We've been told to expect a cautious budget, but will it satisfy an impatient public?

"Economic management", a well-worn political trope even in ordinary times, has been especially prominent in the lead-up to the Albanese government's third federal budget on Tuesday.

And budget economist Chris Richardson submitted a "modest" request: "Don't make inflation worse … Amid an inflation crisis, most governments do small things and pretend they're big things." The treasurer is not short on ambition – his tenure began with a promise to take on big "conversations" about the future. But instead the government has been necessarily preoccupied by the cold realities of the present.

In its statement, the board removed its previous references to "encouraging" progress against inflation, and instead warned it was falling "more slowly than expected" and added the near future was "highly uncertain" and "unlikely to be smooth". Those numbers are modest in the context of a $700 billion annual budget and are enough that the IMF and other economists have considered the government's efforts to be inflation neutral, or only slightly inflation positive, until now.

For her part, Ms Bullock has avoided criticising the government. Last Tuesday, she said the treasurer had assured her he had inflation "on his mind", continuing what has appeared to be an unofficial agreement between the two where, as Mr Chalmers puts it: "I don't tell her how to do her job and she doesn't tell me how to do mine."

Finally, there are Mr Chalmers's own ministerial colleagues, many of them seeking to land ambitious reform agendas before the next election, often with significant price tags attached.In that context, there are limits to what the treasurer can reasonably be expected to control. But perhaps the biggest constraints are political.

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