As dawn broke over Australia's new federal budget last Wednesday, it found some interest groups reeling at the new and straitened circumstances under which they will henceforth be obliged to live.

Among the hardest-hit are firebrand conservative columnists, whose crucial supply of rant-fuel has been cut off abruptly by the newly released national fiscal blueprint.

Annabel Crabb. Credit:James Brickwood

The suffering of such opinion-leaders is twofold. Not only will most be obliged personally to pay the deficit levy on Australians earning more than $180,000 a year, but they have also effectively been stripped of two subjects - class-war taxes on the rich, and the reprehensibility of broken campaign promises - on which many had formerly relied heavily for rhetorical ballast.

Julia Gillard's broken promise on the carbon tax provided a rich content source on which such commentators were able to subsist comfortably for years; even after the defeat of her government, it was not unusual to see entire columns reminding readers of how pusillanimous an act it is for a politician to say one thing before an election and do another afterwards.