AAA wanker gets his comeuppance

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From the AFR:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week dumped the last remnants of tough rhetoric about budget savings, and instead promised voters they did not have to be alarmed about this year’s “dull” budget “because we have got the budget situation from out of control to manageable”.

The budget papers show that, even before the government dumped its plan for a $7 Medicare charge and university spending cuts, the cumulative budget deficits for 2014-15 to 2017-18 have blown out from a forecast of $24.5 billion to $103.9 billion.

The realisation that the budget is going backwards has increased despair within the Coalition. MPs are angry that the government’s political fortunes were eviscerated by the 2014 budget for no great policy achievement.

Well, what did the backbenchers think giving Mr Abbott more time would do? Give the wrecker more time and he will wreck. More from The Australian:

Liberals warned of confusion over Mr Abbott’s economic ­agenda after being jolted by his new message that the budget deficits were “manageable” and that there would be no need for drastic savings in the budget in May.

One backbench MP questioned whether the government was walking away from its fundamental promise to produce a surplus over time. “We’re trying to figure out what our economic narrative is,” he said.

Another said: “There’s no ­consultation — it’s just unfolding before our eyes.”

Yes, it is. The scorn is coming from all directions with reliable loon ponders Jennifer Hewitt and the AFR editorial scathing and centrist commentator Laura Tingle downright contemptuous:

At issue is not just whether Tony Abbott loses his leadership, or whether the budget bottom line deteriorates even further, but signs that our political system really is in deep trouble – not as a polemic point, but in a very real sense.

“Idiot” is the word that comes most often in Labor’s focus groups when voters are asked about the Prime Minister. And lest you’re thinking this is just what Labor would spin isn’t it, we had a confirmation this week from focus group polling conducted for Fairfax by one of Australia’s most respected focus group pollsters, Visibility’s Tony Mitchelmore, with the small caveat being that these voters didn’t describe Tony Abbott as an idiot but a fool.

Voters in Western Sydney – selected because they had switched their vote from Labor to Liberal at the 2011 NSW election – described the Prime Minister as “incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool”.

One must remember that elite opinion and public opinion are not always the same thing nothwithstanding the above polling. Recall that it was the demise of the Abbott Budget that lifted consumer confidence last year – which probably says more about its particular shaping than the task of budget repair itself – but punters could still feel ‘off the hook’ as it were and polls lift.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.