It is the normal Newspoll practice to give the Liberals good news when common sense declares the news is bad. Thus, when the largest gatherings of human history were massing against the Iraq War and Howard was loudly for it, Newspoll showed Howard — ‘counterintuitively’ — picking up votes. When women booed Abbott at the Forced Adoption Apology because he had forced an adoption on a woman who had lately died young, and the Rudd ‘challenge’ imploded, and Gillard triumphed, Newspoll showed Gillard’s vote going down, and Abbott’s going up.

This weekend, though, it is very, very difficult. Abbott has been shown to be keen to impoverish the old, and to disadvantage all children in public schools and to enrage his friend O’Farrell by ripping a deal involving billions he has already in good faith signed up to, and Alan Jones has bagged Joe Hockey for being a wimp. Yet O’Shannessy must more to come…

I thought the Budget was the economy.

They — and we —should be very, very afraid.

Labor by a landslide.

You read it here first.

Mark down the day.

If it can be retrieved, or if it was transcribed, all of this readership should urgently experience it, and learn from it; and take courage.

Do you stand by your publicly stated view that Peter Hollingworth should not have been forced to resign for having defended pederasty while Governor-General? Will you say if you have changed your mind? Will you say what led you to do this?

And he declares this exit inevitable though a million voters are Undecided and most of them voted Labor last time, and all were told on Thursday that their kids would not get a good education nor they themselves a comfortable retirement and this morning that Joe got some figures wrong by half a billion dollars. He notes, of course, that our triple-A rating, greater than Costello ever got, continues to outscore all others, yet fails to say why Labor deserves to lose.

This is a curious omission. Why not say what he believes? Is he behaving corruptly? You may say that, Mattie; I couldn’t possibly comment.

He is saying, amazingly, a hundred days out — a period as long as the time between Dunkirk and the winning of the Battle of Britain — that the outcome is certain. My information is that police inquiries into Abbott’s dubious activities in two jurisdictions, in Queensland and New England, will alter this, but even if I am wrong the incompetence of his economics will do for him anyway.

He is robbing some retirees of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a week, in their most vulnerable years. He is robbing all schoolchildren of forty dollars a week at an equally vulnerable time. He is sacking a hundred thousand breadwinners and, by this depletion of the economy, threatening with dismissal two hundred thousand more.

And Malvolio is saying he is bound to win. And somehow saying he deserves to win; on a morning when he got his figures wrong by four hundred and twenty million dollars. This is a lot of money; more, even, than John Howard gave to Saddam Hussein.

Yet Malvolio says he is bound to win, and Malvolio is an honourable man, and seems to think an oaf like this is deserving of office. The man who mistook another man’s child for his own, and declared his sister would burn in hell for sodomy, and Christ’s living flesh is worth eating on Sundays, and Hollingworth should not resign for having defended pederasty while GG.

Malvolio mistakes the way he thinks for intelligence; but it is almost certainly the result of early brainwashing.

Or corruption, perhaps. One must never discard that possibility.

At all events it marks him as a significant fool: prim, cross-gartered, self-regarding, and raging at midnight at a world of enjoyment beyond his understanding.

Okay, I will continue.

I will reduce the money I will settle for to one hundred and eighty thousand from frangipani (though nine of our children died, I do not regard my wife as a ‘baby factory’) and one hundred and fifty thousand from Bob Ellis’s Salad Dressing (I did not, like Goebbels, ask my wife to kill six of those children) if he reveals the name of the Labor minister who so nicknamed me, in order that I may sue him also; and he then sue Bob Ellis’s Salad Dressing for lying about him, I suppose.

I forgive Johnsalmond, who may have mistaken frangipani’s malicious hectic hydrophobic lunacy for harmless raillery, and also, after a week in the sin-bin, the boring Wombat.

I do all this because, in part, of the crumbling of Abbott’s numbers overnight (he is saving four hundred and fifty million dollars that are not there) and xxx’s threat of two elections, not one, if we refuse to let them speed the ending of the world.

I need the phone numbers of two lawyers. The four hundred and twenty thousand dollars I will now settle for, or the six hundred and seventy thousand if the minister truly exists and said indeed what poor doomed Salad said he said, I will bet on Labor at eight to one.

And so, old friend, it goes…

I am suing her, and abandoning the blog.

Good night, children, everywhere.

I therefore suggest Steve sues her for malicious libel, and they settle out of court.

I am therefore suing Van Onselen for malicious libel. I will accept a settlement of two hundred and ten thousand dollars, and a comprehensive apology, broadcast eight times a day for two weeks on Skynews.

I would refer him to the million ‘undecided’ in Newspoll. Eight hundred thousand of them voted Labor last time. Seven hundred thousand have never voted anything else.

