We looked at this two months ago, when Gillard first ventured onto Sandilands’ show; at the time I said it was obvious where Gillard is concerned that principles disappear when several million listeners are on offer, even when a misogynistic pig is in charge of the show.

At least then she had a pretext of sorts: she and Sandilands were to support a children’s Easter charity together — even if it was, rather conveniently, in the immediate aftermath of the March Labor leadership non-coup which nonetheless plunged the ALP into turmoil.

This time, her attendance can only be interpreted as an attempt to milk the considerable, youth-skewed 2DayFM audience for votes.

For a leader with such a colossal credibility problem with the electorate, my first thought was to wonder what the hell her advisers were telling Gillard.

After all, the case her “misogyny” rant was built on was flimsy, fooling only the gullible to begin with and next to nobody as even they thought it through; making a beeline for studios presided over by Kyle Sandilands kicks the crutches out from beneath any concept of a crusade against sexism and misogyny with Gillard’s name attached to it at all.

Readers will know all about Sandilands, and for the few who don’t, this will bring you up to speed fairly quickly.

Yet in a bizarre twist — reminiscent of the stereotypical friend trying to help, who makes things worse in so doing — Gillard’s Scottish PR maestro John McTernan intervened this morning, issuing a statement that stoutly defended Sandilands’ character, and berating News Ltd outlets for “a vendetta against Kyle.”

Sandilands, McTernan claimed, “touches the hearts of millions of people.”

Taking aim at a report in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, McTernan said it fell to him to point out some basic rules “of comms” to its publishers.

He went on to defend Sandilands in terms of “well-known work with charity” undertaken by the shock jock, suggesting the Tele  “will reflect on the darts of the pygmies who sneer at success.”

McTernan — a media adviser to the previous Labour government in the UK prior to his secondment to the Prime Minister’s office in Canberra — really should have known better, his talk of basic rules “of comms” notwithstanding.

It goes without saying that what he has done represents a direct intervention — even interference — in political and media issues that would seem well beyond the remit of a media lackey in a political office.

McTernan, of all people, should have known his action would become public.

And he should have known because Gillard is on shaky enough ground as it is with all this “misogyny” rhetoric, by trying to bandy it around subsequent to her speech under privilege, and by appearing on Sandilands’ show in the first place.

This isn’t a case of the rules “of comms,” to use McTernan’s insiderish jargon; it’s a case of principles — or, rather, the complete abrogation of them Gillard seems determined to commit, having made a stand on them based on the flimsiest of pretexts in the first place.

It’s not a case of a vendetta against Sandilands (although this column has called for him to be booted off air in the past, and stands by that call); it’s a case of a misogynistic pig with a huge audience of voters hosting a Prime Minister supposedly committed to stamping out misogyny, yet fawning all over Sandilands to gain the benefit of access to his listeners.

And there is no question of the validity of the charity work Sandilands does; even a pig can render some useful service if he sees fit to do so.

No, this issue reflects, once again, squarely on Gillard.

Voters with any sympathy at all for Gillard’s moral crusading against sexism and misogyny should simply shake their heads, and accept they’ve been swindled; Gillard has no credibility on such issues, and is simply a hypocrite.

And as much as McTernan might be the adviser driving much of what Gillard says or does, the responsibility stops with Gillard; ultimately it is she who is accountable to the Australian public — not McTernan.

Of McTernan, I would simply note that not only was Labour thrown from office in 2010, it suffered its worst defeat in 30 years; and as much as he might plead that he left Number 10 well before that election, the sins of a beaten government lie in its history, and he had the ear of Tony Blair for many, many years at the top levels of British governance.

McTernan should pull his head in, and concentrate on arranging his airfare back to the UK; if he books to fly out on 15 September he is unlikely to be slugged for a change of dates.

In the end, however, this latest episode explodes once and for all the myth of Julia Gillard and her hatred of misogyny; the days’ events show rather that she is driven by expediency and self-interest — and when it comes to self-interest, she certainly stands for that…

It comes as little surprise that in some corners of the press, there have been loud headlines this week proclaiming recoveries, bounces and comebacks for Julia Gillard in the wake of last week’s budget and the polls that followed it.

There is virtually nothing in the relevant numbers to justify such talk; we’ll go through it, but deluded lefties getting excited about tiny movements within error margins are just that: deluded.

I’m not going to get misty-eyed about primary votes tonight, which in any case are most relevant these days in depicting the split of the vote for the Left between Labor and the Greens; it’s the two-party measure that wins and loses elections — barring oddities (1961, 1990, 1998) — and that’s what I am going to focus on.

Here are the two-party figures from this week’s polls for the four main opinion polls, all taken after the budget; movement is from the previous survey — one week ago for Essential, two for Newspoll, and four for Nielsen and Galaxy.

Essential: 55-45 to Coalition (no change)

Newspoll: 56-44 to Coalition (no change)

Nielsen: 54-46 to Coalition (+3% to ALP)

Galaxy: 54-46 to Coalition (no change)

And whilst I’m not drilling into primary vote movements — some of which involve moves against the Coalition, but not all — all the movements recorded except by Nielsen fall within the margin of statistical error, and are therefore difficult to regard as reliable.

This is especially the case with this particular Nielsen survey; not because it shows a 3% movement against the Liberals after preferences, but because it contains a state-by-state breakdown that just happens to feature a 12% swing against the Coalition in South Australia and the Northern Territory, after preferences, from its previous findings.

