Most people I suspect are still unaware that on Tuesday the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, will be handing down a budget. Given the horrific and at times absurd events of the past month, attention has been almost anywhere but on economic matters. The shift in dates to allow for a May election has also meant the government has been denied the usual April to leak details and take control of the narrative.

It all makes for a very weird budget.

Because an election is just weeks away, the budget is in effect the election campaign launch, and because no spending from the budget will occur before the election, the budget figures essentially set the parameters for the campaign.

That’s why articles suggesting a boom in company tax revenue will give Scott Morrison a war chest are rather odd – Bill Shorten gets to use that war chest as well, and because the election is so close it also gives him a rather handy advantage.

Normally the budget in reply speech is a bit of a bloodless affair, but this time around Shorten can use it as his own de-facto campaign launch – and the last major political speech before the PM drives to Yarralumla.

It’s one of the few times where incumbency is somewhat of a disadvantage. Being in charge of the Treasury means the government has to essentially make the first bid; Shorten and Chris Bowen can do as Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan did and keep what they like, dump what they don’t and outspend them where they want to.

For the ALP the added advantage is Shorten can stand and deliver lines pretty much built on those he has spoken for the past five years – workers are missing out, the company tax cuts have not flowed through to better wage growth; the government has got it wrong.

For Frydenberg, in his first budget, the task is much more difficult. While a spend-a-thon budget prior to an election is to be expected, the economic scenario under which the budget is being delivered is very much different from what the government would have been hoping.

The past six months of 2018 saw a major slowing of the economy – growing by just 0.7% in trend terms – the slowest six months of growth since 2008. Inflationary expectations have nosedived, and the interest rates for government bonds around the world have also fallen as investors start feeling the chill of a recession on the horizon.

In such circumstance what the budget needs to deliver is not just votes but economic growth – i.e. stimulus – and yet this is a word the government will be very loth to utter. In an interview with the AFR’s Phil Coorey and John Kehoe, the treasurer responded to suggestions that the budget would contain handouts and tax cuts as “stimulus” by saying “that’s your word, I’m not using that word”.

The reason of course is that “stimulus” is redolent of the Rudd/Swan budgets during the GFC, and suggests that things are going poorly. Instead, the treasurer will talk about “pro-growth”. But really, one-off payments to pensioners are pro-growth in the way that heart surgery is pro-life – you don’t do it unless you need to and it is not something you do when things are going according to plan.

The Liberal party bet the farm on pro-company policies leading to better wages and stronger growth. They have seen unemployment fall, and yet also a rise in the share of part-time work and people working multiple jobs.

The unemployment rate went below 5% in February – the lowest rate since June 2011. And yet at that time the underemployment rate was 6.9%; now it is 8.1%. Back then private sector wages were growing at 3.8%; now they’re growing at 2.3%.

The long-hoped-for return of wage rises of around 3% have not come and now there are signs the slowing economy is affecting jobs, with the ABS this week revealing that the growth of job vacancies is at its slowest for two years.

Governments want to go into an election with some sense that what they have been doing has delivered, not that they now need to convince you they have heard your complaints.

The Liberal party delivered tax cuts to businesses and those on above-average and high incomes. Now, due to both political and economic necessity, they are having to change tack, all the while hoping voters believe this is just part of some master economic strategy that is going as expected.

Josh Frydenberg has been handed one of the more unenviable tasks of any treasurer – deliver a first budget and a path to an election that essentially counters the path taken by his now leader when he was treasurer.

It is a tough ask, and I don’t think hoping voters think pro-growth is better sounding than stimulus is going to be enough.

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist