Opposition leader Tony Abbott needs to look beyond the carbon tax which he is so desperate to ditch.
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With Whyalla still doing nicely and the savage impost it was to impose on everyone not visible, the carbon tax is not the election issue Mr Abbott thinks it is.
Yesterday at the National Press Club he said he would not hesitate to call a double dissolution election in government if the Senate blocked the Coalition’s bill to dump the carbon tax.
Control of the Senate would enable Tony Abbott to assign the carbon tax to history, but it would also give a Coalition government free rein with its entire legislative agenda.
If this election is about trust, can the electorate trust Mr Abbott with a legislative free-for-all?
Mr Abbott acknowledged yesterday it would not be easy to find budget savings to fund tax cuts without a carbon tax.
But with the Opposition saying it wants to repay government debt, why would it want to pass on tax cuts and reduce the revenue it has to work with?
Spending cuts are the only other alternative, yet Mr Abbott’s Coalition partner Warren Truss wants to reinstate billions of dollars he claims has been cut from regional programs. Which programs?
Will an Abbott/Truss government commit $1.8 billion or more to regional areas as the current government has through the Health and Hospitals Fund and will it continue the $1.4 billion Regional Infrastructure Investment program being supported by the Gillard government?
And how much is “a fair share of federal money” which Mr Truss wants spent in regional Australia?
While there is plenty of time for the flesh and bones of policies to be revealed, let’s hope the details are clear and precise.
There will be plenty of promises from all sides of politics but voters need to be wary because it is their job to sort fact from fiction.