The federal government has splashed more than $10 billion on families and small business and put another $1 billion up its sleeve in hidden measures in a federal budget that aims to stimulate the economy, lift the Coalition's standing in the polls and give it the option of an early election.

The government has spent almost every dollar saved in its second budget, meaning the bottom line improves by just $1.6 billion over the five years to 2018-19 and it delays a return to balance to the end of the decade and a surplus to 2021 at the earliest.