'You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool all of the time' said Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is either the greatest American president if you live north of the Mason-Dixon line, and the worst, if you live in the South.
Whatever his faults, Lincoln was no fool, even if his constituents may have been at times. What about Australian politicians? I do not think the term 'fool' is useful in the context of Australian politics. We have some blowhards, some traitors but very few fools. At least at the Federal level, it's difficult to get into politics if you are out and out stupid, although some people who are demonstrably mentally ill, in the true sense of term, have managed to get elected.
I think the good old Aussie term ratbag is better. We also have a great many politicians who stretch the truth, and some who even deserve to be called liars. We must draw a distinction between ratbags and liars. Let's look at the Federal Budget for 2012-13. According to the Budget papers, at the end of this financial year, we should expect a surplus of $2.5 billion. Any honest economist (yes, there are some) will tell you that this figure is the result of a fiscal pea and thimble trick. The person who put this Budget together, namely the Treasurer Wayne Swan, is a ratbag. I wouldn't call him a liar he is about what you can expect out of Queensland, which has covered the whole ratbag spectrum from former long serving premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen to media harlot Peter Beattie. Let's say Wayne Swan is a ratbag. From what little you can gather from public sources, in private he seems to be a decent enough sort of person, but he is still a ratbag. It's almost a term of affection.
Although I do not claim great expertise as an economist, I'm told that the 'real' deficit for 2012-13 without the glue and paper patch up is around $30 billion.
Swan apparently believes, as did American showman P T Barnum, that 'every crowd has a silver lining'. His machinations with the Budget are likely to come back to haunt him.
Tony Abbott, on the other hand, has told us that his first priority, if elected -- as he almost certainly will be -- is to repeal the carbon tax and the mining tax. He says he will do this without cutting welfare benefits. He says he will do this by finding 'inefficiencies' in the Commonwealth Public Service. Tell this to any politically literate person and the only response will be howls of laughter. He would need to abolish the Department of Defence, which spends about $60 billion a year, to achieve this goal. This is not going to happen. Thirty years ago the Razor Gang argument might have had some credibility, now it's just nonsense.
I do not believe that Tony Abbott is a ratbag. He is either a fool or a liar. It may be possible to win a Rhodes Scholarship if one is lacking 'common sense', but not if you are a fool. Tony Abbott has devoted his entire life to becoming Prime Minister. I therefore believe that to become Prime Minister he has become a liar. Because it is impossible to abolish the mining tax and the carbon tax without reducing what the the economists call 'transfer payments' and we call welfare. And don't forget that these days the greatest welfare benefits go to the middle class, thanks to Australia's greatest ever socialist Prime Minister, John Howard.
But Tony Abbott knows he has two escape clauses. First, no one has yet been able to convince me that the Libs can get an Act through the Senate to repeal the carbon tax before 2014 due to sheer parliamentary logistics. The notion that you can somehow give the 'carbon polluters' their money back is fanciful. Second, Tony Abbott will send Joe Hockey into the Treasury, from whence he will return a day later, ashen faced (a la Peter Costello) saying 'it's far worse than we imagine, we're going to have to tighten our belts', something Joe has no doubt had a lot of experience with. That this will happen is, as they say in politics, is 'a lay down misere.' Joe will probably be looking at a black hole of around $60 billion and he'll earn the enmity of the back bench when he starts swinging the axe. His last words as he goes to his political grave are likely to be similar to P T Barnum's -- 'Ask Bailey what the box office was at the Garden last night'.
Australian politics is not a three ringed circus nor is Canberra Madison Square Garden -- it's not that electrifiying. But P T Barnum, nominated as one of LIFE Magazine's most influential men of the millennium, knew a thing or two about how to get the crowd onside. Although he famously said 'there's a sucker born every minute, he also knew not to underestimate his audience. 'The public is wiser than many imagine,' he said. It's a wise sentiment Australian politicians should heed.
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