And now for something completely different (well, not really) - some anti-Coalition stories

1.  Lenore Taylor has a great explanation of the obviously calculated Abbott bulldust that he's the guy who's trying to rise above tawdry politics:

For three years he conducted a relentless, deliberate and effective negative campaign against the Gillard government, a campaign at times so aggressive that many on his own side were deeply concerned it was causing irreparable damage to voter perceptions of Abbott himself.

But with negative views of Labor’s record apparently entrenched – aided, it must be said, by Labor’s own self-destructive leadership saga – Abbott is flipping to positive just in time.

Slowly but surely his personal approval ratings are improving. He has toned down the attacks. His colleagues and his daughters talk about his “authenticity” as a community member and a family man. They label Rudd a “fake”.

And all the while Abbott refuses to deviate from his strategy of claiming to have a “real plan” without setting out what it is and how it will be paid for in anything like the detail provided by previous oppositions.

And, as I have noted before, the tactics being used against Rudd this time are those he used against Howard:

The last time we saw “the flip” exercised with such confidence and dexterity was in Rudd’s campaign launch speech in 2007, when he managed to flip the economic management debate to one where John Howard, who had just presided over 11 years of consecutive growth and record low unemployment, was on the defensive over the economy.

Rudd had made $45bn in spending promises during the formal campaign, just $5bn less than Howard's $50bn in campaign promises, but when Rudd told the party faithful “this reckless spending must stop” he looked like the competent and frugal economic manager.

2.  Lenore also had a good column a few days ago about the Coalition's deliberate delays to disclose funding for policies:

.... while oppositions of both persuasions have tried to game the formal costings processes, individual policies have almost always been released with their full price tags detailed over four years.

The Coalition's health policy, released on Thursday, had one line under costings which read: "The Coalition's policy to support Australia's health system will cost $340m over the forward estimates." Some of that – we were told on "background" – would come from cuts inside the health portfolio, and some from "elsewhere". In other words: they'll get back to us.

The "PBO has still got our homework" schtick has also worn thin since the Coalition has been telling us for months they already have everything fully costed and figured out.

The "Labor is running a scare campaign" excuse worked for a little while – aided by the ALP's silly insistence on using the $70bn figure for the Coalition's costings black hole, which by a quick reckoning is clearly overstated.

3.  Abbott's mysteriously unanalysed by Rupert's papers "let's go to Indonesia and buy boats!' scheme has apparently not gone over well in that country:

The buyback plan has met with heavy resistance in Jakarta, with a senior member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling coalition saying it showed Mr Abbott lacked understanding of Indonesia, and the broader asylum-seeker problem.

Mahfudz Siddiq, the head of Indonesia's parliamentary commission for foreign affairs, said on Monday that it was Mr Abbott's right to suggest the policy but warned that it had broader implications for the relationship between Jakarta and Australia.

"It's an unfriendly idea coming from a candidate who wants to be Australian leader," Mr Siddiq said.

"That idea shows how he sees things as [an] Australian politician on Indonesia regarding people smuggling. Don't look at us, Indonesia, like we want this people smuggling.

"This is really a crazy idea, unfriendly, derogatory and it shows lack of understanding in this matter."

4.  Quentin Dempster makes a good point:  if the Coalition is going to make big changes to the ABC, they should be up front about it now.  And let's face it, everyone knows that an Abbott government will find an even worse budget emergency crisis than the terrible disaster of an emergency budget crisis that they have already been warning us about [/sarc], and the urgent need to commercialise the ABC will be justified as a cost saving.