The federal budget serves three purposes. One is to document revenue and expenditure and another is to articulate spending and saving priorities for the years ahead.

The third, if we are to be realistic – and, admittedly, a fraction cynical – is to hammer home the advantage of incumbency by laying down a platform for re-election.

Traditionally, the Coalition has been masters of this third purpose. The Howard-Costello budgets, albeit during the more favourable economic times of the 1990s and 2000s, are the recent standard bearers in this respect.

These budgets borrowed heavily against the inevitable post-election political capital early in the term and then rewarded voters in the lead up to the elections.

With an electorate completely fed-up with Labor’s dysfunction, the Liberal-National alliance needed only to keep its feet to cruise comfortably to second term. However, the Coalition has never quite been able to recover from the disastrous first budget the Abbott-Hockey delivered in 2014.

Ultimately, the 2014-15 budget’s misguided attack on low income earners – not to mention the slew of broken election promises contained within – saw Mr Abbott booted from The Lodge and Mr Hockey make an undignified exit from the political arena altogether.

The first Turnbull-Morrison budget, handed down on Tuesday night, fails on two key measures – it is neither a brave, reforming economic blueprint – the “budget we had to have”, if you will – nor a guaranteed pathway to election victory.

Firstly, it does little to address the “economic emergency” that the Coalition has been using to belt Labor over the head with for years. The deficit is set to balloon to $37 billion in the coming financial year, but suddenly this becomes a footnote in the Coalition’s economic narrative.

Secondly, while the budget attempts to tick a lot of boxes – identified by Fairfax Media columnist Ross Gittins as “super, bracket creep, women, company tax, cities, multinationals, infrastructure” – it fails to really nail any of them.

What does this government really stand for? With an election on the horizon, its biggest strength in the eyes of a bruised electorate still remains that it is not Labor.

- Ross Tyson, deputy editor