The costing of election promises by the major parties absorb most campaigns, although not necessarily the voting public.
With over five weeks to go until polling day, the government is already pointing out Labor's supposed spendathon, claiming there is a $67-billion black hole and a deficit that will grow to almost $200 billion over the next decade.
Shadow finance minister Tony Burke described the numbers as "fictitious".
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull again chastised Bill Shorten for joking about his "spendometer", a comment that the opposition leader says was taken out of context.
"The real issue is the flagrant wastefulness and recklessness of the Labor Party outspending us by 20-to-one in this campaign," Mr Turnbull told reporters near Geelong on Tuesday.
Treasurer Scott Morrison and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann broke down their findings at a joint media conference in Canberra.
They say Labor's spending cuts and planned taxes add up to $16 billion, but even that is short of the $18 billion of government legislation the opposition is blocking.
On top of that there is $30 billion of spending promises and $35 billion of government cuts that Labor want to restore, although they say the latter figure is flexible if the opposition has changed its mind on some measures.
"Worst case is $67 billion, best case is a $32 billion black hole," Mr Morrison said.
"Labor simply can't pay for the promises they are making to the Australian people ... it's the same old Labor, we've seen it all before."
Senior Labor frontbencher Penny Wong described the press conference as a "debacle" that was unable to maintain the same set of numbers from the beginning to its end.
"I would take a lot of what they say when it comes to these matters with a grain of salt," Senator Wong told reporters in Canberra.
Mr Burke went further.
"(The) treasurer and his finance minister started out at the beginning of a media conference, all puffed up like helium balloons and by the end of the media conference, you'd watched the air run out of them completely," he told reporters in Sydney.
Senator Wong promised Labor would do better providing its election costings than the coalition did at the last election when they left it to the last couple of days of the campaign.
The argy-bargy over spending commitments does not appear to be unnerving consumers.
The ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index rose for a fourth straight week, increasing by 0.5 per cent in the past week and now stands 2.6 per cent above the long-run average.
"With another five weeks left in the election campaign, confidence remains vulnerable to any key developments," ANZ senior economist Jo Masters said.
