Read the lips and the smirk and the nose, dummies ...

(Above: could this minor heresy by Eric Lobbecke have appeared in the lizard Oz? It did, it did, and more on the double crossing educational liars below).

So Tony Abbott's a liar.

The pond immediately braced itself for turbulent times. No doubt the shock jocks were shrieking, no doubt Alan Jones was demanding that he be placed in a chaff bag, taken far out to sea and drowned.

No doubt there were plans already being set in motion for a convoy to Canberra denouncing the liar for his lies. It might be difficult to construct a joke out of his name - Tonyliar doesn't have the flow or the form of Juliar - but surely there'd be signs saying Rupert Murdoch's bitch.

It was of course an idle dream, and the pond woke this morning to learn that it was everyone else who'd been confused and who'd misheard, and it wasn't Tony Abbott's fault if there were a lot of deaf as a post, dumb fuckers in the land.

It turns out that the Bolter was entirely sympathetic, and listened patiently as the Abbott extended the notion of core and non-core promises, and the unknown unknowns that we don't know, into quite another area of double-speak political gobbledegook:

'We are going to keep the promise that we made, not the promise that some people thought we made or the promise that some people might have liked us to make. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made,'' he said. (here).

Brazen, cheeky, chutzpah of the first water. Don't blame me, blame the broken hearing of the dumb fuck listeners.

Appearing on Channel Ten's The Bolt Report, Mr Abbott was played a clip in which Education Minister Christopher Pyne said: ''You can vote Liberal or Labor and you will get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.'' 
"I think Christopher said, 'Schools would get the same amount of money'. And schools, plural, will get the same amount of money. The quantum will be the same,'' Mr Abbott said. 
Pressed on the apparent clear-cut promise to individual schools, Mr Abbott suggested there was confusion. 

Yep, your average dumb fucker Australian got it wrong. Stupid confused mug punters ...

Meanwhile, it seems short term memories are disappearing ... Tony Abbott's more controversial speeches disappear.

Naturally the pond went looking for disturbed editorials, shocked reporters and an alienated public voicing deep disquiet.

In the usual course, once  upon a time when this sort of thing happened, the word "Orwellian" would be dragged out of the cupboard by the crony commentariat, dusted off and flung about like a rag doll.

But in their print editions, the Murdoch press was off in other lands.

The Courier Mail was pleased that teachers' pay was going to be linked to kids' ratings, the Daily Terror was plastered with sharks and Pac-Kerr, the HUN featured Better Belieb It!, Packer Kerr in Love Twist and Justice for Dean, while the 'Tiser excelled itself:

Oh Adelaide, Adelaide, you went the bikini top!

And doubtless the wisteria on the back verandah is still blooming and all the great aunts are either insane or dead, though apparently Kensington Road remains in a right old mess at the wondrous new roundabouts ...

Never mind, the reptiles at the lizard Oz were nervous about new leaks to test Abbott in Asia, and the Fairfaxians concentrated on jolly Joe Hockey and the Greens and the debt ceiling.

And what did we cop from generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, the crony commentariat Monday man for the Fairfaxians?

Spluttering indignation, outraged howls? A stern lecture on when a promise is a promise, and not a promise about a different sort of promise?

Of course not. Instead he was on his moral high horse in Tony Abbott must fight the baby boomers' debt explosion.

On some days Sheehan adopts the tone and posture of a Methodist minister. Or perhaps a member of Opus Dei, with a particularly fine and expensive assortment of cilices:

Sweeping judgments about generations are dubious but the statistics do tell a story about one generation which stands out for all the money it has spent and all the debt it has racked up - the baby boomers. I am a member of that generation and I'm not happy about the boomers cost-shifting to generations X, Y and Z. Never before in peacetime have we seen one generation spend so much. Generation Spend. Generation Debt. Generation Second-Home.

This from a man who published a story about how he delighted in dropping ten bucks on a loaf of bread because of the fragrance of the sourdough. This from a magic water man who delighted in taking round the world junkets ...

Move along nothing to see here folks, except moral rectitude so far up its own bum it made for a pitiful and nauseating spectacle.

But there wasn't anything to see anywhere else either. No indignation, no agitation, just the dutiful knob polishers and hagiographers going about their important business at the start of the week:

Amazing scenes. Here's the Bolter urging Abbott to take up the jawbone of an ass and smite his enemies. What a remarkable, astonishing header Tony Abbott should stop being Mr Nice Guy.

Yep, a proven liar is being Mr. Nice Guy. Calling dumb mug punters confused and hopeless and useless and not listening and getting it wrong is playing nice ...

Yep, no chant of Abbott liar, liar, pants on fire, on fire on my very own TV show. No, it's all hate the haters, and hate the lefties and hate Fairfax and hate Quentin Bryce and hate hate and hate, and above all:

His enemies will scoff, but Tony Abbott's problem is he's too nice. He really does think the Left could learn to like him. 
So he shies from reforming the ABC, telling me yesterday he doesn't need more enemies and joking his job was "to be as appealing as possible".

Oi vey, hate the bloody ABC yet again.

Well the pond suspects that the relentless dripping of the Murdochians will in due course see attention turn to the ABC - Abbott has already put a cautious toe in the water by criticising the joint venture with The Guardian on the spying matter, but he'll hold off until times and the Senate are a little more propitious.

Right now, he's pleased to have got away scot free as a proven liar ... while the editorialist at the Daily Terror gets on with even more yowling and the howling, in ABC funding needs quality guarantee.

How spiteful, nasty and childish can you get? Well as a starting point, the anon editorialist want cuts, reinforced by this kind of petulant calculation:

By way of illustration, a 1.6 per cent reduction in Tony Jones's salary would mean the Q & A host is paid $350,097 rather than $355,789. He'd still be able to get by without resorting to half-price movie days and searching supermarket shelves for cheaper cuts of meat.

