The Australian's Dennis Shanahan says the federal government will be “playing to the strength of economic security” in budget which will be delivered on Tuesday in the lead up to the next election. “This is effectively a pre-election budget, even if there is another budget in April next year before a May election, this is the real formation of the political strategy and the economic strategy for the election,” he said. “What we are seeing is a greater emphasis on the economy in this budget than a budget in itself. “What were seeing is that Josh Frydenberg is saying the way to fix the budget, with record national debt and record deficit, is to actually fix the economy by job creation and getting business investment rolling. “So far that has been working very well, much better than expected because of the COVID pandemic - so the government is playing to that strength of economic security, that is job security”. Mr Shanahan told Sky News because it would be a pandemic election the emphasis in the budget would still be on healthcare and helping people whose jobs have been affected by COVID.