I’ll admit it. I’ve double-dipped.

Not me, technically. It was my wife (don’t tell her I said that).

Yes, the 2015-16 Federal Budget has already accomplished what it took Orwell’s dystopian nightmare 1984 more than 260 pages to achieve, inciting husbands to dob in their wives quicker than Winston Smith ratted out Julia.

So while it may not be fair to say Joe Hockey’s second budget is the fiscal equivalent of having your face devoured by a giant Orwellian rodent, the net effect is much the same.

But to be fair, my wife and I have both been beneficiaries of this systematic rort.

And so lucrative was the benefit, we re-offended. We double-dipped twice.

Quadruple-dipped, indeed.

We might as well re-christen our two children Las Vegas and Chicago, since both were effectively founded on the proceeds of organised crime.

Or so the Coalition would have it.

Scrambling to relieve the one-time “Budget Emergency” that is now more of a “Budget Inconvenience”, the Abbott administration has cleverly targeted a small subset of Australian society that is unlikely to kick up much of a fuss: mums, dads and kids.

You’ll recall this same Abbott administration was elected with the promise of a gold class “fair dinkum” paid parental leave scheme, under which “every working mum is going to be better off”.

Back in 2004, then-Treasurer Peter Costello put parenting firmly on the political and economic agenda, effectively telling the electorate to go forth and multiply. A decade later, Hockey is effectively telling us much the same thing. Just not in those exact words.

That was abandoned because it was too expensive and “what is desirable is not always doable”. Fair enough. Now the existing scheme is also set to be effectively abandoned because it is too expensive. Arguable, but fair enough again. Evidently what is doable is not always desirable.

The “Fair Dinkum” Paid Parental Leave scheme, or FDPPL for short, was intended to “prove that the Coalition ‘gets it’ when it comes to the reality of the contemporary woman and contemporary families”. Now the Coalition appears determined to prove that it not only doesn’t ‘get it’, it couldn’t care less.

There were eyebrows raised when the inaugural Abbott cabinet contained only one woman, deputy PM Julie Bishop. But Abbott, the self-appointed Minister for Women, proved that this was no boys’ club by doubling female representation in his cabinet late last year.

Yep, two women out of 19 cabinet ministers.

Which could explain why no-one seemed to think implying beneficiaries of Australia’s PPL regime were systematic fraudsters was a Questionable Idea. Demonising people for accessing a scheme deliberately designed to enabled parents to utilise public and private money as an incentive to both increase the population and remain in the workplace.

It’s no surprise the 17 men round the table thought they were onto a winner with that sort of rhetoric. They are, after all, deliberately barren. And persistently so.

Joe Hockey in Parliament this week. AAP photo

Scott Morrison called the system a rort. Hockey agreed accessing PPL from both your employer and the Commonwealth was a fraud. The whole cabinet seemed to think making working parents sound like party guests who had been too liberal with the tzaziki was Great Politics.

Back in 2004, then-Treasurer Peter Costello put parenting firmly on the political and economic agenda, effectively telling the electorate to go forth and multiply.

A decade later, Hockey is effectively telling us much the same thing. Just not in those exact words.

Over the 18 months of this Government, its primary failing has been a propensity for tin-eared politics. Abbott’s strength in Opposition was in berating the Labor administration and pouring scorn on whoever happened to be in charge of it on the day.

In Government, however, that bile is spread around more liberally.

Jay Weatherill is the master of marrying political ruthlessness and guile with the soft touch of consensus. It’s a model that could well be emulated not merely by other Labor states, but by the Coalition.

It’s not enough to achieve policy objectives; the Coalition appears to feel the need to kick some unsuspecting soul on the way through.

Thus, families who availed themselves of their legal entitlements, as successive governments have encouraged them to do, are calculating felons.

When Holden’s golden ticket was withdrawn, Hockey felt the need to emphasise the fact by anointing the carmaker an ingrate and daring it to “come clean” on its intentions. A challenge the company, which employed thousands directly and indirectly in Adelaide’s north, swiftly accepted.

The Government similarly sought to renege on a long-standing commitment to contract ASC to build the multi-billion dollar Future Submarines, but the then-minister David Johnston couldn’t resist emphasising the U-turn by claiming he wouldn’t trust the Government-owned, Adelaide-based manufacturer to build a canoe.

It appears to be in this Government’s DNA to couple contentious policy with inflammatory rhetoric. This, in part, has helped contribute to Labor’s success at state level in recent times.

The Coalition has made itself an easy target for left-of-centre ideological critiques by state parties who, in economic terms, are not a million miles removed.

Holden’s exit should have sunk Weatherill, whose Labor Party had presided over the exodus of South Australia’s entire automotive manufacturing industry. Instead, the Abbott Government’s bull in a china shop approach made it an ALP electoral asset.

The ASC canoe gaffe then effectively gifted Weatherill majority Government, bolstering Labor just days before the crucial Fisher by-election, which it won by just nine votes.

The SA Labor Party has traditionally been the estranged cousin of the national ALP, the awkward relative who gets sat on the corner table at family gatherings but who you have to stick up for when someone else shoves them around.

These days though, other jurisdictions are closely monitoring the state party, which is seen as a template for organisational success and a model for centre-left politics.

It’s not rocket science though.

Not deliberately offending a large chunk of your prospective voters is a fair start.

It also helps when you have a partisan nemesis who does deliberately offend a large chunk of prospective voters, and who does so frequently and concertedly.

Once again, Hockey has handed down a budget that has given SA Labor a blueprint for electoral success. Weatherill has, as he was always destined to, stepped in to “save” pensioner concessions, but they will now be in the form of a more targeted yet more generous “Cost Of Living Concession”. Quite literally, the cheque is in the mail – leaving the recipient in no doubt that this is a gift from the State Government, and no doubt emphasising that it replaces a concession cruelly removed by the nasty Feds.

It’s been said that this week’s budget was less about the long-lamented Financial Emergency and more about the emerging political one. But the fact is, this Federal Government still lacks political finesse. It is still modelled less on the monastic Abbott and more on the Oxford boxing Blue, who comes out swinging where quiet diplomacy is required.

Jay Weatherill is the master of marrying political ruthlessness and guile with the soft touch of consensus. It’s a model that could well be emulated not merely by other Labor states, but by the Coalition.

If not, it could be their polling figures doing the double-dipping.

Tom Richardson is a senior journalist at InDaily.