Tova O'Brien: 'But wait there's more' Budget - $20 billion more

Budget 2020 could be called any number of things: Billions Budget, Go for Broke Budget, Blockbuster Budget, or Bazooka Budget. 

But we're calling this one the 'But wait there's more Budget' - $20.2billion more to be precise, 20 billion ways Labour could be vying for your vote over the next four months. 

As Winston Churchill reportedly said, "never let a good crisis go to waste", and Finance Minister Grant Robertson is as wily a politician as they come. 

Not only is the $50 billion centrepiece of the Budget a smoosh of money already spent on COVID-19 and money allocated today it also includes a $20 billion re-election fund. 

Nearly half the COVID-19 Response and Recovery fund has been set aside to potentially be spent between now and election day. 

The Government's COVID-19 support package is impressive. Anything with a $50 billion price tag is. Anything that promises to save or create 140,000 jobs should impress. 

Especially when we're facing such dire straits - the unemployment rate is expected to double to 9.8 percent come September and nearly 300,000 people will be in the dole queue by next year. 

It gets worse before it gets better but thanks to this fiscal bazooka it will get better and the big winners are businesses and therefore jobs. 

And the Finance Minister is creating jobs promising a massive build of 8000 public houses. This is Grant Robertson's Michael Joseph Savage moment. 

The extension of the wage subsidy was a must-have, it's what businesses were crying out for and it's specifically targeted to those hit hardest after the lockdown ended. 

The biggest losers are the budget initiatives that hit the scrap heap. Budget 2020 was almost entirely locked and loaded before being torn up when COVID-19 came along. It meant things that were on the cards and should have made it through like subsidised dental care and cheaper doctors visits didn't make it. 

Tax cuts or changes to income tax thresholds which were also once on the table have been thrown on the floor - the Finance Minister ruling out this term.

Robertson said this is the most extraordinary Budget, that the final decisions were made on Monday. That is unheard of and means there are still kinks to iron out and more cash to come - about $2.9 billion over the next couple of weeks for sports and arts, media and some smaller job schemes. 

But it's that $20 billion stuffed into the mattress that's the next big one to watch. The Finance Minister isn't ruling out fiscal stimulus like a cash injection, perhaps targeted to lower income families, or a further welfare boost. 

Robertson wouldn't categorise it as a election slush fund but it is definitely a fund, full of cash that can be freely slushed around before the election.