Perhaps it’s been Malcolm’s cunning masterplan all along. And here’s how it works: spend month after month raising all sorts of expectations about how we can magically wish away our crippling debt and deficit problems by simply tinkering with this or that tax, by soaking the rich, by raising or not raising the GST, by stealing from self-funded retirees, by nobbling negative gearing, by scurrying after multinationals or by a host of other implausible ‘reform’ measures.