1. Deny that any promises made pre-election by the Abbott Government have been
broken. (From the man himself, December 2013: ‘There have
been no broken promises and there will be no broken promises under this
government.’) It helps, when referring to the new taxes the Abbott Government has or is going to introduce and which represent clear breaches of pre-election commitments, to refer to them by any other name: levy, excise, impost, Bette Midler.
2. Accept that one or some promises may have been broken, but claim that the ‘mess left by Labor’ necessitated
it. (Source: everybody on the right).
3. Accept that promises have indeed
been broken, but that it’s not really a big deal when the Coalition does it. (‘Election promises,’
Institute of Public Affairs stalwart Chris Berg tells us, ‘are there for the breaking.’)
4. Accept that many promises have
been broken, but the only one that actually mattered was that the Abbott Government would ‘fix the budget.’ (Cue Tony Shepherd, chairman of the
Commission of Audit: ‘They did make one iron-clad promise: to return the budget to a
sustainable surplus. And in my view that trumps all.’)
5. Lather,
rinse, repeat.
Selected
links:
Abbott's new world record: 25 broken
promises in 150 days
Election promises are there for the
breaking
Has Tony Abbott gone mad?
The Commission of Audit in a nutshell:
ideology over evidence
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