This movement has “rogue” written all over it — especially as its other state-by-state numbers are broadly unchanged.

Readers can view the Nielsen numbers here.

The Fairfax papers seem to have lost their rag over the Nielsen numbers altogether though; under a headline “Gillard’s Budget Boost” The Age begins by saying that Julia Gillard has arrested a three-month decline in her standing with voters, to be back level with Tony Abbott as preferred Prime Minister” (although it is at least honest enough to add that “Labor would still be beaten if an election were held now”).

We’ll come back to preferred Prime Minister numbers, because these really are the only basis for trying to portray last week as any sort of victory for the government — and even then, it’s a wide bow to draw.

But I want to stick with Fairfax for a bit, because their presentation of the claim of Gillard getting a bounce has been pretty disingenuous, to say the least.

If you look at this article you’ll see that its “2010 to Present” visual of primary and two-party voting intention is nothing of the sort; it omits all of 2011 and most of 2012 — conveniently, a period in which Nielsen found the Coalition recording two-party leads of 15% and above — commencing instead at about the time of Gillard’s “misogyny” outrage, and coinciding with the temporary narrowing of the Coalition lead in the Nielsen surveys.

The imputation is that the return to wide Coalition leads this year was a short-term blip; and to complete a point, were it not for the wild movement recorded by Nielsen in one state, the Coalition would probably have recorded a 56-44 result in this survey too.

It’s the same story with their “Prime Minister’s Performance/Preferred Prime Minister” visual, too; the worst of her ratings have been omitted.

News Ltd got it rather better.

“Labor Going Nowhere In Latest Newspoll,” headlined The Australian, before going on to say that “Labor’s electoral base of low-income earners has turned against Wayne Swan’s pre-election budget on the grounds of economic management and being personally “worse off” as a result of measures announced last week.”

(Newspoll tables can be found here).

And the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph were even blunter, stating that “the opinions of Australian voters are now entrenched and not even a Federal Budget promising help for the disabled and education reforms will change their minds, the latest Newspoll suggests.”

So what of the widely reported “bounce” Gillard is supposed to have got from the budget?

Two of the four polls — Essential and Galaxy — didn’t even ask the leaders’ approval and preferred PM questions; Essential, in any case, only does so monthly, and its May findings the previous week showed Gillard’s position unchanged relative to her standing against Tony Abbott.

And a third — Newspoll — found both leaders with very slightly higher personal approval numbers from the previous fortnight, and a 2% narrowing in Abbott’s lead as preferred Prime Minister well within the poll’s margin of error, and with Abbott remaining ahead in any case.

That leaves just Nielsen, with what seems to be at least partly rogue results, and its SA/NT findings seemingly contaminating the rest of its numbers, showing Gillard gaining four points on the “preferred PM” measure at Abbott’s expense for the pair to tie on 46% apiece, with 8% undecided.

And that’s what the entire concocted story of Gillard’s new-found “momentum” is based on: that one survey, when the glaring hole in its findings would cause anyone to wait until the next to see if the 12% swing in SA/NT was replicated or whether it was, truly, just a rogue blip.

Somewhat surprisingly, even the News Ltd papers ran with the Nielsen numbers too, even as they were reporting the doom and gloom Newspoll had found awaiting the government at the polls, and if you click into the Herald Sun link I’ve included, you’ll see exactly that.

Then again, it’s not the sort of caution likely to be shown by those elements in the press pack desperate to pump up Gillard’s tyres, and determined to demonise Abbott at any cost: even if the price is the truth.

I don’t expect to see a 57-43 result at this year’s election or anything close to it, frankly, and whilst I am loath to make predictions (aside from the Coalition winning, and doing so reasonably well) I think 54-46 is pretty much where the votes will end up falling.

It is also probably no coincidence that across the different surveys, and with a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation and some educated guesswork, 54-46 just happens to be the average of all the polls since the 2010 federal election.

In other words, I actually think the Coalition will do a little worse than the average of these four latest polls suggest it will. Just a little.

Politics is a changing game, and anything can happen; in the past six months we’ve seen Labor and the Prime Minister move to within striking distance of the Coalition on the back of one dodgy speech — only to see the Coalition race back ahead as the memory of that distasteful event wore off in the minds of voters.

It’s just an example, but it’s instructive; and whilst polling day is now nominally less than four months away, there is still time for the unexpected to occur.

Even today, there are rumours of a third and final leadership challenge from Kevin Rudd, on or about 3 June: who knows whether it will happen or what the result will be if it does, but it will change the dynamic irrespective of what happens should it come to pass.

I would urge readers to disregard the bullshit of the past week about a “bounce” for Gillard; no such phenomenon has occurred (which is not to say that it won’t at some point between now and the election). The whole thing has been a media beat-up.

Next week, however, you never know what might happen — that’s politics!

I have read with interest this afternoon a story that has appeared on News Ltd sites across the country, in which ex-National-cum-LNP turncoat Alex Douglas claims he’ll be the next Premier of Queensland.

This story is of interest to me as an ex-Queenslander as much as for its value as a political news item in its own right, and sends a shudder down my spine on both counts.

Douglas — had the former Queensland Division of the Liberal Party had any cojones when divvying up seats with the former National Party — wouldn’t even be in Parliament.

