The Treasurer has started the day on the media carousel, which means he’ll be following his tradition of having about two hours sleep during the budget week – he’ll be up again at 4am tomorrow as well for the traditional Sell the Budget Day! (This is not to draw sympathy – it’s his job. Just a small point of the day).

Jim Chalmers is speaking to Sabra Lane on ABC Radio, who gets a bit of a laugh out of him when she asks him if there are any surprises left in the budget tonight:

“You’ll see how it all comes together tonight, and that’s really what the budget will do. It will bring together the progress that we’ve made together as Australians with the plan for the future from here, it will be a responsible budget. It will help with the cost of living, strengthen Medicare and build Australia’s future,” he says.

He also all but confirms that he does not expect the energy rebates to become a permanent feature of the budget (they have been extended to the end of this year)

“Well, what we’ve said really at every budget, is from budget to budget. We do what we can to help with the cost of living, subject to those budget constraints and subject to that responsible economic management, which has helped engineer a pretty stunning turnaround in the budget and got that liberal debt down so that we’re avoiding all those interest costs. So we’ve made good progress in the budget from budget to budget, we review the cost of living policies to make sure that we’re doing what we meaningfully can to help people in the most responsible way.”