If his performances over the past few days are an omen, Scott Morrison's budget show tomorrow night promises to be a dud.
Whether it was placating the National Party with his non-decision on Chinese companies buying land here, or muffing the public relations spin on the $50 billion French submarine deal, the Treasurer has been making a mess of it.
If you listened carefully on Sunday, ScoMo pretty much torpedoed the government's $50 billion South Australian election centrepiece.
Under pressure from Laurie Oakes with an allegation that the French subs are nearly twice as expensive as the German offering, Morrison said: "This bid we have entered into a negotiation on, so it's a negotiation now, the designs have not even been drawn up yet on what the submarines might be."
So, what was the Adelaide show – just a Prime Ministerial camera op with the biggest-possible dollar sign for PR purposes?
If Morrison was telling the truth on Sunday and we've already agreed a price without knowing what the subs might be, the foundations have just been laid for our biggest defence boondoggle ever.
The submarine saga promises to be a story that will keep on giving for decades, that will make the Collins class submarine saga appear a shining example of quality canoe construction indeed.
Already there's a strange mix of yarns brewing around the announced contract (or negotiation, or whatever it is). Some of them have the whiff of coming from the inevitably unhappy failed bidders, while others carry the stamp of buying into the official PR spin.
For example, The Australian's Robert Gottliebsen claims anonymous "defence officials in the US, Japan and Germany are shocked at what is now being revealed". Well, losers sometimes do that.
(It's been widely suggested some American defence types wanted us to buy Japanese to suit their anti-China strategy. It would be of little comfort to Australian submariners 40 years hence to find themselves at depth in a sea alive with anti-submarine drones, knowing their boat was purchased primarily to encourage the development of the Japanese arms industry.)
Or there's the Reuters story on how the French outflanked the over-confident Japanese with superior salesmanship and Tony Walker's AFR piece suggesting the French won because they were considered most likely to be able to build the things in Adelaide without embarrassing cost over-runs. Throw in the Oakes angle of the French being vastly more expensive than the Germans and maybe they've just been wise enough to get their over-runs in first.
Morrison tried to tell Oakes that the economic benefit of these very expensive boats of unknown value 50 years down the track was that they would transform Australia's manufacturing capabilities. That would be a big effort for boats that haven't been designed yet and that won't even start being delivered until well into the 2030s. Till then, Australian manufacturing presumably has to mark time.
You'd have to hope Morrison's budget story will make more sense and have more credibility.