Gaven is a classic example of the kind of urban south-east Queensland electorate that may have been fertile ground for the National Party 30 years ago, but not now; but so were many such electorates in Queensland in the days before the merged LNP came into existence, and it’s unsurprising that not only did the National Party ever win more than a couple of them, the presence of their candidates also assisted Labor candidates in other seats to beat their coalition counterparts.

A “Coalition candidate” at a by-election in the seat of Gaven in April 2006, Douglas was narrowly elected, only to lose the seat at the election later that year; he won it back by a tiny margin in 2009, and was re-elected last year in the tidal wave that carried all bar 11 of the LNP’s 88 candidates into Parliament: hardly a personal endorsement.

Even so, re-election by a 70-30 margin appears to have given Douglas delusions of grandeur; certainly it is difficult to believe that he would have behaved the same way after last year’s election had he retained his seat in another knife-edged contest.

And that behaviour has included stomping out of the LNP in high dudgeon; the lowly backbencher Douglas — who refused to acknowledge his place — had been removed as the head of a parliamentary committee; this followed his wife countersigning a complaint to the LNP that sought to have Treasurer Tim Nicholls sacked from the ministry.

Perhaps because it was Palmer who was the other complainant, Douglas felt he was on safe ground. But as a direct result of the former National Party’s past, the LNP cannot even be perceived as operating under the slightest hint of the appearance of the constraint of a conflict of interest.

This is why the LNP was set to bite the hand that fed it — Palmer and his seven-figure donations — until Palmer stomped out of the LNP as well.

Now we have an utterly delusional political party whose lofty ambitions know no bounds, but which is entirely innocent of any grounding in political reality.

I have opined previously that Palmer has no core constituency; no obvious bloc of voters — based on geography or on demographics or anything else — is lining up in a “Draft Clive” movement to sweep the billionaire, and his associates, into Parliament.

It seems nobody else wants to, either; thus far several reputable opinion polls have been conducted federally on voting intention, and none have registered any support for the Palmer Party whatsoever.

And I say the “Palmer Party” because that’s what it is: Clive Palmer’s vehicle to win power.

It is true that this party was to be called, rather misleadingly, the “United Australia Party,” a plan that had to be abandoned because of its similarity to the name of another party already registered with the Australian Electoral Commission.

But the replacement name belies the fact that uniting anyone (except behind Palmer personally) was never the objective of such a party in the first place.

If anyone doubts this, they should head up to Coolum (yes, in Queensland) to what was once the Hyatt Regency Coolum Resort; it is now Palmer Coolum Resort after the mining baron purchased it a couple of years ago.

They should observe the huge dinosaur adorning one of the greens on the golf course at the resort — perhaps before sampling the “fantastic food” at “Palmer Grill” offered by ubiquitous signs all over the place.

So let’s not mince any words over exactly what motivates “Palmer United Party” — or PUP as we will call it — an entity anyone in their right minds would vote for at their peril.

A check of PUP’s website quickly validates any doubt of the party’s bona fides as a mainstream outfit as opposed to the rickety vehicle for the moneyed and disgruntled.

“Australian Children Should Live,” reads the header on a press release that says the first act of a Palmer PUP government will make Australia’s woeful indigenous infant mortality rate its first priority — without a single word outlining how, or indeed what it would do to address the issue.

PUP opposes, according to its media releases, both cuts in government spending and raised taxes; it simply claims “the only way forward…is to elect a Palmer United Party government…and unite all Australians.” It is unclear how PUP proposes to fix the federal budget through this approach, apart from “uniting” everyone.

And there is a strong “get the Liberals” flavour to what appears on the PUP site; this time last year Palmer was all for Campbell Newman and Tony Abbott; now, the LNP is a bunch of crooks* and Tony Abbott is no better than Julia Gillard, according to his site.

Now, Palmer’s protegé in Alex Douglas thinks he’s going to be Premier of Queensland.

Never mind the delusional objectives of the Palmer United Party.

Never mind the unreasoning and unrealistic estimates it makes of its own support.

Never mind the fact it had to have two goes at its registration as a party.

Never mind the total absence of policy, except a “we hate everyone” approach to competitors, and a distinct suggestion of hunger for revenge against the LNP.

Never mind the fact that Douglas — a parliamentary midget of absolutely no significance whatsoever to the governance of Queensland, or to politics generally, south and west of its borders — appears to believe his own propaganda, or the sizeable chip on his shoulder that accompanies it.

The simple fact is that based on present indicators, PUP is unlikely to win a seat anywhere, let alone form a government in any jurisdiction in Australia, be it as a majority, minority, in coalition with someone or any other permutation.

Clive Palmer is a brilliant businessman and respect is owed on that account, but this column questions the wisdom of the political enterprise he has embarked upon, and the available published pretexts that have thus far been offered in justification of it.

Especially when it attracts the likes of Douglas.

The advice from this column — in the unlikely event he ever became Premier of Queensland — to that state’s residents is very simple.

Leave.

I think the PUP’s prospects are bleak but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be held accountable to the type of ridiculous nonsense offered up this afternoon.

Simply stated, Alex Douglas — and Clive Palmer — are trying to sell Queenslanders a pup.

*according to Palmer before he resigned from the LNP.