Abbott last night said he would sack a lot of people, and take a lot of money from their schoolchildren, and from their old age in reduced superannuation. It is likely that four hundred thousand of them instantly decided to stick with Labor; and, when Abbott is questioned by Commonwealth Police in the next few days over two matters, or maybe three, that I may not now reveal, three hundred thousand more will come back to Labor.

This is a swing of three percent from the 44 or 45 Labor is now on. Two more percent will move toward Labor when Abbott’s criminality is noted, or rumoured, or proven.

From there Labor can win.

How, then, can he say, ignoring a million voters, that anything is certain?

The man is a fool, and, like O’Reilly and Hannity, corrupt.

I used to think him intelligent.

Ah well.

I will discuss these matters with him any night, on his show.

SABRA LANE: Good morning Mr Abbott. Welcome back to AM.

TONY ABBOTT: Nice to be with you Sabra.

SABRA LANE: You’ve said that Australia is in a budget emergency. How is it an emergency?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, plainly this is a government which was promising us to get back to surplus this year. No surplus this year, no surplus next year, no surplus the year after and as the Prime Minister and the Treasurer told us again and again, the best thing you can do to take the pressure off families is to get the budget back to surplus.

SABRA LANE: But unemployment is low, we have low interest rates, low inflation, debt to GDP, the ratio is low compared with other comparable nations. How is that an emergency?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I said it was a budget emergency. I didn’t say it was an economic emergency. Australia’s economy has some fundamental strengths thanks to the reforms of both the Hawke/Keating governments and then the Howard/Costello governments, but the budget is in crisis because this is a government which is just addicted to constantly spending.

SABRA LANE: If it is an emergency, a budget emergency, why are you pressing ahead then with delivering tax cuts?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, unlike this Government, we are showing clearly how we can fund the tax cuts that we want to keep and that means that under us the tax cuts and the benefit increases will no longer be compensation because we’re abolishing the carbon tax, they’ll be fully funded by sensible savings in government expenditure.

SABRA LANE: And you’ve said that prices will fall. Can you guarantee that?

TONY ABBOTT: Go back to the time of the introduction of the GST. The GST also involved the abolition of the wholesale sales tax. Now a lot of prices did come down at that time because the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) was very vigilant in policing the removal of the wholesale sales tax, which in many cases was considerably greater than the GST.

So we will have the ACCC policing the removal of the carbon tax and look, the Government tells us that the carbon tax has added 10 per cent to the price of power. It tells us it has added 9 per cent to the price of gas. If the ACCC is out there policing these things, presumably that means a commensurate reduction in the price when the carbon tax goes.

SABRA L ANE: So they’ll fall by 10 and 9 per cent?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, as I said I’m not, I don’t know what else might be happening in these markets at the time the carbon tax goes.
R
SABRA LANE: But you can’t guarantee it?

TONY ABBOTT: Prices will go down, power prices and gas prices will go down when the carbon tax is removed.

SABRA LANE: You’ve announced a Commission of Audit to review the size and scope of government. Who will you get to head it?

TONY ABBOTT: We will announce that at the right time but it is 15 years or so since the last Commission of Audit. In fact, it was something that the Howard government did very early on in its term. This is something that does need to be done every couple of decades because it’s important to be sure that government is doing only those things that people can’t do for themselves.

SABRA LANE: Will you get someone like Peter Costello or will you get an independent economist to head it up?

TONY ABBOTT: The important thing Sabra is to ensure that the audit that we do, that the review of the size, scope and efficiency of government that we do is credible and respected so you can be absolutely confident that the last thing that we would want to do is damage our credibility as an incoming government should we win the election by appointing someone who doesn’t have wide public respect.

SABRA LANE: To achieve the budget bottom line in the black, you are going to have to make further huge cuts, painful cuts that you’ve not yet announced.

TONY ABBOTT: We will be very upfront with people in good time before the election but one of the points that I made last night Sabra is that while much that the Government has done by way of cutting in this budget is objectionable. We can’t guarantee to oppose anything, can’t guarantee to rescind anything and indeed may well have to implement these things as short term emergency measures to get the budget back under control.

SABRA LANE: There is no clear difference though to the budget bottom line in what you’ve proposed last night. You’re cutting 12,000 public servants, delaying the boost in superannuation contributions to pay for other things. The measures that you announced last night will not measurably change the budget bottom line.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, Sabra, I don’t accept that. Certainly we are funding our measures and we announced how we were going to do it last night. We also indicated that we were prepared to accept all of Labor’s cuts but we certainly weren’t going ahead necessarily with all of Labor’s spending.

So given that what we’ve done is fully funded, given that we’re prepared to accept at least short term emergency measures all of Labor’s cuts but not go ahead with all of their spending, I think the budget is in much better shape under us than under this current government.

