Talk about looking to the future. The far future. It might strain political credulity to base the promise of a "lower, simpler, fairer" personal income tax system on a seven year timetable. This counts less as a pre- election budget and more a post-multiple-elections fairytale of political redemption.

But Scott Morrison is determined to demonstrate the Coalition government has a PLAN. That it is on track to a healthy fiscal future where budget surpluses can start to become normal again but not at the cost of bracket creep and higher taxes. Nor at the cost of dramatically cutting services and spending, especially in ways that the combined brainpower of the Senate crossbenchers would mange to defeat anyway.