Attention, yes, and discussion, yes, although I do point out that whilst this column does not support the legalisation of same-sex marriage, as readers already know, there are surely better ways to argue the case than this.

Tonight’s post is an observational one,  and more to generate discussion than anything as well as keeping an eye on what’s going on elsewhere in the world that is relevant to debates and discussions taking place here in Australia.

This is especially relevant today, given former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement that he has changed his mind on the issue, and now supports the measure.

There are three stories in today’s British press that I refer readers to here, here and here.

To give Australian readers a little context, this is a much “hotter” issue in Britain than it is here; the ruling Conservative Party is losing a lot of popular support at present to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), predominantly over the issue of Britain’s continued membership of the EU, but same-sex marriage is fuelling the drift as well.

There is ample anecdotal evidence that traditional Tory voters want a referendum offering the option of leaving the EU altogether (the so-called “in-out referendum” you may have heard of) and for marriage in Britain to continue to be defined as being between one woman and one man, as is the case here in Australia.

David Cameron, who — in a ceaseless campaign to “modernise” the Conservative Party that seems to be transforming it into a bastard amalgam of economic conservatism and social postmodernism — is doing all he can to avoid the referendum, but to legalise gay marriage.

So there is real…er, spice…surrounding this issue in Britain, and much of it has nothing to do with gay rights, same-sex marriage and so forth.

Enter Tebbit.

He says — among other things — that Cameron and the Tory Party leadership have “fucked up” by alienating the grassroots vote over such issues.

There are two ways to look at what he has had to say; once you’ve read his remarks in full from the clippings I have pasted here, I will be interested to see which way you view them.

It is important to note that despite appearances to the contrary, Tebbit in the past has been known to opine that whilst he disagrees with the practice of homosexuality, he is a defender of the right of the individual to practice it.

But even so, “I rather fancy my brother, perhaps I’ll marry my son” would seem to be a somewhat extreme means of expressing opposition to same-sex marriage.

So, too, is his scenario of a lesbian queen inseminated using semen from an anonymous donor.

Are these scenarios realistic?

Tebbit does touch on a couple of issues that haven’t been given consideration, such as inheritance tax, but really — and remember, I don’t support the measure either — isn’t this going a bit too far?

I’m in two minds as to how to judge Tebbit, given I was a big fan of his when he was a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, and given he is — normally — a voice of hard cold reason, dour as it sometimes is.

On one hand, is he guilty of an indiscretion here on the scale Cory Bernardini was roundly (and rightly) savaged for, by supporters and opponents alike of same-sex marriage, some time ago?

Or on the other, is Tebbit right to rip into the ridiculous, focus group generated slogans “marriage equality” and “equal love” with venom to prosecute his case and, if so, are his illustrations justified?

I’d be interested to hear what people think.

There is a parallel debate in Britain at present, which is gathering pace; whether David Cameron should be replaced as Conservative Party leader (and Prime Minister) before the next scheduled British general election in 2015.

The hubbub over gay marriage is the latest in a litany of issues that have sparked both controversy over Cameron’s leadership and an exodus of Tory voters in the direction of UKIP.

I was one of David Cameron’s staunchest Antipodean supporters for a long time, both before and after he became Prime Minister; I came to the conclusion some time ago that I was in error, and that he must be replaced if Labour is to be prevented from an unjustified and unmerited return to office in two years’ time.

What effect will Lord Tebbit’s outburst have on that?

I look forward to hearing readers’ thoughts — both for and agin.

By the way, I wish to note to readers that I will be resuming “normal” columns in the next day or two; I’ve been distracted for a few days by other issues, but will have a little more time to post very shortly, starting with the post-budget polling.

In recent weeks I have spoken at length about the cynical assumption that underpins most strategies and tactics deployed by the ALP: that is, that voters are an essentially stupid group; a brainless herd whose intelligence is extremely limited, and easily subjugated with idiot-simple slogans repeated endlessly until they become instinctively accepted.

The flashy part of the budget process is finished — the bills will grind their way through Parliament, yes, but barring the (unthinkable) blocking of supply, the rank and file punter won’t see much more of it now the promises, and the gimmicks, and the speeches are over.

And now it is over, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan have hit the stump; not, it seems, so much to sell the budget as to start a colossal scare campaign about an Abbott government in a final, jaundiced attempt to cobble enough votes together to stay in office.

I put it thus because there is no evidence this government cares about anything except that one basic objective; as I said last night, they will say and/or do anything to retain power, offices and salaries — and their treatment of anyone in their way will be brutal.

Wayne “I’m Important and I’m Right” Swan has been out today, spruiking a plot by Tony Abbott to “sneak his real plan” through the election campaign; Abbott, according to Swan, would follow the “Campbell Newman playbook” and hide the truth until after the election.

Labor is obsessed with the Queensland Premier, which is unsurprising as his is the most securely ensconced conservative administration in Australia, and is undertaking a painful yet urgent restructure of his state’s finances after decades of Labor mismanagement.

Even so, this is the same Queensland Premier who reputable polling suggests would easily win a fresh election this weekend, retaining almost all of his unprecedented majority intact.

Gillard — unbelievably — has launched a campaign on GST; despite Abbott’s repeated promise that any reforms of substance would be taken to an election ahead of a second term (and his insistence that review of the GST was not a priority), she has been running around telling anyone who will listen of the grand plot to extend the tax to food, and to increase the GST rate.

