Wayne Swan is promising a budget surplus for the 2012/2013 financial year. I'm not sure why he is bothering.

At just over one billion dollars it is a rounding error away from being obliterated. It is a small target, so will be very difficult to hit, and even if it is hit, what real difference will it make to fiscal settings?

Most financial commentators do not expect the surplus to be achieved.

Worse, to hit it the government has played around with the timing of various expenditures in what economist Saul Eslake calls "financial chicanery".

This is a government that is portrayed as dishonest, incompetent, over-promising and under-delivering. Wouldn't it have been better for Swan to say "Sorry, we've done our best, but a surplus is just not going to happen this year" rather than to have expended more political capital on what is going to be a fairly unconvincing debating dot point?

He would have been derided by Joe Hockey "this government will never have a surplus", but the commentators would have mostly been on side.

And from what I can see, most voters won't change their vote on this issue.

I absolutely agree, Graham.

It is surely the most unnecessary, transparent and mendacious piece of political posturing that we have seen for a while. And that in itself is saying something.

This government has turned self-delusion into a fine art. Meanwhile, the opposition has turned the conduct of cogent debate into a primitive form of schoolyard name-calling. Together, they have made it impossible for the general public to determine a factual basis for practically any issue you care to name.

We deserve better from our political class.

Wrong Pericles.

We deserve what we get from them, having voted for them all.

They reflect the lack of interest in what goes on, and hope they appeal to those who 'care', the ever busy lobby groups who fund campigns for them or against them.

If you doubt this, is there a politician you'd piss on if they were on fire, to help save them?

That said, this latest bluster from Swan is just that.

We could save billions by not letting the Defence forces order anything that was not already working, and by taxing the burgeoning religion industry, which remains totally tax free and bludging off the community for all they are worth.

What happened to tax reform?

Surplus = total irrelevance!

im surprised at you grayham for even asking
heck it gets all the 'other' news off media attentions

its all majic trickery
watch this hand..[so you cant hear what the other hand is doing

its like john howard everytime he hit the wall
he built a new foundation for the next wall

something about a billion gifted to a mate
being a smaller number
than gifting 10 billion water buyback to party mates..

[the latter being more news worthy]....
media chases the bigger number..and uses the info its allready got..[media managment]..re direction its the name of the game..spin it

but heck who cares

children over board
PARENTS TRYING TO DROWN THEIR KIDS..!

exclusive scooop
[what you dont care for kids
being drownd [thrown overboard]..by their parents?

i liked bob browns idea better
end the fuel subsidy to miners

12 billion right there
cutting education is dumb

I think we are agreed that hitting or missing a surplus by a small amount this year is irrelevant to the country's fortunes however I would have thought it is pivotal to the fortunes of the PM and the Labour Party.

What Joe Hockey says is also irrelevant rather it is what the Murdoch press including the likes of Bolt and his ilk do with 'yet another broken promise' that would be of greatest concern to them.

Waving my little antenna around our little country town even some rusted on conservative voters are showing unease with the one-sided press coverage, particularly from the Sun/Herald.

I think the government has little choice in the matter.