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Jim Chalmers has hit the ground running in his first year holding the public purse strings.
The married father-of-three from working-class Logan City in Brisbane's south delivered his first budget against a backdrop of soaring inflation and interest rates.
In the lead-up to budget number two, the economic storm clouds have barely shifted.
The treasurer is overseeing a budget under pressure from several fast-growing spending areas and enormous levels of government debt, with repairing the books a key priority for the 45-year-old.
Dr Chalmers - an honorific he earned writing a doctoral thesis on Paul Keating's leadership style - has also sowed the seeds for a Reserve Bank makeover, taken action against sky-high energy prices, and called for a new model of capitalism.
Before he became treasurer upon Labor's return to office last May, he had an industrious career in politics.
He was elected to parliament in 2013 as the Member for Rankin, a safe Labor seat, and before that held senior roles within the party, including as executive director of the Chifley Research Centre - its official think tank - and as chief of staff to treasurer Wayne Swan.
During nine years of coalition rule, Dr Chalmers ascended to senior opposition roles, including finance spokesman and shadow treasurer.
Before that, he studied public policy at Griffith University and did his PhD on the former Labor prime minister at the Australian National University.
Dr Chalmers, a member of Labor's right faction, believes market economics and social justice can work hand-in-hand.
"I reconcile them in a very simple way, by believing that inclusion and growth are complementary and not at odds," he said in his first speech to parliament.
In an essay published earlier this year, he built on these themes and called for a new economic order where more private capital is unlocked to drive profits and create public value.
"By failing to put values at the forefront of how our economies work, we also leave behind reams of wasted talent, a degraded environment and social dislocation – all of which threaten to diminish the productive capacity of our economies and ability to create 'value' in the first place," he wrote.
Australians will learn more about the nation's 41st treasurer when he releases the budget on May 9.
