The government’s attempt to block the proposal was, it turned out, a futile gesture. The Greens got the support of Labor, three independents and the Centre Alliance, and the idea for a royal commission went to the House of Representatives. There, Morrison’s government allowed itself to look even more stubborn. Reduced to minority government and desperate to avoid a defeat, it used delaying tactics that meant there would be no vote on a royal commission in the first week of sittings. Disabled people from across Australia had gathered, hoping for good news, and were loudly aghast. It seemed mystifying. Morrison had already said he was prepared to consider all options to clean up abuse of the disabled, and on the very day the clock ran down he declared, in a cascade of negatives: “At no time have I ever said that I didn't think there wasn't a need for a royal commission into the disability sector."

In the end, the whole attempt to delay decision-making was futile, too: the government ended up losing a vote in the House, a rare and humiliating event. It wasn’t on disability services: it was the move to allow doctors to decide if refugees on Nauru and Manus Island were sick enough to be evacuated. It clearly dawned on Morrison and his colleagues that the government had blundered. It had allowed the impression to build that it was callous and cared more for political ploys than for the disabled, whether that was the case or not. Within days, it supported a royal commission into abuse of the disabled, contingent on cooperation of the states, declaring that had been its intention all along.

Friday’s election-eve announcement by the Prime Minister was the result. By then, of course, he’d copped a cannonade of anger about the $1.6 billion shortfall in funds for the National Disability Insurance Scheme revealed in the Budget. He’d resorted on Wednesday to calling the ABC’s Jon Faine a liar, and kept repeating it as he tried to explain the shortfall was because there wasn’t the expected demand for disability services. Faine’s program the following day was swamped with callers declaring themselves desperate to gain access to services, but blocked by deficiencies in the system. The Morrison government has established a pattern of being slow to twig to landmines of its own construction. Most famously, Morrison, as treasurer, argued vociferously against a royal commission into the banking system.

He and his colleagues were 26 votes too late to finally discern under PM Malcolm Turnbull which way the wind was blowing. Morrison was prime minister by the time the ghastly truth was revealed by royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne. All those arguments he had constructed against such an inquiry were shown to have been hollow. This failure to comprehend until events run out of control was repeated this week. Tuesday’s Budget offered what are undoubtedly popular handouts to just about every Australian on welfare to help pay their electricity bills. The government figured it was on such a winner that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced the scheme the day before the actual Budget. But there was one group missing from the promised largesse. A roar of outrage was soon rolling across social media.

Loading The unemployed, which is to say those forced to exist on Newstart’s $40 a day – a payment so parsimonious even the Business Council of Australia and John Howard think it should be increased – were excluded from the one-off power bill payment of $75 for singles and $125 for couples. It took the government until the day after the Budget to admit its judgment had failed. Suddenly, those on Newstart were to be included in the little windfall. Too late: the government had already been defined in too many minds as harbouring a flint-hearted attitude to the jobless. A day late and a buck short, you might say. And now, with no more than a few days (at the outside) before an election, the morning after Labor leader Bill Shorten had sought to swing the election/Budget debate from tax to cutting the cost of fighting cancer, the Prime Minister ventures out to persuade the nation and those suffering that he has always had the interests of the disabled in his heart. "As my brother-in-law Gary [who lives with multiple sclerosis] said to me, it is not flash being disabled but the good thing is that that's the condition you live with in Australia and that you're an Australian,” Morrison said, journalists using the cliche about “choking back tears” to report his demeanour.