In late October, just before the Albanese government’s first budget, a journalist I’ve known for two decades messaged me a quote from one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.”

She knew I had worked on or responded to sixteen budgets in government and opposition, but she also knew delivering a first would be something much more new than familiar. Experience would matter, but hers was a neat reminder not to assume that what had worked in the past would necessarily work in the present.