Tony Abbott did his apprenticeship in national politics as a member of John Hewson’s staff. As the teacher surveys the work of his apprentice today, however, he’s distinctly unimpressed.

The Abbott government is offering asylum seekers up to $10,000 - a five-fold increase - to leave detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru and return to their countries of origin.

Asylum seekers who take the ''return packages'' and voluntarily leave Australia's offshore processing centres are taken to the Hideaway Hotel, Port Moresby, where their stay is paid for by the International Organisation of Migration, before flying to their home countries.

Lebanese asylum seekers are offered $10,000 to voluntarily return to Lebanon. Iranians are offered $7000, Afghans $4000 and Nepalese, Burmese and Sudanese asylum seekers are all offered $3300.

It is understood the payments, which are administered by the International Organisation for Migration but funded by the Australian Immigration Department, are made once the asylum seekers have returned.

The High Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the Abbott government's border protection policy, striking down its decision to refuse to give refugees who arrive by boat permanent protection visas.

In two unanimous decisions, with implications for thousands of boats arrivals, the full court ruled that Immigration Minister Scott Morrison's decision to impose a cap on the number of places in Australia's refugee intake for boat arrivals was invalid.

This is a matter of trying to overcome the government's weakness of being unable to effectively communicate with an electorate that has lost trust in politicians making promises that mean nothing – the price paid for chanting "no new taxes"
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The compromise here would be to offer the reverse of the current age pension indexation – excise should rise by the lesser of the CPI or average weekly earnings.

This should make it easier to explain to people that indexation won't cost them more in real terms, that the fuel tax should merely remain constant as a proportion of household budgets.

Having created the monster of forever telling Australians that they're doing it tough, this would at least allow the line that indexing fuel excise will make it no tougher.

Denying the dole to those under 30 for six months arguably is the harshest single issue in the budget.

When you're promising a higher unemployment rate anyway and arming those over 50 with a $10,000 incentive to be employed, there's an ugly element of doctrinaire cruelty in punishing people for not getting jobs that aren't there.

Sure, Eric Abetz would like to reinstate an underclass of cheap itinerant rural labour, willing to work for little more than bed'n'board, but even dedicated Liberal supporters are uneasy about this one – perhaps with a view to higher crime rates.

Leaving it to the states hasn't worked and won't work. The "competitive federalism" ideology is a crock – it dooms the poorer and dumber states to becoming poorer and dumber.

Thus it's not possible to abandon Gonski unless you have something better to replace it. Your job of being a responsible treasurer includes changing your colleagues' language: it's not a matter of spending on education, but investing in it.

You have an increasingly unpopular leader, or a decreasingly popular one, if you prefer it that way. Having successfully helped the Labor Party to lose the election, he had the shortest political honeymoon in living memory and now enjoys all the credibility of Tony Abbott.

Yet he seems to be happily riding roughshod and unchallenged over the government, from an expensive mistake like the PPL to the rich symbolism of his knights and dames.

I come back, and the left whinge is all about slagging Abbott, with not one genuine criticism.

579,

The high court decision was not about permanent visas. The best they can expect to achieve is Labor's bridging visa until the senate changes and they get TPVs again.

Who is slagging Abbott, it is current news.

The government's determination to deny permanent protection visas will now rest with the Senate, where the Palmer United Party will control the balance of power from next month.

The party's leader, Clive Palmer, has spoken out strongly in support of refugees, but told Fairfax Media the party would study the High Court judgment and any decision on allowing temporary protection visas would be made by his party room.

"The law of Australia is that there is only one protection visa, and that's a permanent protection visa for refugees. What this means is that the government must get on with the grant of a visa which our client is entitled to as a refugee," he said.

He said the life of the boy had been in limbo since Mr Morrison imposed the freeze.

In their written judgment, justices Hayne and Kiefel said they had taken into account the consequences for the detention of those who came unlawfully and the time limits for determining protection visas.

SM comes back and says

"I come back, and the left whinge is all about slagging Abbott, with not one genuine criticism."

Au contraire....the reality is that we're spoiled for choice as to which diabolical theme of ineptitude we should choose at any given moment.

Again: - "....with not one genuine criticism"

Lol!