When Joe Hockey settled in for a solo hour on Q&A, the following happened: three apologies, two awkward minutes about his wife, one sausage machine, a giant tampon, a gag about the Pope and gay marriage and, to finish, a social media poll on his performance.

To borrow from the late Malcolm Fraser, life wasn't meant to be easy for a treasurer in the modern media age.

As happened the last time he appeared in March, Monday night's one-man performance delivered the many faces of post-budget Joe - Bullish Joe, Belligerent Joe, Bewildered Joe, and occasional flashes of Blokey Joe, full of bonhomie towards the citizens he hopes will "have a go". He'd prefer we were having a go for him rather than at him, but this being Q&A, the treasurer was braced for incoming fire.

"At the risk of sounding aggressive..,." began one questioner.

"There's no risk [of that] in this audience," quipped Hockey, who had minutes earlier delivered the first patented Hockey sigh of the evening, followed by his first "No, no, no". Signs of frustration had first appeared with a courageously patronising response to Tony Jones' attempts to draw him out on the details of tax concessions for small business. "I know this is difficult to understand, Tony," Hockey said, a line accompanied by an equally courageous pat on the host's arm.

These were not the treasurer's only moments of bravery.

One couldn't help but admire an unusual gambit by the man in charge of the nation's economy, when asked about conflicting messages on super and pensions: "I'm not a financial advisor". It was a confession that rather invited its own punchlines so we won't bother listing them all here, but perhaps more surprising was the repeated utterance of the most scarce word in the political dictionary: "Sorry."

Humble Joe offered it up no less than three times in dealing with a barrage of criticism over the branding of women as double-dipping rorters, a briefly popular talking point whose genius as political strategy was only enhanced by its unveiling on Mother's Day.

"I'm sorry if that's the way you feel and certainly it was never intended,' was the treasurer's attempt to placate one questioner, who graciously forbore asking in what universe the words "fraud" and "rort" might cause anything other than offence. To another woman: "I understand your concern about the words and I'm sorry you took offence."

This all fell under what can broadly be termed the government's "woman problem". But the most awkward moment came with an inquiry concerning one woman in particular: the treasurer's wife. A questioner wanted to know how he could accuse voters of being rorters when he himself trousered an allowance for living in a house owned by his spouse.

The audience wasn't buying his protestations that it was all entirely fair, which gave rise to the third apology of the night. "I'm sorry you feel that way." Perhaps not half as sorry as he was when he asked Tony Jones if the ABC paid him travel allowances. "They do," Jones replied. "But the hotel's not owned by my wife."

Poor Joe. He had had barely finished explaining to us that all he wanted was a place to hang his shirts and keep his toothbrush and a regular pillow on which to lay his head, this conjuring one of the more intimate mental pictures of the night. One of the more colourful visions had come earlier, when Hockey took issue with some economic modelling he regards as dubious cooking of his very fine budget books. "It's like a sausage machine ... I want to see what goes in that sausage machine."

That's generally not a good idea if you ever want to eat a sausage again, but even that wasn't the most arresting image of the night. That honour fell to the video questioner who popped up in front of a giant tampon bearing the words: "Stop taxing my period." The treasurer had to surrender to the moment, apparently creating policy on the hop with a pledge to scrap GST on tampons.

All in all, quite a performance, and Hockey ended with an attempt at a joke, citing the Vatican - "There's no women in the Vatican apparently" - as a companion state to Australia in holding out on same-sex marriage. He guffawed like he'd zinged it for Australia.

It wasn't the right week for it, really, but there was no time for a fourth run on the paddock for "sorry". Instead, Jones closed with an invitation to the nation to tweet its verdict on the performance - "spin" or "win". The treasurer grinned gamely, but couldn't resist one last trademark moment: a very solid Hockey sigh.