So it seems the idea, judging from Cormann’s comments this morning, is to king-hit the poor and low income earners, and then … blame Labor for not allowing them to spread the pain to the upper-income echelons.

“Oh, ye poor and humble of circumstance… IT’S ALL LABOR’S FAULT we’re kicking only youse in the guts.”

They are effectively holding a gun to the head of the electorate.

“Pass our legislation, or the cripple gets it. And I’ll shoot the kids, and the Abo too. One hostage every hour until Labor caves in.”

Their modus vivendi is intimidation. They are political standover merchants. Always threatening, always dividing. Their “class warfare” allegations against Labor are the mistaken take on affairs that comes from preening yourself in front of a mirror too often. It’s they who are the wreckers.

“Nice little country you got here. Pity if sumpin’ bad was ta happen to it.”

Mark Simkin, last night on ABC TV news, put it pathetically. Tony Abbott is showing that he is prepared to make sacrifices too. What a guy! Simkin had in his eyes a look that was a mixture of outright embarrassment and ideological fire. He’s a well-coiffed, well-dressed out-and-out Abbott luvvie, but even he couldn’t disguise the disgust, mixed with excitement that he was feeling as he did his piece to air.

Good God… if they pulled this off (his eyes were eloquent) then Abbott really is a political genius. The punters would swallow anything at all if they swallowed the claptrap about how Abbott was making sacrifices too.

Yesterday was the ultimate test of chutzpah: how to break a promise and expect the public to thank you for it, after all the railing, garment renting and teeth gnashing about broken promises when they were in Opposition.

Get Kennet and anyone else handy out onto the hustings to tell us what dire straits we are in. Who knew? They believed Treasury and MYEFO. But Treasury and MYEFO were nobbled, with Treasury full of traitors and MYEFO hopelessly based on impractical, pie-in-the-sky assumptions. Trust Labor to trash and misuse the very institutions put in place to safeguard our nation’s economy.

They always put us on the back foot. There’s always an emergency, or a threat we have to react to. Under this mob there is no “business as usual”. There is only chaos and uncertainty. The Whirling Dervish of the boxing ring has made it his life’s work to cause turmoil and upset and then seek to benefit from it. He knows no other way. As they say, it’s in his DNA… anarchy. He is no happier than when the punters are restless, because in confusion is profit.

He was thrown out of the seminary because he caused too much trouble. He was in open revolt against the ruling circles of the Church and they had to get rid of him. He waged a whispering guerilla campaign of destabilization and pseudo-intellectual moralizing. God knows what he, a would-be parish priest, thought he could accomplish from it. There was no other option for the Church but to let him go.

Ever since he’s made a lifestyle out of the king-hit, the unexpected “Where-the-f**k-did-that-come from?” assault on ordinary people, from various walks of life, just trying to get on with their daily business.

Unless you understand that Abbott is never happy unless he is causing trouble, you can’t understand the way this country is headed: government by brain fart, holes punched in walls either side of innocent people, isloation and encirclement of hapless victims, threats, going the heavy, holing hostages.

Abbott doesn’t work by raising others to a higher plane. He works by flattening all opposition, then kicking them when they are down. Look at the photo above. They’re trying to hold him back.  That way he comes out on top simply because he is the last man standing. Everything about him is menacing and violent because that’s the best, quickest way to rip apart the polity and put your own twisted nightmare in its place.

For a long time I’ve wondered whether Abbott was acting as if he knew he was on borrowed time – political or even existential time. His entire life has been devoted to making it through the day, by and means, fair or foul, the better to be present next morning so he could tarnish another reputation, destroy another institution or corrupt another tradition.

He will say literally anything. He set it all out in that famous interview with Kerry O’Brien: tell a lie, don’t get nailed down, seek forgiveness later. He is always testing his audience: seeing what he can get away with. Giving in to him only encourages him to go further next time.

And if they won’t forgive you, ruin them as an example of how you base your life on pure aggression, an aggression so fierce and malignant that normal people can’t be bothered fighting you. It’s just not worth it. Cut Abbott some slack and he might go away and pick on someone else for a change.

He has all the fire of a zealot, with the talent for intimidation of a gangster. Bull or bear market, Abbott takes his profit by simply threatening peace loving people with aggravation until they give in.

Previously he’s had mentors to back him up, and to guide him. But now he’s the boss and we’re seeing just what a mad dog can do when it’s put in front of the pack.

Australia has to make a decision. It needs to keep in mind, though, that there is no satisfying the Abbott’s of this world. Anarchists are never satisfied, by definition. They’re always looking for the next thuggish high, an even bigger hit to feed their habit.

