If you think you can hear cicadas in the backyard tonight, you're wrong.

It's actually the collective sound of the coalition rubbing their hands together.

They're going to have a field day.

Treasurer Wayne Swan always said his second budget was going to be "tough", coming on the back of the the worst global economic conditions in 75 years.

He wasn't kidding.

The so-called "temporary" budget deficit is far from it - extending to 2015/16 after starting with a $32 billion shortfall this financial year and then exploding to $58 billion in 2009/10.

This is roughly the same length of time as the last run of deficits that followed the 1990s recession.

Liberal senator Helen Coonan wasn't far wrong when she said the budget papers would be rivers of red ink.

Prior to this year, the last deficit was in 2001/02, and that temporarily lasted one year.

Of course, then the global economy wasn't suffering the worst recession since World War II - just the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, the introduction of GST and the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

Economic growth is forecast to finish flat this financial year ending in June, and then contract by 0.5 per cent in 2009/10 as the recession takes hold.

The killer - for the public and the government - is that unemployment will hit six per cent by June, 8.25 per cent a year later and then goes even higher to 8.5 per cent in the year after that.

So much for last week's rogue fall in the unemployment rate to 5.4 per cent.

Still, Treasury claims that without the government's "early and decisive policy action" including its two stimulus packages, economic growth would contract by even more.

The stimulus efforts have actually supported 210,000 jobs, Treasury said.

Try telling that to the more than a million Australians who will be out of work in 2011.

And the jobless forecasts do sit at odds with the budget mantra: "Nation Building - road, rail, ports, jobs".

Thankfully Mr Swan and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are "economic conservatives".

It may have been a lot worse.

And rest assured, when times get tough, Churchillian statements are abundant.

"These are truly momentous challenges for our nation," Mr Swan said as he handed down the budget.

"But by steeling ourselves, by pulling together as we always do, when we are tested, we will emerge from this global recession stronger and more prosperous than before."

Sends a shiver down your spine, or is it just the grinding noise of the cicadas?