The Commonwealth’s $60 billion underspend on its stimulus plans is no more fiscally responsible than a company underspending on its advertising and declaring a boost to profit or a household underspending on car maintenance and declaring it had boosted its savings.

While the blame game over Treasury’s biggest ever policy costing error will go on for months, what really matters is its gross domestic product forecast. In March, Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia forecast that GDP would decline 10 per cent in the June quarter. To put that in perspective, GDP fell by less than 1.5 per cent during the 1991 recession.