The Abbott Government has finally revealed what it has long denied: the Plan B to its savagely unfair Budget — raising the GST.

As I predicted in a remarkably prescient piece written within three days of the Abbott being elected, a rise in the GST was always coming. Despite being a clear broken election promise and still a vicious attack on the poor and underprivileged, it will nevertheless be used by Abbott as political camouflage as he works towards being re-elected in 2015.

But now Credlin has, almost mercifully, added a new act.

Now, in response to questions about the Government’s obvious plans to raise the GST, Tony Abbott has this week arisen to intone solemnly about the need for a new debate about “reforming the Federation”. Something this 56 year-old man child says should be done “constructively”, in a “mature and measured fashion” and in a “spirit of bipartisanship”.

Yes, anyone who saw Abbott as Opposition Leader knows just how constructive, mature and bipartisan he can be.

The truth is, this has nothing to do with the “future of our Federation” ‒ Abbott couldn’t give a rat’s clacker about states’ powers, except insofar as they limit his own ‒ but rather is a cynical ploy to raise revenue and put pressure on the Opposition.

It is passing ironic that a PM who, as opposition leader, derided the then Government for a carbon tax, which he described as a “great big tax on everything” ‒ and which was anything but, given it only applied to big polluters ‒ to hike up an actual great big tax on everything that was implemented by a government in which he was a cabinet minister.

To raise the GST, Abbott will first blame the Opposition for not passing the Budget. He will then gain the rubber stamp approval of the states – who will, of course, jump at any proposal to rescue their uniformly parlous financial positions – and which he will hide behind, claiming the decision was an act of inclusive “federalism”.

This proposal he will take this into the next election, claiming it is necessary to solve the debt that is ballooning under his profligate, war-hungry Government — but which he will, of course, all blame on the Opposition.

The tactics are fairly obvious.

And the electorate may well buy it at the next election, because a 2.5% rise may not seem to them so much — not when compared, say, against losing their dole, or paying a GP tax, or losing their disability support. And it will be accepted by Australia’s dull, complicit mainstream media and policy commentariat as the “least of all evils” and not a broken election promise at all.