Here's what former Treasury secretary and Coalition senator John Stone had to say: "If ... Costello were running a major Australian company the way he is handling the country's finances, and presenting false accounts qualified by its auditors and the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the way he has done with income from the GST, he would risk being charged in the civil courts by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for deceitful and misleading conduct. But Mr Costello seems to feel that he can do as he likes and that he is above the accepted community standards of truthful behaviour." -- Ross Fitzgerald, Heard the one about honest politicians?

Yesterday, we saw Peter "The Jerk" Costello (part of the Howard-Costello team, but only when it suits Howard) at his sneering, venomous worst. During a joint press conference with John Howard, who cleverly made Costello's name disappear from letters sent to voters in Bennelong, Costello thrust his big, weird face into the camera and leeringly announced that there was an error in Kevin Rudd's tax policy of such terminal magnitude that a major asteroid hit would be mild in comparison. That's right, he repeated, certain annihilation would be sweeter than coping with the all the money they would lose because, as Josh Gordon reports, "Kevin Rudd and his union mates can't add up and it's going to cost middle Australia hundreds of dollars extra a year in tax."

Gordon, tongue poking cheek, and George Megalomenis, ditto, both explain why. Megalogenis puts into perspective thusly:

The Treasurer is correct: Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan did make a boo-boo last Friday. They forgot to continue indexing the most politically sensitive tax threshold of this election campaign - the upper limit for the 15 per cent taxrate. But in his effort to expose Labor's miscalculation, Costello also confirmed a deeper flaw in his own scales. His election tax package neglects to index the threshold for the 30 per cent marginal tax rate. Oops!

Both articles are a hoot.

Today's Newspoll puts Labor surging ahead of the Coalition by some 16 points. More astounding is Labor's primary vote, standing at 51 per cent.

Why does Labor keep winning the polls? Tony "What, Me Worry?" Abbott thinks the polls are bullshit:

"This poll is radically at odds with the experience we have had in the streets as government members over the last couple of weeks," Mr Abbott told ABC Radio. Mr Abbott said private political polling delivers a more accurate representation of public opinion. "The private polling is somewhat better than the published polls of a week or so back," he said. "It would be an unusual Australian electorate that would take a big risk with its future on polling day."

Abbott says "unusual" but he means stupid. How simply could a bribed, frightened and comatose electorate suddenly wake up to eleven years of being taken for mugs? Of course they can't. As Abbott intimates, they're too stupid.

Thus, Abbott could be right about the polls. Only those whose brains have not been sucked out by the John Howard Party are able to respond. As we have suggested before, when JHP supporters are asked about the election they barely manage a sotto voce grunt. Not much there for pollsters. The knuckle-scraping Silent Majority is notorious for its disengagement with everything but its own self-interest, best exhibited by its suspicion and hatred of The Other. Yet they must be considered among the living. You will see them streaming into voting booths on 24 November to mark their X for the candidate best suited to their larval position on the evolutionary scale.

Howard's still in with a chance.