Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where political correspondent Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

Penny Wong has been ringing the alarm bell for months.

She's tried press conferences, she's tried social media videos.

As she approached the microphones in Victoria on Thursday morning, you quickly got the sense she was getting close to begging Australian citizens and permanent residents in Lebanon to get out.

"Now is not the time for you to wait and see, now is the time to leave," she said.

The deteriorating state of the Middle East conflict has created a headache back in Canberra, where diplomats are facing the complicated task of helping Australians escape the region. 

The release of vision from a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade crisis centre — showing diplomats on phones and underneath screens displaying scenes in the Middle East — was also designed to reinforce the urgency of the moment.

Wong and her government knew this was never going to be as easy as people heading to an airport and hopping on a plane.

Even before the unrest broke out, Lebanon was in an economic crisis. 

Estimates suggest more than half the country was facing multidimensional poverty in the 2010s. Then came the 2019 financial collapse, which reportedly left 80 per cent of the country in poverty. The pandemic and Beirut port explosion in the years since have done little to help.

So even if people wanted to get on a commercial flight, being able to afford to do it was always going to be a challenge. 

Seats available for those who want them

Inside the government, there have been concerns that people might be waiting for the Air Force to fly in and evacuate people from the country.

Wong has repeatedly insisted that isn't on the cards. She told reporters on Thursday that a RAAF plane sent to Cyprus was just a contingency and that getting people on commercial flights was the priority. 

There are 15,000 Australians, permanent residents and their immediate family members registered as living in Lebanon. The government expects the real figure could be double that.

Of them, 1,700 have registered their interest in leaving and yet with Wong having secured seats on planes leaving on Thursday, more than half were sitting empty when she fronted the media.

The next hope, pending Beirut's airport still being open, is the 500 seats the government has secured on commercial flights headed to Cyprus on Saturday. 

Rare bout of bipartisanship

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has had few nice things to say about Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's handling of the situation in the Middle East.

Yet on Thursday he found himself urging Australians in Lebanon to "heed the advice of the prime minister, of the minister for foreign affairs", in exiting Lebanon as safely and as quickly as possible. 

It was a rare moment of bipartisanship in an otherwise increasingly bitter discourse over Australia's response to the growing tension between Israel and Iran. 

And try as the government might to push cost-of-living policies this week (such as further crackdowns on supermarket conduct), the looming October 7 anniversary was always going to distract. 

There've been debates over the presence of Hezbollah flags at weekend rallies and there's been a contest over whether this weekend's anniversary plans should be seen as vigils or protests. 

The extent to which leaders have been united on getting people out of Lebanon sits in contrast to their fractious debate over Australia's ability to shape the geopolitical situation that is forcing people to have to get out in the first place. 

Mate, nobody cares about your surplus

Jacqui Lambie is not one to mince words. If anything, the Tasmanian senator is the embodiment of "see something, say something".

It was in that spirit that she didn't have much time for the news Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveiled on Monday.

"Nobody gives a stuff about a surplus, mate," Lambie told Nine’s Today show.

"I can assure you right now people are doing it hard out there. Nobody's talking about a surplus."

Lambie's assessment of the public mood shows how far the political discourse has moved in recent years.

It's not that long ago Chalmers's Coalition predecessor Josh Frydenberg was stocking the Liberal Party gift store with ill-fated "Back in Black" mugs. 

Harangued as economically reckless before the election, Chalmers has defied his Coalition critics not once, but twice now in delivering budget surpluses.

"Our bigger-than-expected surplus in the year just gone is entirely due to lower spending, with the tax take also lower," Chalmers said on Monday. 

"This kind of responsible economic management would be unrecognisable to our predecessors."

Coalition figures were quick to insist that anyone can deliver a surplus when inflation is high. But it finds itself in the situation of being unable to point to having delivered a surplus, let alone two, in close to two decades.

Chalmers, in that Monday press conference, seemed frustrated that the government hadn't got enough credit for its economic management. 

It's likely the product of finding himself in a situation where he's seeking credit for saving money, at a time when, as Jacqui Lambie put it, many others are struggling to find enough money to put bread and milk on the table.

The $20 million mistake 

The NSW Liberal Party's fitness to run a bath recently came into question when it recorded the year's greatest political own goal in failing to do its only job — nominate candidates. 

The state branch is fast looking like a fully-functioning operation when you compare it to reports from Victoria this week, where tens of thousands of Melburnians have escaped having to pay water bills after Greater Western Water failed to, well, send them. 

If the IT bungle that created the issue wasn't bad enough, the problem compounded when the company failed to adequately communicate the issue with customers. 

It's left Greater Western Water being forced to waive bills from February and March, costing almost $19 million.

With water prices locked for the next four years, the company insists property owners won't be forced to pick up the bill for the stuff up. 

Greater Western Water's boss Maree Lang owned the mistake and repeatedly apologised to customers in an interview with ABC Radio Melbourne this week.

It was a sight rarely seen in Australia's political class, where shame and accountability died long ago.