BEING GOVERNED BY FOOLS IS NOT FUNNY
A bit like the old story of the frog that gets boiled alive because the temperature of the water in which it sits rises only gradually, we don't seem to quite be able to take in the growing realisation that we actually are being governed by idiots and fools, or that this actually has real-world consequences.
We finish the week with a Prime Minister who has lost his bundle and is making policy and political calls that go beyond reckless in an increasingly panicked and desperate attempt to save himself; a government that has not just utterly lost its way but its authority; and important policy debates left either as smouldering wrecks or unprosecuted.
At issue is not just whether Tony Abbott loses his leadership, or whether the budget bottom line deteriorates even further, but signs that our political system really is in deep trouble not as a polemic point, but in a very real sense.
"Idiot" is the word that comes most often in Labor's focus groups when voters are asked about the Prime Minister. And lest you're thinking this is just what Labor would spin isn't it, we had a confirmation this week from focus group polling conducted for Fairfax by one of Australia's most respected focus group pollsters, Visibility's Tony Mitchelmore, with the small caveat being that these voters didn't describe Tony Abbott as an idiot but a fool.
inline graphic of deteriorating budget situation
Voters in Western Sydney selected because they had switched their vote from Labor to Liberal at the 2011 NSW election described the Prime Minister as "incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool".
These perceptions are not just a problem for Tony Abbott and his future, but for the broader Coalition, given that the government's conduct in the last couple of weeks can only leave voters with the idea that the idiocy stretches well beyond the Prime Minister's office.
DEEP DEPRESSION
A deeply depressed Treasurer has had his fate tied irrevocably to his Prime Minister. The best the minister for education and training has been able to do, is make himself a figure of ironic hilarity as "the fixer" of higher education as he has presided over a complete policy debacle in the Senate, which has sent the debate about both university funding and structural form back to Year Zero.
It's not just that voters don't like Tony Abbott any more, or are angry about broken promises, they see the government as incapable of doing its job competently.
This is a particularly devastating assessment for a conservative government. The phrase the Coalition used before the last election was that voters needed to put "the adults back in charge".
Yet the Liberal Party of Tony Abbott is not a natural party of government. In fact we no longer know what it is.
The process of formulating the 2015 budget is in disarray with central planks of the 2014 budget abandoned and the government making haphazard decisions to spend money on the run.
It is over a month since The Australian Financial Review reported that the government had abandoned the search for big May budget savings, would not meet its forecast 2018 return to surplus and was privately acknowledging collapsing revenue meant it was highly unlikely to offer tax cuts at the next federal election.
This raised barely a murmur at the time, trapped as we were in the drama of leadership manoeuvrings.
PROMISE OF 'DULL' BUDGET
But it has only got worse since, with the Prime Minister now promising a "dull" budget and expressing contentment with forecasts of a net debt equivalent to 60 per cent of the economy and no surplus for 40 years. Whatever happened to the budget emergency?
Surveying the disaster of the higher education reforms, some in the government argued this week that, despite the setbacks, it had made considerable headway in improving the budget bottom line.
Well actually no it hasn't. The accompanying table shows the evolving shape of the budget since the release of the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, prepared by the secretaries of the departments of Treasury and Finance, in 2013, and every updated estimate of the bottom line since then.
The bottom line for the current budget year has deteriorated from a forecast deficit of just $24 billion to a deficit of $40.4 billion.
While there were no figures available in PEFO for 2017-18, the deterioration in the bottom line over four years from PEFO to the last mid-year review of the budget was at least $75 billion.
Even if you start the comparisons at the 2013 mid-year review of the budget (which the government said drew a line under Labor's policies but also loaded the budget with decisions like the one to give almost $9 billion to the Reserve Bank), the direction of the bottom line is into the red, and the combined deterioration over four years is about $30 billion.
Yes, some of this can be attributed to revenue writedowns (reflecting slumping commodity prices and a weaker economy). But the deterioration in the budget bottom line is even greater.
BUDGET NEWS NOT GOOD
We know there is a further deterioration in revenue coming in the looming budget. And of course, none of these figures include the humiliating backdowns and defeats on the Medicare copayment and higher education which amount to more than $8 billion over four years.
Much of the budget debate has been about what happens beyond the next four years. And these numbers are even less pretty.
What about Labor and the crossbenches, you ask. They too have some culpability.
But the government's utter failure to prosecute either the policy arguments or political strategies to get voters to countenance its signature policies, is a responsibility that rests squarely with the government of the day.
Under siege, Tony Abbott has retreated further and further into attempts to hold onto a very hard right base. Doing so, he has left the centre ground completely vacant for Labor and for Malcolm Turnbull to redefine a new constituency.
There is an immense opportunity for the Opposition, yet angst about how best to proceed. The collapse of the government's raison d'etre requires a response which is more than just the release of individual policies. It opens the ground for an entirely new policy platform. The best launchpoints for this are the Opposition Leader's speech in reply to the budget and the ALP Conference in June.
Yet they are an agonisingly long way away in such dramatic times.
No wonder Labor MPs would nervously ask this week if the government was really considering an early double dissolution election.
Such an option would appear utter madness to most observers. The only rational explanation for why the PM has been raising it is as a way of trying to restore some discipline to his ranks. Unfortunately, many of them now share the view of voters about their leader.
Laura Tingle is the political editor for the Australian Financial Review.
