Tony Abbott has denied claims he’s readying himself for an early election as he tours marginal seats across the country to sell his budget.

The prime minister toured Melbourne’s east on Saturday, just a day after he visited western Sydney.

But, he denied his visits to marginal areas were for anything more than to sell his recently released budget.

“I am making a point of getting around the country,” he told reporters in Ringwood on Saturday. “I’m going to be explaining to the people of Australia the benefits of this budget.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/16/tony-abbott-marginal-seat-tour-is-about-the-budget-not-an-early-election

In life, and in politics, it always pays to own up to a mistake and move on.

But that's not a lesson the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, seems to have learnt when it comes to the government's plan to tackle the "fraud" of new parents "double-dipping" by accessing two paid parental leave schemes. 

On the Sunday before  Mr Hockey handed down his second federal budget, press gallery doyen Laurie Oakes suggested to the Treasurer that parents accessing both the government paid parental leave scheme and their employers' was "basically fraud, isn't it, taking an allowance twice effectively? Who is doing it?"

"Well, it is," the Treasurer said, adding that "it's mostly people who go on parental leave that earn more than $90,000 a year".

Seven days later and after handing down a mostly well-received budget, the federal government has come under sustained fire for the crackdown on double-dipping, which is designed to save about $1 billion over four years.

And those three words - "well, it is" - are now haunting the Treasurer.

Amid the backlash, and revelations that two members of the government's economic team had themselves double-dipped, the Treasurer claimed on the ABC's Insiders programs he had never agreed double-dipping was a fraud.   

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-denies-fraud-comment-about-paid-parental-leave-20150517-gh3d9s

Gus: Joe not-an-economist Hockey has long been on the side of telling fibs despite being a "nice bloke"... I'm sure he went to confession this morning for redeeming this sin, but this won't stop him to tell crap again and again and again... 

Note: "El hacer una cosa por otra es lo mismo que mentir." Cervantes

             Doing one thing for another is the same as lying.

Tony Abbott has dramatically escalated his war on wind power, creating a new cabinet split and provoking a warning he is putting international investment at risk.

Fairfax Media can reveal the government has ordered the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation not to make any new investments in wind power projects.

Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann​ have issued the so-called green bank with a directive to change its investment mandate, prohibiting new wind funding. It's understood the directive was issued without the approval or knowledge of Environment Minister Greg Hunt, angering the minister.

The mayor of DC, a clearly deluded soul named Muriel Bowser, has embraced wind power with a level of enthusiasm that would make Australia's former prime minister, Tony Abbott, weep with fury.

And, very likely, cause Joe Hockey's eyes to bleed.

Mr Hockey earlier this year declared himself appalled at the sight of wind turbines ruining the landscape  around Lake George outside Canberra.

"I drive to Canberra to go to Parliament, I drive myself and I must say I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive," he said.

"I think they're just a blight on the landscape."

Soon after, Mr Abbott famously joined the fray, declaring wind turbines to be ugly, noisy and potentially harmful to health.

Mayor Bowser obviously doesn't understand.

She's just signed a deal with a wind power company to supply 35 per cent of her powerful district's government buildings for the next 20 years, with a vow to take the share of renewable power to 50 per cent of her city's needs by 2032.

The city has purchased 100 per cent of green power via renewable energy certificates since 2012, but now wants to lead the US in supplying itself directly from renewable industries.

Washington will take the entire output of the 46-megawatt South Chestnut wind farm, its turbines scattered around three villages across the DC border in southern Pennsylvania. It's the largest wind power deal ever signed by an American city.

But what might Mr Hockey think about Mayor Bowser and the boss of Washington's energy management agency, Mark Chambers, declaring the deal will save the district around $45 million?

Mr Hockey, when he was treasurer, insisted wind power was too expensive.

"The economics don't work. Right now wind requires massive subsidies over and above other means of reducing carbon emissions," he told the ABC in May.

Washington's Mr Chambers doesn't share that view.

"Directly sourcing renewable power costs 30 per cent less than fossil fuel-based sources, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 100,000 tons, and protects our city from volatile energy price increases," said Mr Chambers, quoted by GlobeNewswire.

"Put another way, over its 20-year span, this deal removes the same amount of carbon from our atmosphere as planting 44 million trees, or removing 18,000 cars from the road every year."

Mr Hockey will surely have to put Washington's leaders straight.