I'd like you to pause and imagine something for a moment..
Let's imagine "that ranga woman" (that's Julia Gillard, our Prime Minister) has just held a press conference. She has announced that Labor are changing their Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme. They are going to raise the number of weeks coverage to from 18 to 26 and increase the amount paid from the current minimum wage to the annual salary of the recipient up to $150,000. She says the scheme will be funded by raising the company tax on big business by 1.5%.
Now let's imagine the reaction..
Next morning's headlines in the News Corporation mastheads - "Great Big New Tax", "Welfare Gone Mad", "Drain on our Economy", "First the Carbon Tax, Now This!" - including bonus images of dictators, murderers, thieves & sad white families with 3 kids, 2 cars, 6 teles and their 'crushing' mortgage..
Piers, Andrew & Miranda frothing at the mouth about the Socialist virus that is engulfing society..
Alan, Ray & Michael apoplectic with rage, saying how more benefits like this will just encourage greater hordes of those vile, evil, bomb-loving terrorist boat people..
Gina's Fairfax political commentators pontificating about excess and waste..
Bluster bag Joe making more prophecies of economic doom and managing to get the word 'chaos' six times in every sentence..
and of course Tony, scripted straight from the Peta Credlin playbook, disparaging our Navy yet again with all his talk of 'drunken sailors'..
But hold on..
Instead, welcome to the Parallel Universe, where this is Tony Abbot's policy and the mainstream media is caught in a conundrum. Even they have to mention the discord within Liberal ranks, but not too loudly. No page one screaming headlines, no doctored pictures to whip up indignation, no graphs of red ink. Just a mention or two well away from the front page.
Yet this is a policy that is manifestly unfair, unaffordable and totally at odds with the LNP's justification for it's other policy positions.
Remember this policy is set against a backdrop of Abbott slashing public service jobs, reducing tax & superannuation benefits for the less well off, taking the slightly cheaper yet vastly inferior route on the NBN (perhaps the most important piece of public infrastructure this century), and flatly refusing to fund vitally needed education reform. All this in the name of fiscal prudence.
It's rolled gold insanity.
