Abbott's most dangerous pledge When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes famously asked. Tony Abbott is promising not to change his mind, to charge on regardless. And that is dangerous. The next Prime Minister's pledge to let the deficit blow out rather than break a spending promise remains true to the spirit of the carbon tax attack that worked so well for him as opposition leader, never mind that it also runs contrary to a concurrent pledge to "reduce the debt." Tony gets lucky After preaching doom and gloom for years, the Abbott honeymoon has started already, Michael Pascoe reports. PT5M51S http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-2t9x9 620 349 September 6, 2013 - 2:51PM It's a pledge that seems to appeal to the Sydney Morning Herald's editorial writer, who opines that "Australia is crying out for a stable government that can be trusted to deliver what it promises." But it is also a silly denial of the reality of government. It's easy for opposition leaders to berate governments that have to deal with evolving facts and restraints. You can get away with all sorts of wild accusations and claims in opposition - talk down the economy, scare the horses, pretend there's a budget crisis - but it's more than a little different when you actually have a duty to act responsibly for the good of the nation. The new Hawke and Howard governments both broke "promises" upon obtaining the treasury benches. They needed to. It was a serious fault of the initial Rudd government that it didn't break some of the promises made during an even worse election campaign than this one, when Howard and Rudd competed to tell Australians riding the biggest boom in our history that they were doing it tough and both needed and deserved more handouts from government. Having said "me too plus $1 more" to everything Howard promised, Rudd mistakenly adopted the final Costello budget and proceeded to deliver yet another round of tax cuts when the Reserve Bank was trying to slow the economy with increasingly desperate interest rate hikes. Of course a promise not to break a promise is only as good as your promise, if you know what I mean. It might not mean much. Hopefully there will be enough backbone in the Coalition government to keep its leader restrained, to prevent a further outbreak of "captain's call" as economically poor as his maternity leave scheme. Should the facts change, we have to hope the government, if not the prime minister, is prepared to change its mind and appropriately reset its priorities. Tony Abbott has chosen to make a straightjacket out of keeping promises. He will deserve to be attacked with the same vigour he exercised in opposition if he strays from his pledges, but it would be better for him to suffer political pain than for the nation to pay an economic price. All that said, there's a chance that the times will be kind to the new government and "promises" won't need to be broken. This week's national accounts and more recent statistics show the Reserve Bank's central scenario is holding up, that our economic growth is bottoming right about now and will slowly but steadily improve. Some of the myths that have plagued us over the past three years will be allowed to quietly fade away. As Joe Hockey so clearly confirmed yesterday, we don't have a budget crisis - but we have had a lot of lies told about it. Fairfax Media's election coverage So despite the quite vicious divisiveness that has marked Australian politics over the past four years (and that's just within the Labor Party), we should be able to approach tomorrow's election with good heart. Yes, it's a miserable choice to be made, but the great thing is that we get to make it. A federal election is a celebration of our extremely good fortune. In some ways, it is our other national day, travelling once every three years or so at a respectful distance behind Anzac Day. With the exception of the occasional halfwit, the odd zealot from either side, it's a ritual we do well as a nation. We're all in it together, after all, respecting our differences, particularly when there aren't nearly as many differences between the two main parties as they like to pretend. We are only trying to pick the least worst option - both sides are promising to give your money to the Brisbane Broncos, for example. Both sides" primary concern is getting the keys to the Lodge, not the rigorous best interests of the nation, so you'd be silly to get too wrapped up in either of them. And tomorrow night offers a great occasion - the Wallabies redeeming themselves by beating the Springboks.