i never realised abbott had more power than the devil himself. Saint Poirot and Saint Steele often banging on about not judging others just can't help themselves. That hatred does blind you to reality. Abbott abbott abbott. And to think at least 2 more years of it. Careful guys your blood might boil over. Its bad for your health.

I've been re-reading David Marr's article,
"Political Animal: The making of Tony Abbott,"
with great interest.

Marr tells us that, "Australia doesn't want Tony
Abbott. We never have. When pollsters rang to ask
who we wanted to take over from John Howard or
Brendan Nelson or Malcolm Turnbull we put Abbott
way down the list, usually at the bottom. As the
years went by and the number of Liberal
contenders dwindled, we always wanted someone else;
Peter Costello even after he gave up the leadership
without a fight; Malcolm Turnbull even after the
climate sceptics brough him undone; or Joe Hockey the
untried hulk...We never wanted the man the Liberals
gave us in December 2009. "

"Abbott was their pick, not ours. And the party was almost
as stunned as the nation. "God Almighty," one of the
Liberals cried in the party room that day,
"What have we done?"

Well, now the nation knows what the party did.
And they are not happy.
Anything can happen in politics in the next couple of years.
One can only hope!

One can only hope!
Foxy,
yes, that Labor doesn't get back in again for the next 20 or so years.
You're placing your immaturity on full display for all by referring to David Marr, one of the most ignorant academics of our time. An idiot would have more integrity than this useless crap stirrer. He is one of Australia's Media most pointless. If you take him serious then don't expect OLO'ers to take you serious. That mutt is an embarrassment to Australia & a liability to the ABC.

Graham Y

Don't be discouraged that the commentary on OLO often gets nasty. It's still one of the best around, one that I keep coming back to.

What I find strange, though, is why you seem surprised that the left is outraged – or in my case, mad as hell – and are venting their lefty spleens on social media. (Although I note that, on OLO, spleen-venting is more the sport of the right.)

Abbott’s government commits the nation to a $20 billion weapons buying spree for this year alone, while telling us we can’t afford to pay aged pensions or unemployment benefits to people under 30. While gnashing teeth over our blowout deficit – one of the lowest in the world – his government still expects us to pay out to keep pampered rich women on maternity leave living the standard to which they are accustomed.

This is only a light surface scratching of the many blatant feed-the-rich, screw-the-poor policies his government is enacting. And you wonder why the left, whose politics is about equal and fair distribution of wealth and resources, is getting a little … well … UPSET!!

This is despite the fact that every country that has introduced the very same austerity ‘we can’t afford it’ measures that the Abbot government is lumping us with is sinking deeper and deeper into recession and social despair. While the few countries that refused to play that game and continued with spending as usual are going from strength to strength.

And you wonder why the left is UPSET? I think you should be more amazed that, under the circumstances, the left is showing considerable restraint.

Killarney,
Why wasn't the Left upset when it ran the country into the ground ? You carry on like a pork chop about $20 mills which is a lot but, pales into insignificance when you look at the billions they wasted, yes wasted in the public service just to ensure there are enough ALP supporters. Well, luckily it back-fired on them. Before you vent your fake indignation at this Government think about the tens of thousands of ALP voting public servants engaged in sabotaging Australia & totally carelessly jeopardise our future, yours & ours. You worry about rich women being pampered ? Where ? Why aren't you worried about quite well off, in fact very well off ALP cronie bureaucrats still playing the rorting game ? Get your anger right on the left.

You want to introduce a co-payment for those currently bulk-billing? Here's a reasonable olive branch: exempt all pensioners and children under 18. That wipes out the main complaint about the announced policy – the idea that a financially-stretched parent would hesitate about taking a sick child to the doctor.

The ruse of claiming this pricing initiative is for a medical research fund - "the budget that cures cancer!" – hasn't scored thanks to the government's broader credibility problem. Better at least reinstate the funding for the commercialisation of our existing quite strong medical research. That might at least improve credibility in the research community.

But it's also the easiest problem to fix: just drop it. It won't get through the Senate anyway so better to confess it was a terrible mistake and ditch it without trying to defend it. Blame an unhealthy IPA element in the party and purge them. Besides, you don't really need the IPA and Murdoch extremists now – remember that you are now in government.

Given the demographic tsunami building up a little over the horizon, limiting age pension indexation to the CPI is a sound policy. Current living standards will be maintained and improvements above that become something that the government of the day will have to deal with as finances and politics permit.

The sales pitch here is complicated because the immediate hook relies on the coalition's fundamentally flawed carbon policy. With Palmer's puppies giving you what you want on that front, do the maths on what Labor's carbon tax pension compensation gift was worth, add the amount that allegedly will be saved by scrapping the carbon price and demonstrate that it actually adds up to years of above-CPI indexation. Promise to revisit indexation when the double-carbon-effect nominally runs out.

You're being given low marks for your dedication to improving education, probably because you're not dedicated. The flip-flopping on Gonski was shameful and Christopher Pyne's hair splitting has been as bad a look as two big finance types sucking fat cigars.
Having cried "wolf" for four years over the non-existent immediate budget "crisis.