those with disabilities. You wouldn't know it from this week's duelling press conferences on disability, but two months ago when she set the election for September 14 Julia Gillard wanted a year ''of cool and reasoned deliberation''. Remember? It was going to be clear to all which were the days of governing, and which were the days, much later presumably, of campaigning. Most have fallen under the second heading. Of course, this is hardly news to Abbott, whose campaign against the minority government has not let up since 2010 anyway. It may have cost him some goodwill with voters, but it can be credited also with rocking Labor to the point of political dysfunction.

What Labor won't be able to do is to lie. Even a minor fudge would be found out. Now, as Gillard and her chief economic ministers, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Penny Wong, put the final touches on the budget, the fact that Abbott (much like Gillard) remains unpopular, seems hardly relevant. Labor is in big trouble and it is in the unenviable position of relying on a budget to help it out. ''Tuesday 14 May will be no old-fashioned pre-election budget night,'' Gillard said this week. ''What the Treasurer will deliver will not be a political pamphlet - he will outline an economic program.''

In reality, Labor is pinning its hopes on securing that elusive ''budget bounce'' - more a thing of political folklore than of modern experience. Just ask John Howard, who got nothing in 2007 even after handing out billions. For a government trailing badly in the polls, Gillard sees the budget as her last best hope of kick-starting a recovery. But announcing fresh taxes before elections is risky. John Hewson's election hopes went up in a puff of smoke when he was unable to explain in a television interview the impact of his proposed GST on a birthday cake. And in 1998, Howard went from a record majority in his first term to a large swing against him when he reversed his stance on his ''never ever'' promise to introduce a GST. Howard clung on.

The differences are stark: Howard had a large majority. Gillard does not. Yet in the absence of clear-air turbulence for Abbott, Labor will come up short. That it wasn't meant to be this way is obvious. Labor's difficulties are the result of wasting the advantage of incumbency. Spooked by Abbott's unrelenting depiction of them as inherently profligate, Swan and Gillard over-compensated, surrendering their flexibility, and committing themselves to economic certainties that proved not to exist. Ordinarily, governments pitch their economic and fiscal policy so as to be on the upswing as they face voters. But there are limits.

No doubt that was Swan's intention, when, in his budget speech of 2010, unveiling a projected deficit of $40.8 billion for 2010-11, he said: ''Our strategy will see us return to surplus in three years, three years ahead of schedule.'' A year later, the predicted shortfall had blown out to $49.4 billion in 2010-11. One-off factors were to blame, and the surplus promise for 2012-13 was tripled from the anaemic $1.0 billion to a ruddier $3.5 billion. Floods and cyclones had hit the budget hard, but again, Swan's tone was ebullient. ''Despite the total cost to government of over $8 billion, our commitment to tightening our belt has not diminished one bit,'' he told Parliament on budget night 2011, promising again to be ''back in the black by 2012-13, on time, as promised''. By budget night last year, it was being pared back again to a projected $1.5 billion surplus for the 2012-13 year, and that in turn was to be trimmed again in October's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook - MYEFO - to just $1.1 billion. Two months later it was all gone, forcing Swan into an embarrassing pre-Christmas acknowledgement of the bleeding obvious - the promised surplus, come hell or high water, was ''unlikely'' thanks to a $7.5 billion collapse in company tax receipts.

That was extended to become $12 billion less than Treasury forecasts - over the full year. It is impossible to disentangle this tale of fiscal woe from the political descent of the government as it battled myriad issues in carbon pricing, Craig Thomson, Peter Slipper, border protection, the mining tax debacle, the Independent Commission Against Corruption in NSW, and this year's self inflicted media law reform mess. The infuriating thing for Labor supporters is that the economy itself remains strong, yet Labor has manifestly failed to benefit. Perhaps that is inevitable. International comparisons provide valid, real-time, examples of how things might otherwise be, but we now know they cut little ice with voters. Now just 10 days away, Swan's sixth budget is still not finalised. Last-minute decisions and rapid responses to deteriorating conditions have become a hallmark of what he and his department have put themselves through each May. Two weeks ago Europe's carbon price collapsed, robbing the budget of $5 billion a year after Australia links to the European carbon price in 2015.

While not quite working around the clock (as did happen during the global financial crisis), staff in the Treasury building are working until midnight and sometimes beyond in a last-minute scramble to find money and politically acceptable savings, arriving back hours later wrung out. The financial task facing the government is not as big as it would have you believe. It has promised not to make up the $12 billion the budget has fallen short, suggesting it will forecast a deficit for this financial year and for the next of around $10 billion to $12 billion. Compared to previous years it will be a good outcome. The 2011-12 deficit was $43.7 billion. To get there all it has to do is to pay for its new measures with cuts or extra taxes. The big new measures are the national disability insurance scheme and the Gonksi education reforms to the states. The 0.5 per cent extension to the Medicare levy announced this week gets it much of the way. "It isn't financially difficult, it's politically difficult," says Stephen Koukoulas of Market Economics. "They only need a few billion, but finding that without annoying people - in an election year - will be awfully hard. I have seen the Treasurer and Finance Minister put up good ideas and have minister after minister knock them down. The process is exhausting. What starts out as a big measure ends up small." The cuts to superannuation tax breaks announced early are a case in point. After considering measures that would have raised between between $500 million and $1 billion a year, the government settled on a package that made $900 million over four years. Tellingly it received few complaints from the superannuation industry.

"They ended up with a few crumbs off the table," Koukoulas says. "If they had gone in hard they could have easily got another billion or two and hurt very few people. We would have forgotten about it by now and they would have got a big chunk of cash." Koukoulas thinks the government's reluctance to offend means the big budget decisions are already known. What's left will be a multitude of small measures, each offending someone, but most of them not too much. Reports suggested the government was unlikely to go after the massive $3 billion paid to the mining industry in diesel fuel rebates. The rumours themselves were enough to spark an advertising campaign hammering the message that taking money from mining is "a really dumb idea". It will go after easier targets, some of which will fear even worse under the Coalition. The public service will get another so-called "efficiency dividend". What Labor won't be able to do is to lie. Even a minor fudge would be found out. On Monday August 12 the Governor-General will issue writs for the election. Ten days later the heads of treasury and finance have to release what's known as PEFO - the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook. A creation of former treasurer Peter Costello as part of the Charter of Budget Honesty, PEFO has to represent their own views, free from the dictates of political masters. With a change of government likely they will have every reason to call it exactly as they see it. Fiddles will be exposed, which is why there almost certainly won't be any.

The heads of departments might even go further, offering their own views as to whether finances are sustainable beyond the standard four years of "forward estimates" included in the budget. Such an assessment would be appropriate given that many of the budget measures will have a life of well beyond four years, including the national disability insurance scheme. And if the heads don't do it, the parliamentary budget officer will. The new post, set up as part of the agreement with the independents, gives former finance department deputy secretary Phil Bowen the right to report on whatever he chooses. Within weeks of the budget he will deliver his assessment of whether it is in sustainable balance, and for good measure he will look back 10 years to examine whether previous budgets were. Calculations released by the Australia Institute on Saturday show the six successive years of personal income tax cuts kicked off by the Howard government in 2003 are costing revenue $38.9 billion a year. The cost over and above the price of merely indexing the tax scales so people weren't pushed into higher brackets is $25 billion a year. Swan has a week and a bit to get the pieces to fit. The document needn't be printed until Sunday. The final piece of the forecasting puzzle - the exchange rate assumption - won't be settled until Thursday or Friday. He will rise to his feet on Tuesday the 14th.