Voters dudded by damned lies and statistics After trashing the economy for three years, Abbott and Hockey are in no position to talk about misrepresentation. The sense that this election is poised on a knife-edge is turbo-charging a normal political tendency to gild the lily. Four days in and already voters are awash with misrepresentations. But as the former Liberal adviser Grahame Morris said this week, even if Kevin Rudd's campaign goes unusually well, it is still likely to fall short. Labor hardheads know this too. Of course a big clanger from Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey could change things markedly. In the absence of that, however, a sober reading suggests Labor will recover ground on Rudd's home turf of Queensland - where its share of the vote dipped below 45 per cent in 2010 - and could pick up a "sneaky" one or two elsewhere such as in Western Australia. But that will not be enough to offset losses in Tasmania, Victoria and NSW. Embedded in Morris' comments is a dig about a possible hung parliament - no doubt drawing on Liberal Party focus group testing. It was no accident that Abbott used his first campaign appearance to hammer home that there were no circumstances in which he would horse-trade to form a minority government. We've ruled out power-sharing with the crossbenches, why hasn't Labor, he asks. Of course the central battleground is the economy. Here there is little need for embedded messages when outright lies are par for the course. Three big ones are doing the rounds already: (i) the budget bottom line and the missing $70 billion from Coalition accounting; (ii) the real and political dimensions of the latest interest rate cut; and (iii) Abbott's alleged plans to increase the GST. The origin of Labor's charge that Abbott is planning "cuts to the bone" by "ripping" $70 billion out of Commonwealth spending over the forward estimates was Hockey. It was a figure Hockey verbally confided to a colleague in 2011, to unearth a leaker. It found its mark but that lumbered Hockey with explaining it in the public domain. So that's 10 out of 10 for creativity, minus several million for good thinking. Unsurprisingly, Labor has alchemised that piece of political ham-fistedness into a "secret plan" and Rudd further embellished it on Monday, elevating it to an open Coalition commitment. "We are investing in Australian families and what they need, as opposed to Mr Abbott, who has said he will be in the business of ripping $70 billion out, which means cuts to jobs, education and education services, as well as cuts to health," he said. Reporter: On the question of accuracy, you have said here today that Tony Abbott is planning $70 billion worth of cuts. I wonder if you can point to where he's said that? Rudd: Mr Hockey announced that number a long time ago. They have never walked away from it. The political fact-checking service PolitiFact has tested the assertion and found it to be false because it is based on dodgy assumptions, exaggerations and simple guesses. Still, with Hockey trashing Treasury and refusing to submit policies to it for costing, and this week declaring the Coalition will not even provide a bottom-line deficit/surplus number before the election, voters are being given little to go on. After Hockey's embarrassing $11 billion costing black hole in 2010, the body language from the Coalition is hardly likely to inspire trust. Then there's the interest rate cut. Borrowers, of course, welcome any relief, which is why Rudd was crowing on Tuesday. But Labor's claim that Hockey was arguing against the cut was nonsense. The fact is the Reserve Bank ordered the cut to stimulate a slowing economy. Whether it was politically wise of Hockey to get into an argument about rates, rather than just cop it, is debatable but his point that the lowest cash rate since the 1950s was a reflection of a soft economy and a worrying outlook was self-evidently correct. Finally, there's the faux debate over the GST. Labor says Abbott and Hockey are planning to increase it. This is a scare campaign, pure and simple. That the Coalition will include the GST within the scope of a planned tax review is to its credit. That Labor did not do so with its Henry review was pathetic. Abbott says there are no plans to touch the GST and has further promised that should the review recommend any changes, he would take those plans to a subsequent election. Hockey may have diluted that commitment slightly by accepting on Tuesday that the GST was "part of the equation," but even so. After trashing the economy for three years, Abbott and Hockey are in no position to complain about misrepresentation. And as a putative prime minister, Abbott has a clear responsibility to explain his program and how it can be afforded - not least with the addition this week of a $2.5 billion annual company tax cut. But with the standard of debate and respect for the truth so low on both sides, voters are the ones being dudded. Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.