Abbott has given himself three years to wreak as much irreversible damage on Australia as he can before he’s railroaded out of politics for good. Even he must realize that he’s cooked his own goose in the last 8 months. There’s no second term for him in the offing. That’s plain now.

His party is in revolt, even the cherished Murdoch newspapers are writing nasty things about him.

Speaking of Murdoch, he probably thinks he has Abbott’s measure, that he can control him. But you can never have the measure of a madman. Sociopaths like the Prime Minister see trust as a weakness, to be exploited. They don’t care if they shit in their own nests, and they certainly have no trouble with shitting in anyone else’s nest. The only thing that matters is the high they get from causing trouble and panic in others, from seeing their opponents decked on the mat, bleeding from the ears.

There are others who believe they had his measure, too. Hockey, Reith, Pauline Hansen, Arthur Sinodinos in the political sphere come to mind. SBY and the Malaysians in the geopolitical circle.

He dudded Reith and Hockey, stabbed Hansen in the back, completely outclassed Turnbull, and gave Sinodinos the Jesuit’s kiss of death by telling the poor Greek gofer boy he was his greatest admirer (sad little Arthur, now a humble backbencher, probably still thinks he can make a comeback).

As to SBY, Abbott put out some weasel words about respecting Indonesia’s territorial waters, then invaded them. He sacked the poor low-level saps in the Navy who believed him when he said he’d back them all the way.

He big-noted himself about about finding the Malaysians’ plane, made out that he was personally in charge, bragged that he had a secret that he he could only tell to the Chinese (the Malaysians must have twigged by then, let’s hope), then abandoned the search and, for good measure, will be sending the Malaysians the bill.

To Abbott, promises are just a breath of air, evanescent, temporary measures designed to get him to the next square on the big political game board.

He has made parsing his own words – always in his own favour, of course – not only a personal hobby, but a national pastime. When he says something a whole industry, from pundits to stakeholders, goes into overdrive trying to figure out the loopholes he’s left for himself, and who will be betrayed this time.

The carnival barker always lies. The mob take that for granted. So the spruiker’s job, in these circumstances, is to bet the crowd that they can outwit him. But the game is always rigged in his favour. If it looks like he might unaccountably lose out in the latest swindle, he simply packs up and walks away.

The punters, think they invested their vote – I mean, it’s only a vote, right? – a small risk. Then they are left empty-handed and bewildered. They all thought that other bloke, over there was the one being scammed, when it was them all along (or rather, all of them, all along).

Now even his own party is discovering they’ve been scammed, too. They’ve put a bull in charge of their own china shop. Abbott makes it up as he goes along. He is always confronting, testing, intimidating… not because it needs to be done, but because it give him his kicks.

He got to the top by deception and intrigue, and outright betrayal of his comrades on the way up. He places fait accomplis in everyone’s path: “Give in or I’ll wreck the joint.”

Sadly, many do give in, but they squirrel away their grudges for the day when they can get their revenge. Abbott is always embarrassing them into defending him. One day, however, someone will shout “Enough!” and start a movement to oust for good from politics, so he can’t do any more damage to them, or to – as many are now realizing – the nation.

Don’t expect Abbott to go quietly. That is not his style. He has a good deal more trouble to cause before he accepts that he’s finished. We’ve had one preening narcissist in charge of Australia from the Labor side, but at least Rudd, for all his madness, wanted to do good and even great things in among the murk and madness of the way he ran his office.

Abbott, on the other hand, has the purity of the perfect aggressor, with the added certainty of having God on his side. He exists only to dish out the next king hit on the next unsuspecting mug. His shit-eating grin is never broader than when he is causing trouble and mayhem, havoc and angst.

He tries to kid us (and may even try to kid himself) that there’s a purpose to it, but there isn’t. It’s just the way he is: a kid who grew up as a Golden Boy, who got away with everything by using charm and (if necessary) thuggery, deceit and lies.

Always protected in the past, he is on his own now, and we are seeing the full panoply of his capabilities to lie and deceive, to scam and falsely flatter. His canvas isn’t a back room at a party meeting, or a canteen at an aged care facility where he can wow the old ladies (or stare at the young ladies’ breasts). He isn’t on a bike ride anymore. He’s got a whole country to wreck now.

And Australia – you, me, our neighbours, our institutions and our values – are in his sights.

Until someone stands up to him, until someone takes him by the scruff of the neck and boots him out – like the Catholic Church did all those years ago at the seminary – it’s “Welcome to Abbott World”.

In case you didn’t realise, you’re standing in it.