Forget inflation; forget the government bond rate. Treasurer Joe Hockey on Thursday morning injected a new price measure into the political lexicon: the Middy Exchange Rate (MER).

It's amazing how much stuff that's unremarked on in Australia (let alone Adelaide) can be found by googling "defenSe" and not by our own spelling.  I can't find local reporting of a US Congressman serving on the Armed Services Committee visiting Adelaide last February, but the jaunt has raised eyebrows "back home".  It was written up in the Washington Examiner as "the most expensive privately funded trip on record".

On what was (across the dateline) Valentine's Day in the US, Congressman Mike McIntyre and his wife arrived in South Australia for a week-long visit.  The trip was paid for by South Australia's Defence Teaming Centre, an industry organisation that liases with the State Government run defence department DefenceSA.  DefenceSA is run by Mr Andrew Fletcher, who served as Halliburton's Global Vice President for Infrastructure during the early Iraq war years.

Tony Abbott is dishonest 

A political staffer who set up the alleged NSW Liberal Party slush fund Eightbyfive wrote a false corruption complaint against senior public servants under an assumed identity, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard.

Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer has called on the government to take its harsher budget measures to an election.

He declared the GP co-payment and pension changes were not matters for negotiation and there was no chance his party would support them.

In an interview with ABC TV on Wednesday, Mr Palmer also predicted that the Prime Minister would not call an election if he could not pass his budget measures.

For Prime Minister Tony Abbott, his was not so much a budget as a settling of old scores.

During one of a raft of breakfast television appearances, on the Ten network's Wake Up, Mr Abbott was confronted by an elderly woman, named only as Vilma, furious about changes to the age pension, who responded to his explanations on broken promises with: ''I have never heard such rubbish in all my life.''

‘‘Why don't you leave the pensioners alone? If we pull the belt any tighter we’re going to choke to death,’’ Vilma said. ''Why are you picking on me?

‘‘I challenge you: come out and meet some of the pensioners, they’ll tell you a little thing or two.’’

Is 20 billion bucks for medical research going to cure my major disease — cynicism?

I repeat: Is 20 billion bucks for medical research going to cure my major disease — cynicism?

The 2014 federal budget asks all Australians to take one for the team and tighten their belts. And by 'all' we mean the poor, students, the sick, scientists, and anyone in the arts, writes Ben Eltham.

Joe Hockey’s much-leaked first budget promised wholesale surgery to the Australian body politic.

“Pain all round” will be the rallying cry of the night. Joe Hockey says this first budget - tonight - will hit everyone from high earners to politicians to Australians too poor to pay to see the doctor. All of us will have to “contribute budget repair”.

Except that we won’t.

It’s difficult to find words to adequately describe the spectacle of the Abbott government setting about hiking income taxes and fuel excise in its first budget. “Beyond belief,” as one of the prime minister’s colleagues quipped, comes close.

From the man who promised no new taxes, and argued that “no country has ever taxed its way to prosperity,” here come the new taxes.