Paul Keating once complained to Bob Hawke that Australia had never had a great Prime Minister, sending Hawke into a tailspin about the virtues of John Curtin.

But here's another question. Have we had a great, or even a halfway decent, opposition leader?

Most of them since the 1970s don't rate highly simply because they never achieved the ultimate prize - Bill Hayden, Andrew Peacock, Alexander Downer, John Hewson, Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Mark Latham, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull.

Bob Hawke can't be rated in that role either because Malcolm Fraser called an election the day he succeeded Hayden. Hawke never sat a single day in the parliament as opposition leader. Prime Ministers Paul Keating and Julia Gillard inherited the top job in government so they never led their parties in opposition.

And Peter Costello wouldn't take it on, so we'll never know about him.

That leaves just two others in 40 years - three if you include Tony Abbott - and I'm coming to him.

Two: John Howard and Kevin Rudd. Both were very good opposition leaders and both became Prime Minister.

If they had one thing in common it was a willingness, indeed an obsessive need, to engage intellectually with the media and the public. They sought you out not only to put the boots into the government of the day, but to debate the big issues facing the country. Both were economically rational and both came to the highest office in the land off the back of a positive personal agenda. Both were more than willing to engage their opponent on the detail and the substance of economic decision making.

Based on this week's performance, Tony Abbott still sits with the long list of low achievers.

His populist, contradictory, rhetorical and shallow analysis of the budget has been matched only by the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey.

For months, both have demanded deep cuts to the budget. But when the government made a modest attempt to prune welfare, they described it as war on the middle classes.

This was not the time to hurt Australians, Joe Hockey protested.

How on earth can you be fiscally tough, and make the necessary cuts, without hurting someone?

Previous governments, to the detriment of future generations, turned middle class welfare into an art form, using the family allowance system to rain a whole bunch of new vote buying gifts on the electorate.

There is a pressing need to draw the line. But when the government did, Abbott and Hockey condemned the move with all the rhetorical flourishes they could muster. By and large, the media applauded them for - apparently - smart politics. But it's all too easy. People are easily persuaded that they get a raw deal, even when they don't. The opposition's response has simply encouraged a dangerous sense of entitlement that pervades much of the country.

Abbott said on AM that "this government" says people on $150,00 "are super rich," (they haven't said that) and "they don't deserve any help from the government." (They haven't said that either.) He then said , "Sure, these people might be doing better than most, but they're doing better than most through hard work." Is he suggesting those who don't earn that much haven't worked hard enough?

It was instructive to listen to talk back callers across the range of radio stations. So many of them were people on $60,000 or $70,000 who said they would gladly give up welfare if they could ever earn $150,000 a year. Howard's battlers have not yet been replaced by Abbott's aspirants. Those aspiring to the big incomes can't understand why the better off middle classes are making such a fuss.

If the budget gives the government a bounce in the polls, don't forget to factor in the performance of the opposition.

Like Malcolm Fraser in 1975, Tony Abbott may only need to stay on his feet to win whenever the next election is held. But on his performance over the past week, he'll need to defy a 40 year trend and get there despite himself.

He needs to offer more, if only for the sake of good governance; he needs to make a compelling case to the electorate to do two things: throw out the government if it isn't up to the task; and elect the Coalition because they present as a clear and attractive alternative.

Malcolm Turnbull is the last on the long list of opposition leaders who didn't make it. Well not yet anyway. Watching his face as Abbott delivered the comically named budget-in-reply speech, offering a wry smile as the chamber erupted to the "building an entertainment revolution" gag, you couldn't help but sense he was musing: "Is that all you have to do? What was I thinking?"