Self inflicted wounds

There's no doubt, I think, that the issue of the funding and costs of the Tony Abbott endorsed Paid Parental Leave plan is hurting the Coalition.  Maybe not "election losing hurt", but certainly a significant negative for the campaign.   And it would appear entirely self inflicted, because the claimed supporting costing done by the Parliamentary Budget Office is presumably sitting in the box in Liberal Party HQ marked "do not open less than 48 hours before election day."

The evidence that it is hurting:  everyone in the Coalition is showing clear annoyance and irritation at persistent questioning about it.  Tony Abbott last night, Joe Hockey during the day yesterday, and this morning the heavily South African accented Mathias Cormann on Radio National.

Cormann amuses me - he is like the perfect antidote to the annoyance I am sure many Australians have felt over the years towards Scottish or English accented unionists, some of whom have gone on to political careers (hello, Doug Cameron.)   They have often provoked the reaction that they were importing their aggro, working class warfare from the UK to a country that didn't want it.  

Well, fortunately for Labor, we now have a Coalition spokesperson who comes with an accent which, especially when they get agitated, I think people associate with sentiments ranging from "I am born to rule and you aren't" to "release the hounds - we must have law and order." 

And to make it funnier - I see that he is actually from Belgium and only sounds South African because that's where he learnt English. he, um, sounds South African. (To me.  And clearly when I went looking for a reason why he sounded that way, I read the Wiki link too quickly!)

As far as I am concerned, he should be on TV and the radio more often...

But back to the Tony Abbott's parental leave:  there must be many, many teeth grinding about this policy amongst Coalition strategists - it is wholly of Abbott's creation, never been widely supported within the party, and he has been so persistent about it for so long, it is politically impossible for him to back down now.

A perfect, and completely unnecessary, self inflicted wound.

Update:  Delicious.  Despite Henry Ergas' attempt to put lipstick on this pig of a policy, Judith Sloan calls the scheme "crazy", and Sinclair's inevitable gut reaction against anything involving money being handed to a government means he's been helping the bad PR for it as well.