1. Is stupid and
2. Goes against his previous promises as a leader.

Tony Abbott is trying to relight the dwindling flame of his woman support by proposing a six month paid maternity leave, which in itself is a fantastic idea.

The problem is the bill will be foot by a fairly large tax of 1.7% on all middle to large businesses that earn in excess of $5mil a year.

Apart from the fact that Abbott promised there would be no new taxes if he were to become leader, most of these large multimillion-dollar businesses already have paid parental leave schemes for their employees in place and by this new tax would be put out millions of dollars more to pay for everyone else. 

Interestingly, Australia is one of the only Western countries that doesn't have a governmental parental leave programme already in place, which reflects poorly on us as a progressive nation.  

Perhaps we should take a leaf out of Norway's book - where each Norwegian is taxed 0.01% and is rewarded with 46 weeks off at 100% of their wage or 56 at 80%, and the father MUST take at least 10 weeks off.   

Why didn't Australia get the memo? . . read more

by David Michael 

It takes a very brave politician to stand up and oppose a tax on mining super profits and say it's ''the issue on which the election now turns''. A very brave or stupid politician.

For one, mining magnates such as Clive Palmer are hardly endearing characters, and when they whinge and moan while raking in billions from our minerals, that strained endearment ends.

The second reason is that every time a politician stands up and talks about threats to miner's jobs most people around the country must yawn; only 129,000 people (or 1.3%) of the population are hired by mining and most of them are far away from the cities. 

And finally, when Abbott said that this tax "would be robbing Peter to pay Paul" I'm sure most Australians were thinking, yeah, but Peter has a fortune - a lot of which is disappearing out of the country- and Paul only wants decent hospitals, decent schools and a decent pile to live on when he retires. 

By Kara Jensen-Mackinnon

There’s a well-known phrase that goes something like – we know that not all liars are politicians, but all politicians are liars.  And after Tony Abbott’s career changing faux pas in an interview with Kerry O’Brian on the 7:30 Report, we can’t help laugh at his proverb proving performance. 

We all know that politicians often candy-coat the truth, but which citizen votes for a man who outwardly admitted to lying?  If Tony is elected as leader, how many of his policies on health care, education, immigration, the environment were carefully prepared and scripted or just said on the fly? 

He’ll probably release a statement saying something along the lines of: he’s an honest man for admitting to lying.  I just hope that stapled to the back of that statement is a spreadsheet with all his policies that were false, so we as a voting public know where we stand.