ALICE: I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!Lewis Carroll could hardly have dreamt up the sort of marvellous hallucination that is consuming the federal parliament.
Here is Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party, having promised no new taxes and having spent months chanting that Labor's wicked climate control plan was nothing but a great big new tax, suddenly offering to rip his own brand new tax - into big business, yet - on behalf of, good Lord, working women.
And who offers congratulations and support? Abbott's new devotees are Bob Brown and his Greens, not to mention a slew of feminists.
Carroll might have introduced his Cheshire Cat at this point. ''We're all mad here,'' he would purr.
Oh, but it hardly covers the Canberra wonderland.
Here is Kevin Rudd, having decided to pick a fight with the states, almost all of them Labor, by declaring he'll denude them of a third of their GST receipts so he can run the health system, righteously outraged that the Liberals would suggest tickling the top end of town.
Why, foamed Rudd, Abbott's scheme was nothing but a thought bubble popped out of space on a Monday morning.
Quite, as it happened. Abbott hadn't told anyone, and apologised to his party colleagues for not letting them inside his head. ''Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than permission,'' was his fabulously creative excuse.
Carroll's the Mock Turtle might have murmured at this point, ''Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.''
The thought bubble left Abbott's Finance Minister, Barnaby Joyce, describing the impost on big business as a tax and the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, insisting it was a levy. Curiouser and curiouser.
Yes, and what of Treasurer Wayne Swan, desperately searching for allies in the assault on Abbott, standing at the dispatch box approvingly quoting John Roskam, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that doesn't normally think kindly of the Australian Labor Party. Roskam, a free marketeer, had won Wayne's favour by declaring that Abbott's scheme was a tax on business that ultimately would be passed on to consumers.
Swan could hardly seek solace among the usual suspects. The unions were a Mad Hatter's Tea Party: the ACTU's Sharan Burrow, of course, was railing that Abbott was propounding his idea as a smokescreen to allow the Coalition to vote against the government's own (less generous) paid parental leave scheme, but Unions NSW was cheering Abbott from the rooftops, claiming he was actually adopting their very own plan.
It took Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner to put together a rational argument about the need for fundamental and sustainable long-term economic reform, but in this topsy-turvy environment, you could almost hear Eaglet shrieking: ''Speak English! I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!''
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