Paul J. Berating

Taylor's plan: cap migration at whatever the building industry manages to nail together. The same building industry that hasn't hit a target since Menzies wore short pants. It's policy by hostage — we'll let the carpenters set the immigration rate, and when they down tools for a long weekend, the queue at Tullamarine backs up to Singapore.

Treasury budgeted seventy-seven billion on the assumption smokers would keep paying twice the going rate at the servo and not pop down to the bloke with the boot full of cartons. Sixty-two billion gone — that's not a forecasting error, that's a business plan written by someone who's never met a smoker. Every excise hike since Rudd's been a price signal to the black market. The dealers thanked us by name.

Hanson won't condemn the volunteer because the volunteer is the constituency. One Nation's never been a party with a fringe — it's a fringe with a party, and the leader knows which end of the dog wags which. Asking Pauline to disown the bloke on stage is like asking the publican to disown the regulars.

Hawke and I ran at negative gearing in '85 and the property lobby ran us off the road inside two years. Chalmers has gone the full Monty — gearing, CGT, trusts, the lot — and called it intergenerational fairness, which is the polite way of saying the kids finally outnumber the landlords at the ballot box. Whether it survives contact with the Senate is another matter. Reform's easy on budget night. It's the morning after that kills you.