I would simply point out that the GST might have provided an effective campaign point in 1993 and 1998, but it won’t now.

At those elections, people voted out of fear, to the extent the GST was a consideration for them: fear of the unknown, fuelled largely by the same misleading tactics that seem to be making a reappearance now.

GST didn’t make Kim Beazley Prime Minister in 2001; people understand the sky didn’t fall in, and that the tax operated exactly as John Howard and Peter Costello said it would.

The GST, and some Machiavellian Newmanesque plot, are just the start of it.

Still, Gillard and Swan don’t have a hell of a lot to work with.

They can hardly stand on their record; they would only do so in order to hide it.

They can hardly outline a bold new vision, and invite the Australian public to follow them: the Australian public is fed up with being lied to by its politicians, and with that experience under their belts have decided they don’t want to follow Gillard anywhere.

And in any case, after six years in government, none of the ALP’s big, bold ideas have attracted much enthusiasm at all; take away the NDIS, and what’s left is received sullenly, almost malignantly, by a growing majority of voters.

Even the promise of billions in education funding made no difference to the government’s standing in the opinion polls.

And so — with no electoral capital in hand, and with voters waiting for them with baseball bats — The Big Scare is all Gillard and her cohorts have left.

A friend of mine asked last night why there was no palpable anger “out there” over the superannuation co-contribution (which was meant to be funded by the mining tax) being axed; at the time I responded that it was probably because people didn’t believe the promise from Swan and Gillard in the first place.

I actually think it’s more than that; people now know Wayne Swan has spent years presenting dodgy figures in budgets and implementing taxes that don’t raise any money, and I think they understand that there is no money, therefore there is no super top-up.

(I still can’t get over thew fact that the traditional tax-and-spend party has buggered up two taxes “designed” to reel in billions and billions and billions of dollars).

Yet everyone from Gillard to Swan to Bill Shorten and several of their colleagues are putting the line around that Abbott is ripping off the low-paid; Abbott is taking money away from the poor. ”Tony Abbott (will) take the axe to low and middle-income families in the community,” Swan said.

I think people are more likely to be angry with the present government — and Gillard and Swan, first and foremost — for making such blatantly undeliverable promises in the first place than they are with Abbott for outlining steps to right the ship of state.

But Labor won’t back off; the fear factor is the only tool left in their toolbox.

Today is just the start of this latest attack, but it will intensify; the closer to polling day we get, the more of this desperate claptrap we will hear from Gillard.

Even after one day of this rubbish, she said ”people should be asking themselves ‘what’s next?’”

Quite.

The scare campaign that worked in 1993 and — almost — in 1998 will not work now.

The Australian electorate have had enough of Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan; this Labor government is nearing its expiry date, but its leadership duo are the single biggest liabilities it carries, and the time to replace them has all but passed.

Gillard and her cronies will ramp up the scare campaign: expect wild accusations and even scurrilous “revelations;” but the fact is that nobody is listening, and that sobering reality must be very galling indeed.

Add to this the fact that since Julia Gillard’s despicable “misogyny” rant under the coward’s cover of parliamentary privilege, people have had another look at Abbott, and increasingly like what they see; Abbott himself is fuelling this effect, acting more Prime Ministerial by the day, and not responding to barbs and taunts he would once have let rip over.

The more the government tries to ramp up its scare campaign, the harder it will rebound on them, and staring down the barrel of a heavy defeat indeed, like lemmings they now seem hellbent on making it worse.

There is 17 more weeks of this to look forward to.

Budget reply speeches — indeed, budget speeches themselves, as evidenced by Wayne Swan on Tuesday — have increasingly become political rather than economic exercises, aimed more at the achievement of a set of political objectives than they are at the announcement and debate of specific measures and initiatives, or their cost.

In this context, Abbott’s address tonight was a triumph; he has emerged the victor in terms of the annual battle between Treasurer and opposition leader, and is now seemingly set to proceed to a colossal election win against Julia Gillard in September.

(Readers can access a transcript of the speech here).

Make no mistake, tonight’s speech represented a balancing act that could well have gone disastrously wrong.

Labor — with a budget crafted as cleverly as its straitened and self-inflicted circumstances permitted — had set traps for Abbott everywhere, then tried to goad the opposition leader into rescinding cuts it had announced and/or reneging on supporting spending measures.

That Abbott was able to neuter these tactics is no surprise; that he did so with great aplomb and dexterity caught some on the government benches by surprise.

His announcement that a Liberal government would “reserve the right” to implement any or all of Labor’s cuts, along with implementing none of Labor’s spending commitments “unless specified,” clearly ensures Labor will wear the political opprobrium for the budget deficits it has presided over, as well as the political pain associated with fixing the mess.

It allows Abbott the flexibility as Prime Minister to restore individual measures if additional offsetting savings can be found, but cut them — and do so in Wayne Swan’s name — if they can’t.

Abbott has confirmed that a Liberal government will proceed, as pledged, with the NDIS; on Gonski, however, it seems obvious those “reforms” will never be implemented, with Abbott saying his government would not be held to a scheme that is not national.

As foreshadowed in our dissection of the budget, abandoning Gonski could be a good decision: it also saves billions of dollars that are additional savings over and beyond those earmarked by Swan.

