If the federal budget this week was the opportunity for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to throw down the gauntlet to Opposition leader Bill Shorten, then he did so.
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Yet, not only did Bill Shorten pick up that gauntlet, but he walked up to Scott Morrison and whacked him around the head with it. Hard.
Bill Shorten's budget reply on Thursday night was a moment in politics, but it was so much more.
In that moment, Bill Shorten went beyond politics with his stance and focus on cancer treatment and research.
In his budget reply Bill Shorten made it perfectly clear he would be standing on a platform of health for the coming election.
That platform would be heavily centred around helping cancer patients and their family access treatment and a heavy investment into cancer research.
Labor has pledged $2.3billion to cut the cost of treatment with free scans and consultations.
Many families only too well know the heavy cost of cancer is only intensified by the often heavy financial cost people have to pay to access treatment.
The policy includes free X-rays, ultrasounds, mammograms, CT scans and MRIs.
"For so many people, cancer makes you sick and then paying for the treatment makes you poor," Mr Shorten said.
For so many Australians those words will echo loudly, whatever their political inclination.
You would be lucky to find an Australian family anywhere not in someone touched by this insidious disease.
Federal member for Whitlam Stephen Jones knows this only too well, losing his brother Adam to leukaemia five years ago.
"Losing a brother too young, who never saw his son grow up, leads me to hope that within my lifetime there will be a cure for his, and other types of, cancer," Mr Jones told the Mercury.
"Even five years since Adam passed away, there's treatments available that would have kept him alive."
Politics aside, this is a strong move which will resonate throughout the community.
