Speaking of lifestyle choices, and the budget only eight weeks away ...

(Above: David Rowe and more Rowe here).

Let's just frame all that follows within the same frame offered by Niki Savva in this morning's digital lizard Oz:

The budget is only eight weeks away, with few signs of how the various contradictions can be properly reconciled. The lack of coherent, consistent, credible messaging has been a hallmark of this administration. The position of the Prime Minister and the Coalition remains parlous. Time to pull it together is fast running out.

Meanwhile, the foot in mouth man goes about his daily business, but the pond's duty is to do a reptile watch, and a curious thing happened in a very short 24 hours in relation to the foot and mouth man's latest effort.

First up the reptiles trotted out Chris Kenny:

Look there he was yesterday, doing the hard yards for the reptiles. And it has to be said, his effort was a classic, simpering over Abbott and worrying about the children in a way that would have made Helen Lovejoy green with envy:

So where does Kenny go with the argument?

Well into the valley of the bizarre, including the line that "we would not stand for non-indigenous children being raised in remote bushland" when in fact one of the enduring myths of Australia's grand pioneering days was how brave and bold were the pioneers and their children, and how wondrous it was to have them educated by the School of the Air.

Nobody talked in those days about lifestyle choices. Pioneers were pioneers and Kenny would have been judged as veering into treason against the Crown and British lifestyle choices...

Yes, there it is, in the penultimate par, the first refuge of the scoundrel dog consorter ... after patriotism.

That's right Apple, distract us from the budget with a stupid watch.

Now when you have a thoroughly stupid man as your supporter - the Bolter was busy writing the same sort of black-bashing stuff elsewhere - you might be appealing to your base, but you're not doing yourself much good.

Even Warren Mundine paused from his business of shipping blacks out to the fringes - the joys of being a Sydney property developer - to note that Abbott might have been a tad wrong and simplistic, while Noel Pearson went off his tree.

And so the reptiles had a curious change of heart.

Yes, Kenny was gone, and Karvelas was appended to the story:

And the reptiles published an editorial:

Oh dear, et tu reptiles?

Oh dear. But how can he get his foot out of his mouth? It's a lifestyle choice.

Meanwhile, the Fairfaxians were having fun with a listicle. Here's the early findings:

But quick, you can still vote.

There's still four hours or so to go in the poll, while you're trying to work out Abbott's worst clanger, as helpfully listed in Tony Abbott's 10 biggest gaffes, clangers and cringeworthy moments. (with bonus forced video).

So what's the foot in mouth man achieved with this latest outing, apart from lists of his numerous follies?

What was it Savva said?

The budget is only eight weeks away, with few signs of how the various contradictions can be properly reconciled. The lack of coherent, consistent, credible messaging has been a hallmark of this administration. The position of the Prime Minister and the Coalition remains parlous. Time to pull it together is fast running out.

So how's the world's worst treasurer travelling?

Um, badly, with a good savaging from Malcolm Turnbull, and again sourpuss Savva wasn't impressed with the pair of doofuses:

His poor choice of words — whether in wishing more Muslim leaders could sound as if they meant it when they described Islam as a religion of peace, or talking about the lifestyle choices of Aborigines in remote communities — come across as deliberately provocative or unthinkingly insensitive. 
Even if you kinda knew what he meant, in the environment we are now in kinda can kinda help kill you. 
One day, to try to set the scene for the budget, the perils of an ageing population are revealed with the release of an Intergenerational Report highlighting the pressure on the budget from pensions, yet only two days later the Treasurer tells young Australians they could access their superannuation early to buy a house. The contradiction was immediate and obvious but it took days for Labor to hook into, and then only after Paul Keating led them to it. If the government lumbers along, Labor slumbers, thinking it can sleepwalk into office. 
Again, only partly through force of circumstance, although the government decided on the Intergenerational Report release date, the timing was off, the strategy cockeyed. Joe Hockey released it, spent a couple of days selling it, then threw in the super thought bubble that made it go pffft — a bit like the polls. Then he was tied up for another few days in the witness box in his defamation suit against Fairfax — a court case that he knew was coming up and that was bound to be a diversion. 
The budget is only eight weeks away, with few signs of how the various contradictions can be properly reconciled. The lack of coherent, consistent, credible messaging has been a hallmark of this administration. The position of the Prime Minister and the Coalition remains parlous. Time to pull it together is fast running out.

