Ever since it was revealed the cost of running Canberra's public health system had boiled over, there has been the distinct feeling the government has been trying to clean up after itself.
That's the trouble for a long-term, multi-decade government: it's difficult to blame anyone else when you have been around so long that the decisions of any previous governments are invisible to the human eye in the budget papers.
There have been, indeed, global economic shocks. COVID-19 at the start of this decade was a very big spanner in the works and the United States launching strikes on Iran and the ensuing war is the last thing the ACT's bottom line needed. And some of the legacies the ACT inherited at self government in 1989 make fixing the budget harder than it should be.
Nevertheless, Treasurer Chris Steel seems to be trying to chart a careful - his word was "measured" - path back to fiscal sustainability, even though Saul Eslake's review of the territory's fiscal position, released in May, gave the government considerable cover to go harder and faster on budget repair.
What better cover for tax hikes or deeper cuts than an independent inquiry the Liberals and Greens made happen in the Legislative Assembly?
Mr Steel is unlikely to appear as treasurer and say everything that had come before him was a great pile of excrement and the disaster he had inherited called for radically different action. Why? He probably doesn't think it and his boss, Chief Minister Andrew Barr, was the territory's budget impresario for more than a decade.
The mirage-like appearance of a surplus at the end of the forward estimates - a mythical time four years from now - is a game ACT budget watchers have grown accustomed to. Its next instalment arrived in Wednesday's budget. If Mr Steel pulls it off and avoids the usual, and probably likely, busted flush, it will be a serious stroke of fiscal cleverness.
Since the Greens vanished from cabinet, Mr Barr has tried to position ACT Labor as the natural custodians of the sensible centre of politics. Mr Steel's budget follows in the same vein: trims and tucks, moderate spending boosts on the frontline and a gently-does-it attitude to bringing the budget back to balance.
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All this leaves the opposition in a tricky spot. The Liberals have long campaigned for better services while extolling the virtues of lower taxes. The party has been quick to latch onto the observation the ACT is out of cash, but less inclined to adopt the clarion call that the government has not done enough to raise taxes.
Where to from here? The Liberals' only real path is to argue the ACT pays far too much for services, show that NSW, for example, puts down roads for less than we're paying or can staff its schools for less, and that we can save cash by doing the same and still have it all, no great tax hikes required. It's a tough but not impossible sell.
New fiscal sustainability targets in Wednesday's budget showed the government is alert to the criticisms being levelled at it.
Labor knows it needs to be seen as the legitimate economic managers for the territory if it is to remain in power. The financial results will show whether they have done enough to sort out the territory's finances or whether they should have taken the chance to be more radical now.
