No alarms and no surprises, please

Tony Abbott before the election:

We will be a no surprises, no excuses government, because you are sick of nasty surprises and lame excuses from people that you have trusted with your future.

So far, we have had:

• A "stop the boats" policy based on misusing the rules of the sea to trick Indonesia into accepting asylum seekers, which lasted exactly two boatloads before surprising the Liberals by collapsing in spectacular fashion, leading to excuses that is was all the ABC's fault;
• A "Jakarta-focused" foreign policy which surprisingly led to a downgrade of relations with Jakarta, which will now only be solved through an abrogation of Australia's security interests in fighting terrorism, leading to excuses that it was all Labor's fault;
• A supposed "unity ticket" on Gonski education reforms that has surprisingly been ripped up in favour of... um... no one knows exactly, but it won't be a return to Howard era funding arrangements because they didn't work either, leading to excuses that it's all the fault of Liberal state premiers;
• The "budget emergency" which has been completely disregarded by Joe Hockey in blowing the budget out further by over $10 billion, leading to excuses that it was all Wayne Swan's fault;
• A declaration that Australia is "open for business", followed by today's announcement that Hockey would block the sale of Graincorp to ADM, leading to excuses that it was the fault of the Foreign Investment Review Board for not making the decision quickly enough;
• A promise to deliver the NBN quicker and cheaper, followed by today's leak from the "blue book" giving information to the incoming government that its NBN policy was inadequate, includes unnecessary expense in its design and would be unlikely to meet its targets, leading to excuses... well, Malcolm Turnbull hasn't thought one up yet, but it will come I'm sure.

At least Abbott has been consistent on climate change. His only problem there is that he has shown no sign at all of having an idea of how to get his repeal bill through the Senate. It's Clive's world now, we're all just living in it.