So much fat in the budget it should be sent to Jenny Craig. Or so Abbott feels

THE federal opposition appears to have plumped for a fatwa against the government's flood levy.

Tony Abbott finds the land of plenty on 2DAY FM yesterday:

WE need to spend the money but we don't need the tax because there's plenty of fat in the budget.

How much? Abbott on ABC 612, Brisbane yesterday:

THERE'S plenty of fat in the budget which the government could be using to meet these expenses, but instead, before they even know what the final cost is, they've said "let's whack on a new tax on top of the mining tax," the carbon tax which they've promised us for this year.

Bring forth the fatted budget. Abbott continues on ABC local radio in southern Queensland yesterday:

WELL, we certainly need to spend the money to reconstruct Queensland and the other states but we don't need a new tax to do it. There is fat in the budget . . .

Stick to the fats. Doorstop interview in Gatton, Queensland, yesterday:

THE alternative is for the government to defer the cut or to reprioritise its existing spending and if you look at the federal finances there is plenty of fat in the budget that could have been used for flood reconstruction.

Abbott at a press conference in Sydney on Thursday:

THERE is fat in the budget, more fat in the budget upon which the government should draw in order to meet reconstruction costs in Queensland.

Lest there be any confusion. Abbott on The Today Show yesterday:

WELL, as I said, there is a lot of fat in the budget.

No one should shoulder the fat alone. Andrew Robb helps out on Macquarie Radio yesterday:

THE fact is there is ample fat in the budget.

Taste takes a holiday. Headline on Yahoo7 on Thursday about a woman who allegedly ran down her cousin with a minivan:

JEALOUSY overdrive?

Oh, the inhumanity. David Williamson still smarting in The Spectator Australia yesterday:

THE play is going to work with audiences but also, as I'm painfully aware after 40 years, I'm in for some very negative reviews. The first one comes from an unexpected source: the left-wing Crikey.com. It's as if the young Generation X-er can't wait to excoriate me. It's the most personal and vicious criticism I've ever had in my life. Everything is wrong with the show -- the "fat, lazy" writing, the stale jokes, the overacting, but finally and fatally that I have offered no incisive political comment, no way out of society's present "vapidity". There is a demand that "elites" get me off our stages. I was outraged at the suggestion that the opinion of "elites" should outweigh the verdict of the people as expressed at the box office. I pointed out in a response that the elites have more often than not got it wrong. The elites in Bach's time judged his music old-fashioned and boring, and considered Shakespeare as an entertainer whose scripts were only saved years after his death by a handful of his ex-actors. The Australian's Cut & Paste takes my piece totally out of context to make it appear I'm comparing myself to Shakespeare. Why haven't I learned my lesson? Selling papers is about spilling blood and there's no way you can defend yourself in the face of this imperative.

So what's her excuse? Williamson's wife and biographer Kristin Williamson in The Australian on March 20, 2009:

KRISTIN Williamson concedes that one of her motivations for writing the book was to focus attention on her husband's entire body of work. "Forty-two produced plays," she trumpets. "That's more than Shakespeare."

He's used to rougher joints. Piers Akerman reflects on Jimmy Buffett's last Sydney concert in The Daily Telegraph yesterday:

MORE impressively, the mature audience was relaxed, there were no brawls and queues for the diminishing liquor stocks remained orderly.

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