It is not unusual for treasurers to find themselves being pulled in all sorts of different directions in the lead up to the budget, the single most important day of their year. Jim Chalmers was certainly no exception when it came to framing this, his third, and certainly most important, budget.
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Given it may well be the last before the next election Dr Chalmers has been under pressure to use his second windfall surplus to spend up; particularly in areas where Labor is under threat from the Greens who have rebranded themselves as the party of renters and are chasing the 18 to 40-year-old cohort. These are the people for whom home ownership in a capital city seems the impossible dream.
Then there are those who feared if the budget spend was too lavish it could force the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates higher for longer, destabilising financial markets and creating additional cost-of-living pressures. Dr Chalmers knows full well that if the RBA is forced to act he will, as one commentator put it, "own" the next interest rate increase.
That could be disastrous for Labor. The party made a great deal of political capital out of a single interest rate hike under the Morrison government. Another 12 rate hikes have occurred since Labor came to power.
All of this means Dr Chalmers has had to make some difficult choices while striving to strike a politically palatable balance.
One of the hardest has been to sell the remodelled tax cuts as the principal form of cost-of-living relief. While that sounds all well and good it's very cold comfort to people on the basic wage who will only take home an extra $15.91 a week from July 1.
The bulk of the benefit from the tax cuts, which according to Treasury "were legislated under very different economic circumstances" and will cost $105.7 billion over the forward estimates period from 2023-24 to 2027-28, will go to those earning $80,000 or more a year.
While there is some targeted relief for pensioners and social security recipients (who don't pay tax) there is very little on offer for those who serve food, stack supermarket shelves and help keep the country going.
And, while the Treasurer has repeatedly assured RBA chief Michelle Bullock he did have inflation on his mind while he was thinking about the budget, there are some big ticket items that will have an inflationary impact down the track.
The "Future Made In Australia" strategy, which the government obviously hopes will be an election winner, is a Damoclean sword. While, on the one hand, it makes sense to invest in Australian manufacturing and strengthen national supply chains, great care must be taken to avoid bankrolling loss-making enterprises that will need taxpayer funding in perpetuity.
It is also inevitable that the big spend on social and affordable housing, while absolutely necessary and long overdue, will drive up construction costs - and probably wages - in the building sector. So to will the raft of major infrastructure projects being underwritten by the federal government in battleground states and key electorates.
The fact governments in Western Australia and Queensland, which both have elections coming up, and Victoria are spending money like drunken sailors isn't helping to slay the inflation dragon either.
While Dr Chalmers has a much more "the glass is half full" view of the inflation outlook than the one expressed by Ms Bullock last week, the smart money would be on the RBA governor.
Her reaction to the budget is more important than anybody else's. She, and her board, will mark Dr Chalmers's homework on June 17, just over a month from now.
Watch this space.