Much of what was said tonight — on trust, credibility, and restoring confidence in government — goes to the heart of the Liberals’ likely election campaign; watch for a lot of running to be made on the themes of honesty and trust as the Coalition continues to hammer Labor on what has been its weakest point since 2013.

Abbott confirmed what he has previously promised — to abolish the carbon tax, but retain the compensatory measures already introduced — whilst announcing an additional $5 billion in savings to pay for them.

This has already led to howls of outrage from Labor figures — particularly superannuation minister Bill Shorten — about spending cuts for battlers and tax cuts for billionaires.

Yet it remains to be seen what credible case Labor can make for opposing these measures, with a bloated bureaucracy to remain larger than in 2007 even after Abbott’s cuts, and other measures for low-income earners abolished on account of the revenue instrument supposedly funding them raising no money, and slated by the Liberals for abolition.

Abbott has flagged that any Coalition spending policies released between now and the election will be revenue neutral; he has also undertaken to release costings once the pre-election update of government finances is released shortly before polling day.

Yet his approach tonight — what the Coalition might keep, cut, or introduce anew in office — has pre-purchased an incoming Liberal government enormous flexibility.

Any grilling on policy costings need now only be met with a formulation simply stating that a) Labor has lied about the numbers for six years, b) any commitments are contingent on the discovery of the true state of government finances, and that c) adjustments may need to be made if further budget blowouts are discovered after the election.

And having thwarted the budget landmines Labor had planted for Abbott, the government was faced with the galling experience of having to watch Abbott speak directly to voters in what can only be described as an election speech — and a rather good one at that.

It was instructive to observe the reactions on the faces of Labor frontbenchers.

Wayne Swan looked typically smug, as if there were some hidden threat to Abbott that remained undiscovered; being the old numbers man he is and was, Swan will no doubt continue to plot and scheme, but his political skills to date suggest Abbott has little to fear.

A seething Julia Gillard, on the other hand, looked as if she might spontaneously combust; it isn’t difficult to understand why when Abbott’s speech tonight probably hammered the final nail into Labor’s coffin, and the coming election campaign will obliterate any remnants of her political credibility — and Gillard knows it.

The budget was basically the last big chance for Labor to turn the political contest around, and it has failed.

There are no more big-ticket agenda items left in this term of Parliament; and to the extent there may be — a no-confidence vote moved against the government by the Liberals — the Gillard government will, perversely, be in far worse political health if it survives it than if it were thrown from office at that point.

Above all, Abbott’s speech tonight was simple, honest and credible: attributes that provide a stark contrast to his opponents and to the budget delivered by Wayne Swan on Tuesday, and an approach which will be, if maintained, an asset to Abbott as Prime Minister.

The Murdoch press reports this afternoon that Indigenous Affairs minister Jenny Macklin has announced $900,000 over three years for the “First People’s Disability Network Australia” to provide services to assist indigenous Australians to understand and access support from DisabilityCare Australia.

My response — to use the crude but blunt vernacular — is simple. WTF?

Jenny Macklin is a decent individual, and — despite her politics, which I detest — is normally one of the more reasonable figures on the ALP benches.

But she’s lowered her colours by getting in on this.

Why do Aborigines mandate $900,000 for their own disability network?

Why has the Labor Party opted to segregate — other than for the purposes of gimmickry — the benefits Aborigines will receive from the NDIS from those open to other Australians?

And why should anyone believe this is anything other than yet another cheap political stunt, pandering to minorities in an attempt to be seen, particularly by Greens voters, as bolstering Labor’s “credentials” on “social justice?”

If I were an Aborigine I’d feel patronised and insulted; as an Australian, I’m affronted by what is a clear case of more taxpayer money pissed up against a post on needless spending by a profligate government trying to curry favour in areas it thinks it can win votes.

Remember, Labor is still in the doghouse in some parts of the Aboriginal community over the railroading of former Olympian Nova Peris onto its Senate ticket in the NT at the expense of the far better-credentialled (and Aboriginal) Marion Scrymgour.

A statement from Julia Gillard claimed that her government was “committed to closing the gap for Indigenous Australians with disability.”

Which is fine, although it goes on to say “many Indigenous people are reluctant to identify themselves as a person with disability and often do not seek help with disability services.”

Surely this statement is applicable to Australians generally — not just Aborigines?

But  – again — the $900,000 in spending announced today is to provide services to assist indigenous Australians to understand and access support from DisabilityCare Australia.

Over three years.

Why are Aboriginal people less likely than anyone else to understand what support is available from the NDIS?

Why does the Gillard government effectively state it will take three years for them to understand this?

And far from rendering any meaningful progress in “closing the gap” on indigenous disadvantage, this “measure” tokenises Aborigines.

Its message, simply stated, is that Aborigines are too stupid to be trusted to work out for themselves what the rest of the country has the brains to discover on its own, and must therefore be singled out as desperate cases indeed.

The best part of a million dollars allocated to this is more a salve for Labor consciences and their do-gooder hangers-on than it is a valid expenditure of public money.

Then again, there’s nowhere too low for the Labor Party to stoop now; desperate and panicking, it will do anything — and this is a tasteless illustration of the type of tactics I think we’ll see an awful lot more of before 14 September.

Meanwhile, the ALP has also attempted to refloat its beloved “misogyny” issue today with a fracas erupting over a pairing request for backbencher Michelle Rowland, who has a sick child — initially refused and later agreed to by the Coalition — as it tries to stir up what trouble it can to deflect the extremely poor reception its budget has received thus far.

