Day 33- Return to Rooty

A day of debt and 'debate'- the debate that never happened, and the forum that did. Gillard 'wins' what the twits called RootyQ at the Broncos leagues club (heart of the political nation), but Abbott, by both rejecting a debate on the economy after all that guff and through releasing his budget costings at 4:45 (instead of the planned 3:00pm launch), looks a little shady.

The Coalition have found a bunch of spare cash, so said Jumpin Joe and the A-Robb at a late presser. They even brought graphs and spreadsheets. Couple billion down the back of the couch. A few more by rolling out a dial-up internets facetube network instead of the super expensive geekband idea that frankly does their heads in. All this independently assessed, not through those treasury hacks- the same hacks they'd have to run the thing through if they did form Government. And over and over, they promised that they had provided a plan so that punters could indeed compare apples with apples. Sure, one set of apples were granny smith and the other were some dangerous middle-eastern hybrid, but broadly speaking, everything was within the wider apple family of fruit. Trusts us they said. We're the ones who save money. It's reputational. 

RootyQ provided little enlightenment, except the proof that, like the duckworth-lewis system in cricket (used to ensure a result in one day matches affected by rain, through a complicated and stupid system of maths), the advantage of going last is real. Gillard took to the floor and thankfully had a hand held microphone hindering her florid hand gestures. She did fine. Abbott did fine too and came up short. There's a theme emerging there. Small targets, with one looking better, if diminished.