We know that the Coalition's policy will be debt repayments and budget surpluses above all else.

How will the Coalition eliminate a large part of the structural deficit? They will cut government spending to bring the deficit down and restore stability.

What will be the economic effect of the huge cuts in public spending? Big damage

You say that Labor is "remote from the concerns of ordinary people".... you mean those "ordinary" yet crucial voters in western Sydney and southern Brisbane.

These seem to be the people that the pollies pander to come election time.

More really a democracy, eh?

What will be the economic effect of the huge cuts in public spending? Big damage

We can only hope Turnbull moves successfully against Abbott during the first term. At least then we might have some socially progressive policies to ameliorate the free market fundamentalism.

What we have in Australia is client journalism. Politicians and journalists create a semi-fictitious political world whose most striking features are media events and fabricated stories.

Newspapers are highly partisan in a party political sense. Hence the narrowing of the range of political views espoused by newspapers.

A partisan press cannot be considered to be politically independent except in the purely formal sense of not being owned and controlled by specific political parties.

The COALition doesn't do 'policy'.

It responds to capitalist ideology as best as it can according to how the various vested interest groups interpret circumstances and how the MSM filters that to the public.

So 'policy', that which the COALition at least pretends to espouse this week, is that which suits the dominant interest group[s] of the time.
Or all such groups which results in massive contradictions, 2 recent examples of such from several - the running around in circles by Libs and Nats in WA vs the East over wheat regulation, the infighting between farmer groups and coal and mining groups over fracking.
So if, not when but if [sometimes I'm not pessimistic], the COALition takes over the govt seats they will do, as they have always done, what their masters [gender used deliberately] tell them to do.
After all, what's good for business [and farmers and irrigators and the Catholic and other churches and fellas in general, white rich ones in particular] is good for all Aussies.
Ain't it?

Well written, Fred.
The Australian people will get all they deserve, dragging the rest of us down with them, if they are stupid enough to vote Coalition and if stupidity alone is the criterion for Australians, they WILL vote Coalition, have no fear.

an Abbott government will set about dismantling Australia’s carbon policies.

an Abbott government wants to use technology which relies upon Australia's existing copper networks even though over 80 per cent of the nation's copper network is over 30-years old.

The policy goal should be one of “terminating the copper”.