By ABC's Barrie Cassidy  Friday 5 December 2014

Photo: The Government needs a clear economic message. There is none. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

Self-serving rhetoric in opposition and mixed messages in government make it very hard for the Abbott Government to get back on track in 2015, writes Barrie Cassidy.

The Abbott Government's first full year in office has ended with the Prime Minister drowning in his own rhetoric and the Treasurer torn between talking the economy up and talking it down.

Tony Abbott's "mea culpa" news conference this week, designed to reset the Government on the cusp of Christmas, served only to push him under another wave as he tried to explain away broken promises. The moment he said "things have moved on - circumstances are different", the public's cynicism meter went off the charts.

That hackneyed and derided excuse effectively makes a mockery of all promises and devalues the currency into the future.

Julia Gillard said the same thing after ruling out a carbon tax before the August 2010 election and then, once in government, "making some changes in order to work with the parliament that Australians voted for".

"Yes, I did say that," she told the Nine Network, "and circumstances have changed."

Now it is Abbott who must ride that monster wave through to the next election, a task made even more difficult because he cut Gillard no slack when she offered the same rationale.

Quite apart from that, he promised "no excuses, no surprises" and left an impression in the minds of the electorate that he could balance the budget without cutting into health and education or raising new taxes.

Falling commodity prices? No excuses. Senate obstructionism? No excuses.

Abbott now has to steer a path through his own rhetoric.

He told Karl Stefanovic on Nine this week:

Sure it gets tougher when you've got to negotiate your legislation past your political opponents in the Senate, and I wish the Labor Party wasn't in such a feral mood...

Stefanovic responded:

With respect, you were fairly feral in opposition, weren't you? ... And if it worked for you, why would he (Shorten) do anything different?

Against that rhetorical handicap, the Government has to go into budget planning early next year with unfinished business from this year overlapping their deliberations.

And hardest of all, the Treasurer has to find a way to persuade voters that the situation is so dire that tough measures need to be taken, and that those measures are fair and equitable.

Respected columnist Paul Kelly insists Hockey must use the MYEFO statement to convince the public that the country faces serious long-term problems. The document needs to be a circuit breaker that leads to a greater acceptance of fiscal tightening.

But that would require a clear and unambiguous message, and there is none.

On the one hand, Hockey talks about a budget emergency but on the other he seems loath to accept the economy is in trouble.

At a news conference this week, he told journalists that he had that day spoken to a global banker who briefed him on the challenges facing international economies "and Australia is in a stronger position than many of the comparable economies in the world".

Why then, Lenore Taylor asked, "is the government saying economic prospects are good and they should continue to spend up to Christmas, but on the other hand the government is saying economic prospects are bad and that's why it's crucial the Senate pass reforms and budget savings? Can you explain why the messages aren't contradictory?"

Hockey couldn't. He went on to argue that the Government's income has fallen below expectations "precisely because we have falling commodity prices and weaker wage growth... (but) ... the Australian economy is going to strengthen".

Then the next morning he told Chris Uhlmann on AM:

I don't want this idea starting to spread as a result of poorly informed commentary that Australia is going to have a tough 2015. It will get better.

So no softening up there; no preparing the groundwork for the type of medicine that has to be swallowed if the deficit is to be reduced.

"Will the next budget have to be more severe (than the last) to make up for lost revenue?" Hockey was asked.

"I'm not sure you should assume that," he responded.

Next year has to be the year of recovery, both politically and economically.

But because of Abbott's self-serving and opportunistic rhetoric in opposition, and Hockey's muddled mixed messages in Government, that is going to be hard to achieve.

Those contradictory responses encapsulate the government's middle-distance dilemmas and diabolical choices.

Barnaby Joyce Thursday described the year as "a dogfight in the fog. It's loud, it's noisy and it's furious."

After the chaos, the confusion and the nastiness of the previous few years, the electorate was hoping for something other than a dogfight in the fog. But Barnaby's right. That's what they got.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

The electorate was hoping for something better - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)