Budget chickens home to roost

Some of the more interesting points from recent budget stories:

*  Lenore Taylor makes it clear that Tony Abbott does not understand his own budget.  Peta Credlin's crib sheet must have been a bit too simplified for its own good.

*  Pollbludger does a good summary of the dire polling for Abbott today in Newspoll and Nielsen.  I was particularly interested to note this (from Nielsen):

The deficit levy finds support, with 50% in favour and 37% against, but there’s a surprisingly narrow majority of 49% to 46% in favour of abolishing the carbon tax. The poll finds predictably strong opposition to the notion of increasing the GST, with 30% for and 66% against.

I think this indicates that it's plausible for Labor to argue that it is better to keep its carbon pricing scheme than to kick lower income people in the shins.  They should push this line hard.

As for the "deficit levy":   I think it would be more popular if it kicked in at a lower level.

*  Andrew Bolt has been frequently criticising the media for its "spiteful" attacks on Joe Hockey (he smokes cigars; his wife wears expenses dresses) but I do believe he was unable to bring himself to criticise Sinclair Davidson for running a "smoking Joe" banner at Catallaxy for a few days.   The handholding power of the IPA has created a strong bond, obviously.

*  Tony Windsor tweeted yesterday:

If you watched #insiders today you would have received a sense of why it would have been difficult to choose him as PM in Hung Parliament

Yes, hard to argue that Windsor's sense of not being able to trust Abbott is vindicated.

* There has been little attention given to this appalling example of twisted priorities - a Human Rights Commissioner is to be dropped, following the appointment of a new one (the "photograph me, please!" boy, Tim Wilson) as some sort of sop to the Andrew Bolt Right wing fanclub.  The problem is, the next Commissioner due to expire is the one for Disability, meaning that this role will be shared by someone else there.

Adam Creighton, the small government, anti tax favoured journalist of the Australian, got hit about the head something severe when trying to argue this was "no big deal" on The Drum last week.  Here it is, from the 15 minute mark. 

*  Speaking of Creighton, he's an utter lightweight, ideologically driven twit, as far as I'm concerned.  Here's how he ended his first column on the budget last week:

The Coalition’s budgets will only prove profound to the extent they kindle a conversation about the dysfunctional federation that leads to serious reform. It is, as Tony Abbott has written, the biggest problem facing Australia, not only because of the duplication in costs but the damage it does to political incentives.

The political benefit from spending more taxpayers’ money must be offset by the political pain of lifting taxes.

The states could, for instance, levy a uniform tax on land to raise whatever amount they wanted to spend on hospitals or schools. Of course, the more palatable option might be to run their own creaking, Soviet-style health and education systems more efficiently.

Yeah, Adam: it's like no one has been talking about maximising efficiencies in the State systems for the last 30 years, hey?  What evidence you got, mate, that the States are running "Soviet style"  health and education systems?  Idiot.