Shark and Clark Islands, located off the harbourside suburb of DarlingPoint and Rose Bay respectively, became dedicated recreational areas as early as the 1870s and are now great places to watch the boat traffic in Sydney Harbour.
So instead Mr Darling will point to the better than expected borrowing figures, the gradual fall in unemployment and the first tentative signs of recovery - to argue that the government is slowly but surely turning the economy around.
And it was, as we now know from Alistair Darling, on the point of making that cameraman's behaviour entirely rational: the ATMs were "hours away" from shutting down.
Raising this tax will not go down well but it was vital to enable Mr Darling to make his most important political point of all: that Labour is the guardian of crucial public services.