How are we supposed to respond to almost endless broken non core promises?
Perhaps if the govt releases much less information, we may never ever know, if we were cleverly duped or not?
Perhaps we expect coalition politicians to lie to us, but voted them back in anyway, due to one Kevin Rudd and his unusually successful, almost single handed campaign, to undermine/destroy his own party, just to bring Julia Gillard down, or prevent her winning for labour, with a more than useful majority, in 2010?
Which in turn, might have prevented the landslide loss this time round?
Some voters have very short or terminal memories, otherwise politicians of all political stripes, simply would never ever be able to get away with the breaking of non core promises, or the non-consential privatization, that seems to be the conservatives/fiscal conservatives particular bag.
First they win with lots of sleight of hand or if you will, non core promises? That has to be followed by an audit, and many necessarily shelved programs? And in-between, this or that privatization possibility, (trust me I'm a politician) raised for discussion or HARMLESS review?
Mostly to gauge the reaction or strength of opposition?
i.e., would this proposal, if enacted, result in an election loss to us next time round? It's not just broken promises that are problematic in politics, but the inherent dishonesty, of too many, to clever by half, politicians?
And with the last point foremost in my mind! I believe Kevin Rudd ought to resign from all politics or be disendorsed!
Rhrosty.

The author is out of touch. Boat arrivals are significantly decreased and getting less each month. Abbott has only been in office for six weeks for gods sake. Yet, the author, who is happy to see the boats continue to arrive, also wants to blame Abbott for not stopping them by now?? There's no end to the confused and tortured logic of the angry Left.

There are a number of lessons to be drawn from this article. I suggest that a few of them are as follows:

1. The Coalition will say and do anything if they think that it will return them to the power they manifestly think is their entitlement.

2. Australia's sorry record with regard to its international obligations is once more in the full glare of publicity. It is difficult to decide which is worse: Australia's disregard for its international treaty obligations; or the appalling disregard that the mainstream media has for those breaches.

3. One cannot rely on the Labor Party for a principled and consistent policy. It is so compromised by its own policy failures and backflips that one can never take their pronouncement sat face value, and opposition to the government's policies, while fully justified, sounds hollow and hypocritical when coming from the mouths of Labor politicians.

4. All the well founded fears about Abbott have been borne out in a remarkably short space of time.

5. Morrison's arrogant disregard for the rights of the people who elected this government to be fully informed about boat arrivals etc is symptomatic of a wider disregard for democracy that underpins so much of Labor/Coalition thinking.

Thee is much else, but these serve to make the point.

In June. July, August the numbers of boat arrivals were nearly 1000 a week, now we are well below 100 a week. Whatever the left whingers are claiming, the reality is that Labor was unable to stop the boats, and the coalition clearly is.

Now that the flood of refugees has slowed, it will be easier to deal with the few that are left, already most are off shore and a portion already repatriated to Sri Lanka.

Seriously, why should anyone be concerned when a politician breaks (what is laughably termed) a promise?

There is no sanction, no punishment involved for the politician concerned.

Only when we require our politicians to regard their policy "manifesto" as a binding commitment to the people of Australia will we change this laughable situation.

Which will never happen, of course. At least, not in my own lifetime.

But chickens do eventually come home to roost, as many governments around the world have discovered in the past few years. Lying to the people has a finite life. One day, the government of the day will find themselves in direct confrontation with the people they have treated with such barefaced, blatant, malice-aforethought disregard for so long.

It will hurt. That's a promise.

Rotten to the core is a widely-used term. It will surely become Abbott's epitaph.

Now that Phoney is wearing the crown of Prime Ministership, it appears to me that he has become confused. Perhaps he's not sure whether he is the Pope or the Prime Minister.

I'm sure this came about because of his priestly sojourn. Yes, one minute he was walking along the road trod by Jesus and next he had a Road to Damascus experience (not to be confused with a place where nerve gas is being trialed) and suddenly he became a politician!

The human body and its accompanying grey matter can only take so much! I mean his grey matter was assaulted by the Jesuits and by pugilists and then he was ministered to by various Ministers principle of which was the war-loving John Howard. Oh, what a feeling!

Whatever core promises Phoney has made have been frequently changed. He is a serial changer of promises. He might next decide to become the Sugar Plum Fairy!

Ah, Phoney, who art thou?