In life, and in politics, it always pays to own up to a mistake and move on.
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But that's not a lesson the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, seems to have learnt when it comes to the government's plan to tackle the "fraud" of new parents "double-dipping" by accessing two paid parental leave schemes.
On the Sunday before Mr Hockey handed down his second federal budget, press gallery doyen Laurie Oakes suggested to the Treasurer that parents accessing both the government paid parental leave scheme and their employers' was "basically fraud, isn't it, taking an allowance twice effectively? Who is doing it?"
"Well, it is," the Treasurer said, adding that "it's mostly people who go on parental leave that earn more than $90,000 a year".
Seven days later and after handing down a mostly well-received budget, the federal government has come under sustained fire for the crackdown on double-dipping, which is designed to save about $1 billion over four years.
And those three words - "well, it is" - are now haunting the Treasurer.
Amid the backlash, and revelations that two members of the government's economic team had themselves double-dipped, the Treasurer claimed on the ABC's Insiders programs he had never agreed double-dipping was a fraud.
"Do you regret some of the language you used around this, that put you behind the eight ball from the beginning?" host Barrie Cassidy asked.
"What language was that?" the Treasurer replied.
Cassidy: "The reference to double dipping, the suggestion that people were rorting the system. You agreed with Laurie Oakes that it was fraudulent."
Hockey: "Well, no, I didn't actually. If anyone actually properly reads the transcript and properly reflects on that ..."
Cassidy persisted: "He said it was fraud and you said, yes, it is."
"No, I didn't," Mr Hockey insisted. "He asked me who is it? And I said well it is da-da-da-da-da."
In the Insiders interview, Mr Hockey also distanced himself from a report that the Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison - not him - was responsible for the unpopular parental leave crackdown.
Mr Morrison has been dubbed as the treasurer-in-waiting by some MPs on his own side and in an interview with News Corp Sunday papers Mr Hockey appeared to blame his rival for the measure.
But on Sunday he said: "There is always a bit of embellishment in reporting. I don't want to be cynical about journalists but it went through the normal process, we all accept responsibility for the decisions. There was nothing unusual about this process".
The Treasurer also said it would be "terrific" if the $5.5 billion in tax breaks contained in the budget for small business was over-subscribed and dismissed suggestions it could cause a blow-out in the federal deficit.
"If we can encourage Australians to invest in the things that help to grow their businesses and create more jobs, I say that's terrific. That's exactly what we want," he said.
"If small business people are investing in innovation and job creation, we should be celebrating. That's fantastic and that's how you grow an economy."
And he insisted the government had not given up on the task of budget repair in its second budget, nor put pragmatism ahead of policy purity.
"We focused on continuing with our economic plan which is built on last year's budget, is built on a number of decisions we have made since we came to government. We are continuing with that economic plan. We are focused on making sure that wherever we have new spending, we have offsetting savings. Not tax increases but offsetting savings," he said.
Labor treasury spokesman Chris Bowen said the Treasurer should remember that "if you say something on national television people will remember it. And you can't deny it just one week later".
