If ever you needed confirmation that Steven Joyce's maiden Budget was Labour heavy you only had to listen to the architect of eight of them, Bill English in Parliament's bear pit.

Andrew Little, who must have been scratching his head coming up with a line of attack, had a go at what he clearly thinks is National's Achilles heal, housing, where the initiatives had already been announced before the document was delivered.

Little sat down and English rose to his feet noting that the Labour leader had been reading his speech from an iPad which the Prime Minister said had obviously been logged on to the wrong part of the Labour web site, saying the speech was Mike Moore's from the 1993 Budget.

Joking aside, National knows, four months out from an election it has to capture the centre ground which Little refuses to acknowledge.   Its polling after giving twenty five bucks to beneficiaries a couple of years back gave it a fillip so Joyce is capitalising on that, hoping his generosity now will put votes in the ballot box, although probably not as many votes that came Labour's way in 2005 when Helen Clark scrapped interest on student loans, leaving National gasping for air.

And the Clark move came much closer to the election which means Little has more time to play with than National did at the time.

This Budget was shrewd, stealing some of Labour's thunder by looking after the low to middle income earners. But it's also something of an indictment on our society when you see the amount of money, $763 million, being set aside to lock up more of those who generally come from that income group.

And September the 23rd will tell Joyce whether he should have been a little more generous to those who've been pushed into the $70,000 a year top tax bracket of 33 cents in the dollar.  They're now paying the lion's share of the total tax take at 63 percent.

The Budget doesn't seem to have convinced the man who'll more than likely decide which party will lead the next Government, Winston Peters who initially was confused about the election date, calling it for three days after the votes will have been cast.   He recovered well though saying he got ahead of himself,  that's when he'll be forming the next Government.

If you listen to this 72-year-old who's been in Parliament on and off for 40 years, National will be off his calling card list, describing them as a bunch of useless, hopeless, lazy, idle, and in the main old, well gone MPs who've passed their use-by date.

Andrew Little finally smiled.