Tory economic credibility goes up in smoke

After being throroughly destroyed in the lead up to the budget, Turnbull had the unhappy job of dragging himself to the dispatch box and setting down his alternative budget for Australia. Unsurprisingly the hypocrisy was palpable.

After spending days banging on about how Treasurer Swan did not mention the bottom line during the budget speech, Turnbull took to the stand and gave a budget speech that amazingly did not contain any specific schemes, projects or indeed any specific figures at all. The Tories, after spending a week telling the Australian people that Labor was taking out more debt than they would have and criticizing Swan for not mentioning a publicly available figure, could not bring themselves to a fair fight and compare the figures.

Turnbull, who voted against an increase in alcopops, has unveiled a 12.5% increase in the cost of cigarettes, in lieu of the Labor party's cost saving measure: not paying a third of the private health costs of people earning over $150,000 a year. Immediately after hearing the speech, even Bronwyn Bishop lined up to laugh at Turnbull's rant.

Read the full debacle here.