And for those who love this sort of thing, jolly Joe made a bizarre spectacle on the ABC's Lateline last night:

Malcolm Turnbull is absolutely right?

And I'm a twit?

TONY JONES: But Malcolm Turnbull ... 
JOE HOCKEY: Hang on, hang on ... 
TONY JONES: No, no, but let's stick with what Malcolm Turnbull actually said because he's talking about your plan. He said it's a thoroughly bad idea. 
JOE HOCKEY: Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. It's not my plan; it's been floated by numerous people in the community and I raised it ... 
TONY JONES: Yeah, but you're the Treasurer. You're out there spruiking it and saying it's a good idea. 
JOE HOCKEY: Well, I'm sorry, you're exaggerating. I'm not spruiking it. I raised the idea in relation to superannuation, arguing the point that we have to, in the context of a longer life span, think about how we can maintain a reasonable quality of life throughout our life with various points in our life when we're in and out of work. Now, at various points when we are in and out of work and we are changing careers, we may go back to study or to retrain. During those periods, we still have to pay the bills, we still have to pay the mortgages, we still have to pay for - to - raising families and so on. But we are going to have multiple careers during the course of our life and that will go on longer - longer over the years.
TONY JONES: Alright. It does suggest you're going to need a bigger superannuation nest egg.
JOE HOCKEY: Well, that may well be the case, that may well be the case. 

And so on. It was an excruciating performance, half blowing into the wind, half pissing into it.

There's a lot more at the ABC here, with transcript, and for the tough-minded, actual vision of the doofus tangling himself in knots.

And for what? Is Hockey's thought bubble - which a number of notables has pointed out is eminently stupid - going to end up in the budget? Is it going to help sell the initiatives that will presumably be offered in the shortly to land new budget? The new ones to replace the useless barnacles in the old budget?

What's the point of having a debate, if it's a stupid debate?

All we now have is headlines saying 'cabinet split' on debate ...

Which brings us back to what Savva said ...

The budget is only eight weeks away, with few signs of how the various contradictions can be properly reconciled. The lack of coherent, consistent, credible messaging has been a hallmark of this administration. The position of the Prime Minister and the Coalition remains parlous. Time to pull it together is fast running out.

And there's the Treasurer caught up in a defamation case, which has revealed all sorts of bizarre things about how they operate on the North Shore, when he's not busy making a fool of himself on Lateline.

But Savva had more to say, and what it reveals is that the splitters and the leakers are back in business:

Yes it's more Credlin bashing at reptile central.

So there you have it.

Just a few weeks to the next budget, and we're back to confused messaging and chaotic thinking, and useless, confused, poorly framed debates and the cartoonists and the listicles making out like bandits, and the leakers and the splitters whispering into Savva's willing ear.

TONY JONES:What's your judgment by the way about Malcolm Turnbull coming out today ... 
JOE HOCKEY: No, we wanted the debate. 
TONY JONES: ... saying it's a thoroughly bad idea. 
JOE HOCKEY: Yeah. We wanted a debate about this. 
TONY JONES: Did you want a debate in your own cabinet?

They wanted the debate as a distraction? As the lead-up to the next budget? And sinking the boot into outback blacks is going to help?

Did the pond mention Niki Savva?

The budget is only eight weeks away, with few signs of how the various contradictions can be properly reconciled. The lack of coherent, consistent, credible messaging has been a hallmark of this administration. The position of the Prime Minister and the Coalition remains parlous. Time to pull it together is fast running out.

Go on David Pope, wrap it up, and more Pope here.