KEY POINTS:
Michael Cullen usually plays golf. In today's Budget he switched to snooker. There is no room, he crowed, for more fiscal loosening.
He has set out to leave no room for early bigger tax cuts without increasing borrowing above his large $3.5 billion - "the limit of my comfort zone" - and/or cutting government services.
He even tightened the screw a bit by cutting the provision for extra spending by $250 million to $1.75 billion a year - which he said would require public services to "reprioritise", Beehive code for small cuts here and there.
Has he snookered National? "Budgets don't win elections," he told the media lockup. He's right. When Sir Robert Muldoon said he had "spent the lot" in 1972, he nevertheless went out in a landslide.
At most Cullen has held the line, doing the tax cuts he had to (around the level of forward inflation). The public mood has turned very black. His opponents will finesse him by promising a fine-sounding "restructured" tax system.
But, if this is his swansong, he can say he rebuilt social services, kept the accounts in very strong shape - and, having step-changed up the tax burden, is now stabilising it. In Labour terms, a fine record.
