As long as we're talking about the style of interviews our economic leaders are subjected to, we're missing an opportunity to talk about the things that actually matter, writes Emma Alberici.

As long as the public is debating my posture and attitude in interviews, and as long as we're talking about perceptions of female versus male presenters and fulminating over the ABC's supposed political bias, we're overlooking the more important analysis of the budget itself.

As increasing numbers of commentators joined the chorus of outrage/delight about Malcolm Turnbull's criticisms of ABC presenters, the subject of my budget night questions to the Finance Minister was obscured. The Communications Minister recommended a "less aggressive" and "more forensic" approach to my interviews. After hours spent poring over previous budgets and checking Government projections and calculations with market economists, his comment left me scratching my head.

During his first budget reply on May 12, 2011, Tony Abbott said: "People can be confident that spending, debt and taxes will always be lower under a Coalition government."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 7 minutes 58 seconds 7 m Interview: Finance Minister Mathias Cormann ( Emma Alberici )

When I reminded Senator Cormann of this claim, he insisted they were in a stronger position than if Labor had been in government, but was also quick to explain that changes in "economic conditions" had seen revenue plunge by $90 billion.

But when former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan delivered his last budget in May 2013 and announced that weaker commodity prices and a stubbornly high Australian dollar had conspired to wipe $170 billion off tax receipts since the Global Financial Crisis in 2009, Mathias Cormann said Labor was not fit for government. Julie Bishop went further, calling Wayne Swan "the worst treasurer that this country has ever seen".

Is that a double standard? When commodity prices and global demand fall, it's beyond the control of the Coalition, but when the same fate befalls the former treasurer, Senator Cormann labels him "reckless and incompetent".

It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.

The principle has proved easier to proclaim than fulfil. Mr Abbott promised to be a better economic manager than his predecessor, but the deficit is up, as is the unemployment rate, government spending and taxes.

The PM didn't provide mothers with 26 weeks of paid parental leave at replacement wage despite calling this his "signature policy". He also pledged no cuts to education, pensions, the ABC or SBS.

Former treasurer Wayne Swan delivered a budget deficit of $19.4 billion in 2012-13. He projected a deficit marginally better in 2013-14 of $18 billion but just three months later in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO), that figure had ballooned to $30 billion. The Finance Office and Treasury blamed volatility in commodity prices and a depressed global growth environment for the downward revision.

It's the same set of events that keeps punching holes in Joe Hockey's estimates. When in opposition, the Treasurer liked to caution that "if debt is the problem then more debt is not the answer", but that mantra has been mothballed right alongside the pledge to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Consistent with the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 (introduced by John Howard and Peter Costello), the PEFO was deemed the best way to determine the state of the public finances free of political interference. Just weeks before the election in 2013, Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson and David Tune, the head of the Department of Finance and Deregulation, signed the document confirming that they had taken in to account all economic and fiscal information as well as incorporating the fiscal implications of Government decisions.

PEFO included specific program estimates across the 10 years for, among others, DisabilityCare Australia (formerly known as the NDIS) and the National Plan for School Improvement (popularly known as "Gonski"). Net debt was set to reach $370 billion at the end of the forward estimates (2016/17). With no policy changes, net debt was projected to reach zero by 2023-24. PEFO ensures, as Mr Costello put it in 1996, "that the Australian people know the situation before an election begins and so that elections can be conducted on the basis of the facts and not on the basis of deceit, as governments in the past have sought to do".

The set of figures outlined in PEFO 2013 presented quite an upset for Mr Hockey's budget emergency narrative. Three months after the election, the Abbott Government released a Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) which saw the 2013-14 deficit soar to $47 billion. A number of new Coalition measures had cost the budget dearly, including a $9 billion payment to the Reserve Bank (which had not been asked for) and $7.4 billion over the forward estimates from the abolition of the carbon tax and the associated expense of keeping the consumer compensation. Other spending decisions and changes to economic assumptions also saw net debt peak in 2023-24 at $667 billion. Again, both Dr Parkinson and Mr Tune were involved in preparing this new set of numbers but MYEFO, as opposed to PEFO, is an entirely political document.

Still, both the Treasurer and the Finance Minister continue to refer to the $667 billion figure as "Labor's debt" knowing that under the Charter of Budget Honesty, the most accurate reflection of the state of the public finances before an election is contained in PEFO.

In our Lateline interview on budget night, Mr Cormann claimed that by using the PEFO figures, I was running "the Labor argument". Was his own colleague Scott Morrison also running the Labor argument when on June 3, 2014, he addressed the Parliament with this: "If I go back to the PEFO - as we know, the PEFO is where the officials tell the truth about what the budget really is from the previous government; that is what it does."

The 2015-16 budget forecasts the Government's net debt will now rise to $325 billion by June 30, 2019. Debt for 2016-17 is now expected to be $313 billion, which, in this era of impossible to determine commodity prices and global growth, looks strikingly similar to the $370 billion Dr Parkinson and Mr Tune estimated in PEFO.

The Coalition has decided to lift spending to GFC-era levels, but with so much of this latest budget still tied to savings proposed in last year's budget, the final numbers look rubbery. The GP co-payment is gone and the change to the indexation of age pensions has also been abandoned, but savings associated with changes to family tax benefits, higher education, and $80 billion in lower payments to the states for hospitals and schools can hardly be counted as money in the bank.

I was at a corporate function this week with some of Australia's most prominent business leaders. There was widespread lament about the glacial progress of economic reform. After 24 years of uninterrupted economic growth, they suggested what's really needed is a wake-up call. Real reform, they proffered, might well only be possible after a recession. Perhaps then the public will understand that the good times can't last forever.

Dr Parkinson summed it up like this when he spoke recently to the AFR:

We've got into a trap of people promising painless solutions to problems. If we get ourselves into a situation where you can't raise an extra dollar of tax from anybody without it being seen as unfair, well you may as well give up and go home. The issue is how do we get the community to share in the fiscal consolidation that has to occur. We have this disconnect, this yelling match about the budget in the short term, yet people talking about positioning Australia for the future. It's almost as if the discussion about fiscal sustainability is occurring in a vacuum.

As long as we're talking about the style of interviews our economic leaders are subjected to, we're missing an opportunity to talk about the things that actually matter, like what our future industries might be and how we might encourage investment in them.

Emma Alberici is a host for ABC's Lateline program.