It is noteworthy Tony Abbott had nothing to do with the request and subsequent agreement to the pairing request.

Predictably, however, Labor types are running around the country, screaming “Tony Abbott just doesn’t get it,” with Julia Gillard stating the episode made “an absolute mockery of everything the Leader of the Opposition has ever said about working women.”

Perhaps it’s too indelicate to point out the decision on the pairing request was made by an opposition whip rather than Tony Abbott personally.

Then again — if you’re the ALP — the truth never gets in the way these days to talk about Tony Abbott and misogyny in the same sentence.

Such is its obsession with the retention of power — and its willingness to smear and destroy opponents on as personal a basis as possible (just ask Kevin Rudd) — that the ALP will say and do anything between now and the election to retrieve its dismal prospects.

Today has been another disgusting day of grubby Labor politics.

It is to be hoped, in his response to Wayne Swan’s budget tonight, that Abbott inflicts some real political damage on a government and a Prime Minister whose tenure cannot come to an end quickly enough when the national interest, rather than Labor’s, is the yardstick.

Actually, this could well be seen as an over-correction; not only does Swan get a visual as well as auditory exposure, but his interview with the ABC’s Leigh Sales on 7.30 last night is the longer of the two interviews as well.

Readers can view the Swan/Sales interview here.

Wayne Swan gives an active account of both himself and the budget he delivered last night; I thoroughly recommend readers of all political stripes watch this interview as it offers an excellent insight into Labor’s budget strategies moving forward.

My apologies to those offended by omitting airtime of Swan; here it belatedly is.

Despite the fact he wouldn’t allow Hockey to fully answer half the questions he asked before cutting Hockey off, Alan Jones had a lengthy interview with the shadow Treasurer this morning that I think is well worth a listen.

Readers can access the audio feed here.

Hockey actually answers the questions fairly directly here, and what he has to say to Jones (interruptions notwithstanding) is instructive in terms of the approach the likely new Liberal government will do on economics once elected in September.

Just a quick post; I will be back later today — perhaps on the budget issue, or perhaps on something else…

First things first: can anyone tell me what is meant by this statement: “Revenues are at 25-year levels in the context of the past 25 years?”

This is one of the points Wayne Swan made in his post-budget interview with the ABC’s Leigh Sales; to be fair, it’s probably the sort of slip anyone under extreme strain could make in such a situation, and under the pressure of delivering a pre-election budget from a political position of diabolical  – if not terminal — weakness.

Yet that piece of verbal recursion is a metaphor for this budget; it makes little sense, and it leads nowhere that anyone might care to follow.

Indeed, the kindest thing I can find to say about Swan’s sixth — and, to be sure, final — budget is that at least he had the grace to finally admit a problem with the Commonwealth budget in terms of revenue and expenditure that needs to be addressed.

Suffice to say, this budget does not address that problem, and beyond that observation it is an unmitigated failure as an exercise in politics, policy, and through which to enhance the standing and standard of living of the citizens of this country.

At the outset — and this won’t be popular — but perhaps the Gonski reforms ought to be abandoned outright. For now at least. I’ll come back to this statement a little later.

The self-important Swan has announced an expected budget deficit for the current financial year of $19.4 billion: very close to the $20 billion I have repeatedly flagged in this column over the past month or so, but (thankfully) well short of  more extreme projections of $80 billion that have found their way into other sections of the media.

Even so, it’s a big turnaround from a surplus of $1.5 billion, predicted this time last year.

“The years of surplus are upon us!” Swan had foolishly proclaimed. The years of deficit, however — six to date and at least two more on Swan’s reckoning — still have another hole of at least $30 billion to blow in the national finances after the current year ends in June.

Tonight’s budget is predicated on a dangerous science indeed: Wayne Swan’s economic forecasting, which for six years has been shown to be as unreliable as the wind, but which underpins the assumptions Swan and his colleagues now ask Australians to accept anew.

Those assumptions see deficits of $18 billion and $11 billion for 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, followed by a “balanced” budget ($800 million in surplus) in 2015-16 and “surpluses in the years beyond.”

Such assumptions — combined with the usual Labor penchant for rampant, inefficient and unaccountable spending — are the reason the problem exists in the first place.

Someone is responsible for these — people can decide whether it’s Swan and the government, or the “professionals at Treasury,” as Julia Gillard calls them — but for mine, and especially as even Swan admits Treasury provided the same (unerringly accurate) advice to the Howard government as it does to Gillard’s, my finger points at the government, not the bureaucrats.

And why wouldn’t it?

To fill the hole, families and businesses bear the brunt of this budget; the ALP historically and this government especially have never made a secret of the fact it views both constituencies with contempt.

I posted earlier about the abolition of the Baby Bonus, and just to be clear: I never said it was a sound policy measure, but it is something that has provided relief from the increasing costs associated with childbirth for those starting or building a family.

Private obstetrics services had already been hacked at by Labor, with 10% reimbursable from Medicare rather than 80%, and the Baby Bonus didn’t even cover that gap.

With the bonus now removed altogether, the ridiculous effect will be that many couples with private health insurance will opt for childbirth in a public hospital, effectively placing Medicare and the public hospital system under even greater strain than it already is.

