Ministers and Senators Behaving Badly Series 4

If you can't convince them, then confuse them …
In public policy, announcements come fast and delivery comes slow.
Governments can be assured a day’s good press for having the right idea,
but proving the program wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be can be the work of
months or years for the opposition.
Labor has spent much of 2020 constructing that narrative, first with
bushfires and then with Covid-19, that Morrison is “there for the photo-op,
not for the follow-up”.
Two weeks of Senate estimates scrutiny have helped Labor frame Morrison
as the ad-man who has failed to deliver. Here are the major promises
the Coalition has made and where they’re up to.
Budget surplus
One of Morrison’s most notorious unmet promises was his claim before the
2019 election that the Coalition was “bringing down the first budget
surplus for next year”, a projection that never materialised.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg during the budget delivery in the House of
Representatives on 6 October 2020. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images
Of course the deficit in 2020 was necessary to boost an economy battered
by Covid-19, but the Coalition was chipped for the certainty with which it
claimed Australia was Back in Black. Mugs emblazoned with the slogan
were removed from the Liberal store.