So how much do the Murdochians pay the Bolter? What sort of friend drops a stray bottle of Grange behind the lounge? How much does he spend on opera each year?

Yep, it's play the man day, and berate the ABC about the standards of its reporting, as if the Daily Terror, a crude photoshop propaganda sheet of the lowest, basest, yellowest, gutter tabloid kind, had the right to say a single thing about quality journalism.

Why, as the Walkley awards noted, you'd be better off reading the Newcastle Herald if you wanted some decent investigative reporting ...

In the end, in desperation, the pond hied itself off to the reptiles at that castle of lizards, The Oz.

And what do you know, there was Mr. Bouffant himself explaining that it was all just a matter of communications, and plainly what we had was a failure to communicate:

You can check it out if you like, here, if you break the paywall, but truly it was pathetically short, and painful to read, a real non-opinion opinion piece.

Is it an indignant howl of pain about an Orwellian government manipulating the media in a cynical and - dare we say it - Orwellian way by withholding information, limiting media contacts, and degutting any pretence that the Australian media was on hand to hold the government to account, a safe pair of hands once the Murdochians had succeeded in their aim of degutting the ABC?

Of course not.

Of course, the Coalition in opposition made the fundamental shift in control of the operation to the military command which gave Defence and Customs control but the reasoning behind the limits on disclosure is from the operational commanders. 
Defence and Customs simply didn't want a media release issued every time there was an illegal boat arrival, especially one identifying the ships involved and where and when the interception took place. Morrison has hit back at the "grassy knoll" conspiracists and pointed to the success rate so far on stopping boats. 
What Morrison has realised is that the argument over the government's media relations were burying the message about 80 per cent reduction in boat arrivals since the change of government. 
Abbott's appearance on the Andrew Bolt program yesterday was hardly a departure from limited media appearances and there wasn't really a message that he conveyed from the interview but it is a sign there is going to be more direct prime ministerial media appearances. 
Just don't expect a shift back to a 24-hour news cycle.

That's it. That's all folks. You see, the Abbott government and its ministers are just hapless pawns, under the strict control of their operational commanders. Don't blame them, they're just following orders from the operational commanders. It's the Nuremberg defence, and what a good one it is ...

No doubt Tony Abbott lied because he was told to do so ...

But then at last, the pond reached its holy grail. Finally, it seems, someone had noticed:

That's it, that's all?

Broken their promise?

No, they lied going into the election, and now they've lied coming out of it. Let's not put a fig leaf where the spade meets the shovel on a pagan Roman statue in Vatican City ...

Abbott and Pyne are treating voters as if they are mugs. The difference between what they told voters before the election and what they are saying now could not be more different. The voters have been betrayed...
This is dangerous territory for a new government. Abbott has undermined one of his core commitments to voters: to be a government of "no surprises" and to restore "trust" in the political process. 
Labor now sees an opportunity to expose this multi-faceted hypocrisy. 

Dangerous territory Troy? With a clutch of supine Murdochians mainly obsessed with cashing their pay cheque from the government, said cheque for services performed being the degutting of the ABC?

Never mind, at least you tried, at least you noted the fig leaf.

At least the pond doesn't have to mount an attack on Tony Abbott for being a liar, not when there's a reptile at the lizard Oz who can talk about broken promises:

Labor, however, doesn't need to lead the attack on the Coalition for breaking its promise to voters on school funding; it has the conservative state governments to do the job for it. 
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell wasted little time in lashing Abbott and Pyne. 
"This issue has escalated because of the poor way in which it has been handled," he said on Tuesday. "That is not acceptable when we are talking about the education of future generations of Australians." NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli accused the Abbott government of being "immoral". In damning words, Piccoli told this newspaper: "There's no doubt that what seems to be happening is that states that signed up are being punished and the states that didn't are being rewarded." 
 Not only are a majority of state and territory governments offside with the Abbott government, so are advocates for the public, private and Catholic school sectors. So much for another of Abbott's promises: to usher in a new era of co-operative federalism. (here, behind the paywall) 

By golly, that sounds good Troy, do go on. Have you got anything to say about the poodle Pyne and the failure to discuss, foreshadow or debate the issues in relation to the alleged Conski?

...Abbott and Pyne extinguished the time for that debate during the election campaign when they pledged a "unity ticket" with Labor to implement the new funding model and the agreements already signed. 
Moreover, Pyne has comprehensively failed to articulate why this model he promised to keep is now a complete "shambles", as he puts it. 
 Has he even read the Gonski report? One of the myths propagated by Pyne is that the Gonski report "had little to say" about matters such as teaching standards, school autonomy, parental choice and accountability. This is plainly wrong. 
 Not only does the Gonski report deal with these aspects of school education, so do the agreements now in place that guide how the funding will be spent. 

Okay Troy, now let's wrap it up. Can we end with the "L" word for lies, from liars?

Oh please, pretty please:

Playing politics with education is fraught with danger. 
Anybody who has been within cooee of a school recently knows that teachers, parents and local communities are behind the "I give a Gonski" campaign. 
Now schools are worried that an Abbott government will take money away from them. Rarely has a government elected with such goodwill and popular support squandered so much of it so soon. 
For the Abbott government, the political lull that coincides with the Christmas break could not come sooner.

Ah well, it's better than nothing.

Perhaps the old days of calling politicians liars, and drowning them at sea and talk of ditching pricks and pictures of Chairman Rupert's bitch are best put behind us.

Except the pond - call it the Catholic lingering in the pond - doesn't like seeing a liar get to call himself king of the castle courtesy of purgatorial fibs and hellish monstrous lies ...

(Below: wasn't Pinocchio a born liar? Remind us David Pope, and more Pope here).