However unlikely such an occurrence may be, the three previous treasurers grappled with the hope of returning a budget surplus, and failed.

Treasurer Scott Morrison, in the job for just over a year, may now be learning the hard way that running a national budget is nothing like running a household one.

Handing down his second mid-year economic and fiscal update on Monday, Mr Morrison had in his hands a document showing the budget would be an extra $10.4 billion deeper into the red by 2019-20 than he had hoped in May.

He touted the government's achievement of a $2.5 billion improvement over the forward estimates, while fully funding the government's election commitments.

But against softening demand, weak wages growth (public service pay rise, anyone?) and falling corporate tax receipts, the Treasurer has held fast to his pledge to deliver $48 billion in corporate tax cuts.

The perennial problem one assumes he hopes to solve, faced by Messers Swan, Bowen and Hockey in their respective time, was ever-increasing recurring expenditure versus falling tax receipts. To cut spending or to increase taxes?

But, where Mr Swan pledged a surplus publicly, Mr Morrison said Monday that "we don't go around making these sorts of promises".

Indeed, it may no longer be a focus of this government, given just 18 months remain of this term.

Political courage seems to decrease in direct relationship to the number of days until the only poll that counts.

This latest update shows a further $3.76 billion deterioration in tax receipts expected in 2016-17, forecast to fall $30 billion overall by 2019-20, compared to the May budget.

While the three major ratings agencies have given Mr Morrison a brief reprieve from a downgrading in Australia's AAA credit rating, at least one downgrade at some point in the next year or two now seems inevitable.

The budget update has again attracted the usual criticisms from the usual suspects, several invoking that time-honoured yard-stick that budgets bare a government's priorities - as they do.

Those priorities are, publicly, innovation and economic growth. But what of one of Australia's once-promising industries, renewable energy?

It is one sacred cow Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seems unable or unwilling to revive, and one gets the sense Mr Morrison will not be proffering solutions.

Opposition treasury spokesman Chris Bowen points out, again, that the government could ditch it's promised corporate tax cut, citing Labor's helping hand with various savings measures (despite the $13 billion in zombie measures still on the books).

Clearly, even if Mr Bowen held a scintilla of private empathy for Mr Morrison, his public sympathies lie elsewhere.

But Mr Morrison's conundrum, one held by his predecessors as it will likely be held by his successors, is Australia's conundrum.

After 25 years of economic growth, a growth rate perhaps matched only by that of political staffers on the hill, this nation's leaders (of all shades), need to come together.

Governing is harder than it looks; so is swallowing party loyalty for the public interest, however essential.