SABRA LANE: So short term, define short term. How long will these measures need to be in place?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, we will be responsible and I think that’s what the public expect. I think the public understand that this has been a poor government, a terrible government in many ways. Even this government’s strongest supporters would accept that it’s been a bitter, bitter disappointment so I think the public understand that there is going to be a fair bit of putting the house back in order.

SABRA LANE: With an $18 billion deficit predicted for the next financial year, Treasury is forecasting a growth at around seven, 2.75 per cent. The Reserve Bank is around 2.5 per cent, both down on what we’re expecting this year. How low would you be prepared to see growth go to see a reduction in the deficit even further beyond that figure?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, normally economic growth is good for the budget and I want to get economic growth up and the great thing about cutting the carbon tax, cutting the mining tax, getting rid of unnecessary regulation, moving the workplace relations pendulum back to the sensible centre is that we should get productivity up, competitiveness up and ultimately economic growth up.

SABRA LANE: What trade off are you prepared though to make between making big spending cuts which could trigger a recession and growth?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, if the private sector starts spending, that’s going to be good for the economy and as confidence comes back I think the private sector will start spending. One of the reasons why the private sector is not spending at the moment and the household savings rate is sky high is because people don’t trust the Government.

So I think there will be a very strong confidence boost if there is a change.

SABRA LANE: Is there ever an acceptable level of net debt?

TONY ABBOTT: Ah, I’m not against debt. For instance I’m very strong on infrastructure spending and I made a series of very important infrastructure commitments last night but if you’re going to borrow, let it be borrowing for something that lasts. You can’t just borrow to blow it and that’s the problem. This Government is…

SABRA LANE: But what is an acceptable level?

TONY ABBOTT: This Government is borrowing for a current spending. It’s not borrowing for capital spending, and that’s the big difference. If we’re borrowing, let it be borrowing to build something that is really going to help our country like WestConnex, like the East-West Link, like getting the Pacific Highway duplicated. This is the sort of thing that we understand.

SABRA LANE: You’ve put reform of tax and Commonwealth/State relations firmly on the agenda. You’ve announced white papers on both. If the tax review recommends broadening the base of the GST and lifting the rate as many economists say is now essential, is it possible that you will take those proposals to the following election?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, that’s a hypothetical question that you’re asking me. Sabra, we have no plans to change the GST. We don’t intend to change the GST. Anyone who wanted to change the GST and that wouldn’t be us, would have to get the agreement of every single state and territory because it is a state and territory tax and anything that we might do arising from our white paper, we would seek a mandate for – not at this election but at the election after. We won’t do anything without seeking a mandate.

SABRA LANE: Mr Abbott, thanks for your time this morning.

TONY ABBOTT: Thanks so much Sabra.

What the Abbottites did not see was the difference between a thirty-four day campaign and a hundred-and-four-day campaign. In the former, one can use blurred panic and hysterical squawking exaggeration and get home by these means without discussing or defending policy in any detail. In the latter, one cannot.

Abbott has therefore already said he will take thirty or forty dollars a week from every school child in New South Wales although their Premier, Barry O’Farrell, has signed them up for it. He has also said he will cancel new promised fast roads that will get Blacktown and Pentrith commuters home to their familes thirty minutes earlier.

These two things mean he cannot win enough seats in Sydney to win government. It means he has already failed.

In order to stop a landslide ruining his party he will have to tell inland Australia why his cheap and foolish neighbourhood-defacing broadband is better than the one fifteen million Australians want. And why his pregnancy leave plan favours rich top-floor executive women over part-time waitresses, child minders and teachers.

In a thirty-four day campaign he could survive this. In a hundred day campaign he cannot.

He is getting the last thing he wants, scrutiny. And, oh dear, oh yes, arithmetic.

He now must ask people who have always voted Labor to give up two or three thousand dollars a year to vote Liberal. It is hard to see why they would. They were ‘undecided’ last week but they are not any more. And there are a million of them.

It is not as if he has promised a surplus earlier than Swan. Even if he did no ‘undecided’ voter, and there are a million of them, would think it worth the inconvenience. Put up a bus fare by twenty cents and you get trouble. Take away thirty dollars a week (or, in the case of superannuation, eighty dollars a week in your old age) and you will get more trouble than it’s worth.

And you will have lost it, probably, for good and all.

Discuss.

What is the name of your lawyer?

I will accept a settlement of two hundred and ten thousand dollars.

Yours,

Ellis

As is well known by my respondents, I would never collude in the killing of my children, having lost too many of them to ‘natural causes’, and the comparison is unfair.

Birmingham, if that is ‘Bob Ellis’s Salad Dressing”s real name, is a piece of Liberal filth and I will kill him if he comes near me.

Or, better, sue him.

People not getting through elsewhere should put their comments under here.

Sean, for his unforgiveable offenses against the mother tongue, is banned for life.