Kevin Rudd has shown he is still on the campaign trail as he carts his Cabinet off to Perth for today’s first meeting of the year. Western Australia was the one state where Labor went backwards at the election and the Prime Minister clearly sees some symbolism in choosing it to outline a promised tough approach to financial discipline.

Yesterday saw the first of his forums where Cabinet ministers open themselves to questions from the public. This morning it was the West’s business community that had breakfast listening to promises to deliver a budget surplus in May of 1.5% of anticipated gross domestic product.

It was a wonderful claim for fiscal conservatism but nothing more than a claim. The details of what the Rudd ministerial Razor Gang will actually cut to achieve the surplus was not touched on. The hard work is yet to be done. Mr Rudd and his Treasurer Wayne Swan have ruled out the easy approach of delivering a budget surplus of $18 billion or so by tinkering with the promised $30 billion of tax cuts.

Mr Rudd called it this morning “a comprehensive review of spending. Department by department, program by program, line by line.”

Inevitably it will mean taking benefits away from some current beneficiaries of government spending and that involves risks for a government. Taking things away from people is a sure-fire vote loser. Get ready for a more tightly means-tested approach to welfare payments of all kinds.

The Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson will be watching closely to see if the public reaction is sufficiently adverse to create the conditions in which he can obstruct things sufficiently in the Senate to force the early election that is probably his only chance of ever becoming Prime Minister. The ambitious men sitting alongside and behind him are unlikely to let him last a full three years as Liberal Party Leader.

It is worth remembering that the median first term of the five new governments since 1949 has been but 22 months. Sir Robert Menzies waited 21 months before calling his election in 1951, Gough Whitlam was at the polls again after just 17 months, Malcolm Fraser in 24, Bob Hawke in 21 while John Howard waited 31 months.

It makes the decision of Kevin Rudd to keep campaigning much more explicable than it might at first sight.