My first job, when I lived in Newcastle, was in Sydney - Wahroonga, to be precise. Two trains and a long walk, it took me 3 hours to get to work each day to the traineeship. It's time some of today's kids (and adults) toughened up and stopped leeching off hardworking taxpayers!

Doesn’t seem to be anything there about kicking asset millionaires off the old age pension! Or removing the lurks the economic illiterate Costello put in by which the very rich can avoid tax using super, or removing corporate welfare like negative gearing and the diesel rebate.

Nah, all about extracting pennies from those who only have pennies. A lot will be done but welfare will grow.

The shambles is made up of idiots!

One of the really difficult things about the Abbott government’s first term will be explaining to voters why – if the carbon tax repeal goes ahead – their standard of living continues to be eroded.

…repeal or no repeal, the bigger issues that should have been debated in the House (but weren’t) are coming home to roost…

Let’s start with rising unemployment… abolishing the carbon tax was supposed to fix that, remember? We will now watch relatively good GDP growth during the volume phase of that boom without jobs growth, and by 2016 realise that the carbon tax had little bearing on either…

Then there’s [rising] inflation…

Put those… factors together… and voters must realise that the carbon-tax impost on the 5 per cent of their income they spend on energy really didn’t matter at all…

There’s not a lot that is fair in politics. Tony Abbott got away with murder as opposition leader, killing off Labor’s electoral prospects with the blunt instruments of carbon pricing, boats and debt and defict.

Now, as structural forces way beyond his control ravage Australia, there will be little that’s fair about the negative press that generates for the Coalition.