The Treasurer’s ministerial statement to parliament yesterday – in place of the usual budget speech scheduled for that day — could have been expected to shed light on three aspects of the current crisis: the economic situation and outlook; the fiscal costs and the outlook for public debt; and policies for recovery. 

On the economic situation and outlook, Frydenberg provided a litany of dismal statistics. Coming from a government, this slant to the negative was as novel as the coronavirus itself, and surely the opposite of what we would have heard in a budget speech. Frankness is the beneficiary when the disaster clearly is not the...