It needs to be remembered that subsidised as it may be, the cost of private health insurance is still overwhelmingly borne by the consumer, with the average family of four paying $3,000 per annum in premiums that are in addition to the Medicare levy, and are effectively a taxpayer subsidy of the costs of healthcare in Australia.

This government has pushed the ability of those consumers and families to continue that “subsidy” to breaking point, and this budget continues that.

But beyond the Baby Bonus, Swan’s budget makes further attacks on health; it freezes indexation of schedule Medicare fees for doctor visits at $36; this will lead to a decline in bulk billing rates, and to doctors passing on increased gap payments — irrespective of the government’s fanciful rhetoric to the contrary — to patients who, ultimately, will find it prohibitively expensive to seek health care except in a public hospital.

And that, too, will place the creaking public health system under exponentially more pressure again.

And just to really screw the individual and the family on health, the Medicare Safety Net is to kick in at a much higher threshold, effective only after a household has incurred $2,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses in a given year, up from $1,200.

The tax rebate for out-of-pocket medical expenses is to be abolished altogether.

So much for easing cost of living pressures; and so much for the ALP being the “party of health” when this budget does more to compromise the standard and availability of healthcare in Australia than any other measure in living memory.

The business community cops it in this budget, too; not simply content to allow union thugs untrammelled influence over labour costs and conditions, measures announced by Swan to tighten compliance, remove tax deductions and bring forward revenues will add to business costs, reducing profits and productivity, and ultimately, cost jobs.

On infrastructure, the $24 billion “committed” in this budget should be taken with a grain of salt; as discussed in this column this morning, the example of its partial funding of a project in Melbourne isn’t even the one the state government intends to build, and even if it was comes with so many strings and conditions attached to it that the State of Victoria would be well-saved the bother of taking the money.

Either way, it’s unlikely Swan’s $3 billion will ever be spent in Victoria. I daresay some of the other projects allocated “funds” in this budget fit a similar storyline.

The most degenerate aspect of this budget is its treatment of education and disability policy.

I’m always cynical of Labor governments — state or federal — offering to throw huge pots of money at schools; it pulls on understandable heart strings but, in the end, the money invariably ends up in teachers’ pay cheques or, more commonly, in the form of additional bureaucrats.

These “outcomes” do nothing to improve educational outcomes.

So when I follow the debates over education funding reform (“Gonski” for short, as most know) or the worthy and universally supported objective of establishing a National Disability Insurance Scheme, I get very suspicious.

Especially as both sets of reforms call for entire new bureaucracies to be established to administer them.

Especially as the majority of the money for each is decreed, by the Gillard Government, to have to come from (mostly conservative) state governments.

And especially because the Commonwealth component of them — roughly $100 billion over 10 years — is set to be legislated through this budget to prevent an incoming Abbott government from modifying or abolishing them to save money, and to redress the budget flaws Wayne Swan hasn’t, can’t, or won’t.

I have a big problem with a government that will be booted out of office in four months’ time, in a tidal wave, legislating a 10-year, $100 billion program — irrespective of the merits of the policy or policies in question.

And as we discussed at the outset, the structural problems with the nation’s finances are in no way remedied by this budget: to the extent they are, the fix is based on dodgy forecasts, and no more.

I say that if the country so desperately can’t afford the expenditure it currently incurs, it can’t afford another $100 billion over the next decade.

Given the ballooning ranks of senior public servants who weren’t there five years ago (but cost the government many billions of dollars each year to retain) are intact, and immune from Swan’s axe, I say very simply: the NDIS or the Gonski reforms, but not both; one might be sustainable, but not both.

The 0.5% rise in the Medicare levy, viewed this way, is simply a tax measure wrapped up in a bit of bleeding hearted spin, and does not in itself enable either of these policies at a monetary face value or anywhere remotely approaching it.

In sum, this is yet another bad budget by a bad government that will soon be thrown from office — and rightly so.

This budget doesn’t support jobs; it threatens to destroy them, placing businesses already operating in a hostile environment of governance and compliance under exponential additional strain to pull in a few billion extra dollars to help fix a problem the pious Treasurer and the incompetent Rudd-Gillard government should never have created.

And it doesn’t support growth; in a softening international economic climate, it removes money from the very consumers whose spending is crucial to drive it, whilst risking a huge surge in unemployment as the businesses that are the employers of Australia struggle, and downsize, and are forced to close.

For all the rhetoric in the Treasurer’s budget speech tonight about “sensible choices” and “intelligent investment,” this budget is little more than a lot of hot air designed to optimise Labor’s prospects at the September election, and to sabotage those of the Liberal Party when it attempts — as it will be entitled, upon its election, to do — to run a professional, competent and efficient government after six years of Labor chaos.

I wrote yesterday about the dangers of the Liberals moving a successful motion of no confidence in the Gillard government during the present session of Parliament: foremost of these was the real likelihood it would have to adopt Swan’s budget in those circumstances.

Ironically, Swan’s budget is so bad that it represents the single best pretext on which to move such a motion; and either way, far from delivering a responsible document, Labor’s final budget renders no useful service to this country whatsoever.

The Red And The Blue recommends, in the strongest possible terms, that readers take a similar view of the 2013 federal budget, and to spread the word: after six years of mistakes, it simply isn’t good enough.

Australia deserves better than this.