The Sketch: At $35 a coffee cup, there’s a surplus of mugs in this game

Scott Morrison admires Josh Frydenberg’s air-quoting ability during Tuesday’s question time in the House of Representatives. Picture: Gary Ramage

“Hands up those who thought there was going to be a corona­virus epidemic when the budget was released last May?” Scott Morrison asked the press pack he had gathered for a bit of expectation management.

“Of course no one did. These are unknown global shocks,” the Prime Minister continued. “So we’re dealing with those shocks and we’re processing that through how we look at the budget as we go into May and beyond.”

Luckily, the Coalition hasn’t hung its political capital on delivering the surplus promise that Labor couldn’t.

Hang on — yes, it has!

It literally made Back in Black merchandise. The official coffee cup is still for sale (at $35!) in the Liberal Party’s online shop.

But the description rewrites history slightly: “The 2019 budget delivers the first surplus in more than a decade.”

As tense time wizard Morrison explained during last year’s election campaign: “I think Australians can trust us to keep it in surplus.”

Sabra Lane: “It’s not in surplus now.”

Morrison: “I said next year. I said we brought the budget back to surplus next year.”

And it’s not like the Coalition criticised Labor for dumping its promised surplus during the GFC!

Oh, wait — yes, it did!

Here’s the 2013 Liberal policy doc Real Solutions for All Australians: “Labor has not delivered on its financial promises and has never returned a budget surplus, only excuses.”

And Morrison on the Today show in 2013: “Labor said come hell or high water, they would deliver a surplus. It didn’t happen.”

How about a media release from back when the PM was immigration minister: “Today’s ­asylum budget update is as mythical as Wayne Swan’s vanished ­surplus”.

Josh Frydenberg wrote in The Spectator: “The 2012-13 surplus, which was a rolled-gold guarantee, then a commitment, then an objective, then a guiding principle, then an expectation … has been brazenly dumped altogether.”

Mathias Cormann was asked in 2013 if it was a mistake for Labor to abandon its surplus? “They have promised a surplus in 2012-13 more than 200 times and of course they should have stuck and delivered on the surplus promise.”

So how does one distract from the fact the Coalition has been hoisted on its own petard of fiscal hubris? Frydenberg stopped just short of evoking the ghost of Christopher Pyne and promising he’d “fix it”. Pyne, you may remember, famously said with an air of economic mystery that he couldn’t reveal where the savings would come from because he “want(ed) it to be a surprise”.

Forgetting for a second he is the Treasurer, Frydenberg told question time: “What are you gonna get from the member for Rankin’s (Jim Chalmers) wellbeing budget, Mr Speaker? Double the hugs and triple the taxes, Mr Speaker.”

“When Labor hasn’t delivered a balanced budget since 1989 … of course you’ve gotta look for something else to measure.”

Politics really is a mug’s game.