Costing the earth: Abbott's mean budget

Abbott has also declared that he will sack the foe of deniers, Climate Commissioner

Tim Flannery and scrap the Climate Commission. Which is tantamount to declaring that he will shoot the message as well.

According to the ABC voting survey Vote Compass, 61 per cent of Australians want more action on climate change and the environment. They are however divided on the imposition of a carbon price.

But despite the humungous implications of a superficial, but ineffective climate action policy, this is not the only serious implication of the revelations of the budget shortfall on declared targets. Firstly, despite the claim of responsible fiscal management,

the costing of climate policy has been sloppy or negligent. Furthermore, staying within a budget that fails to achieve its modest 5 per cent target, declares that money will be saved but not the environment. Is there any point in paying out $3.2 billion on a policy that from the outset has been found to portend a failure to achieve its declared goals.

So no surprise here, Tony Abbott still thinks climate change action is crap but he also needs the votes he may gain by seeming to do something. And what could be more resonant of the assurance of getting something done than, 'a direct action plan'?

So this is politics not truth after all and both major parties are playing this game. But the difference is that Abbott is looking like winning this contest of deception and false reassurance. He is speaking slowly to us now, in a read my lips fashion, as though we are childlike and he is a wise father, A 'daggy dad' who knows best and asks us to trust him.

Ah how many men have said that before him. When someone asks me to give them my trust, carte blanche, well call me a sceptical Freudian, but I immediately feel suspicious.

Why bring it up in the first place and why go on about it? Why not just prove it?

Ah therein lies the problem. Tony Abbott doesn't care if his costings are out on climate change, they are capped even if temperatures are not.

Abbott is willing to commit his own version of the declared cardinal sin; the broken promise. Abbott has pledged to keep a cap on the climate budget. This means he is prepared to break his emissionspledge. This is inevitable due to the predicted funding shortfall.

So will this fiscal template apply to other policies?