The federal budget was entirely predictable. The dodgy accounting. The flimsy ''surplus''. The higher taxes on the wealthy. The bribes to the favoured constituencies.
The only surprise was that business was surprised that the government broke its promise to cut the corporate tax rate. Nothing the Gillard government does should surprise anyone.
It's ironic that business leaders are now complaining that Julia Gillard abandoned her pledge on company taxes.
When the PM broke her promise to the electorate not to introduce a carbon tax, business welcomed the ''certainty'' a carbon tax would provide.
Supposedly, one of the original justifications for the mining tax was that it would fund a cut in the company tax rate from 30 to 29 per cent.
Instead, now the mining tax will pay for higher welfare payments to low and middle-income families. Treasurer Wayne Swan's calculation was easy. There are no votes in reducing company taxes. But there are votes in 1.5 million families getting a welfare payment of a few hundred dollars more.
This government never ceases surprising the business community.
Business is surprised the government is still pursuing a carbon tax.
Business is surprised it won't amend the Fair Work Act. Then on Tuesday, business was surprised at the non-arrival of the promised company tax cut.
Business people are supposed to be clear-thinking and hard-headed, yet bosses and their associations fall for the government line time and time again.
Business in Australia left it to the resources companies to fight the mining tax , partly because it was believed every other non-resources company would benefit from the raid on the miners through a lower company tax rate.
Well it didn't quite turn out that way.
None of the 30 chief executives whom the PM entertained at dinner at the Lodge a week ago should be surprised that while the PM was talking about building constructive relationships with business, her Treasurer was penning the press release repudiating his commitment to cut company tax.
The truth is that politicians will always act according to their conception of what's in their own best interest. It's a truth too often forgotten by bosses who think they're making a deal with the government and the government will stick to it. If it's not in a politician's interests to stick to a deal, the chances are they probably won't.
This latest episode of the company tax rate in the budget is proof of this.
Chief executives should remember that politics is not business, and business is not politics. In 1790, Edmund Burke, in his classic work of conservative thought, Reflections on the Revolution in France, warned of the dangers of priests getting too involved in politics.
What he said about priests could apply to business leaders in Australia.
''Those who quit their proper character, to assume what does not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character they assume.
''Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they ... [know] nothing of politics but the passions they excite.''
Burke was responding to the priests taking to the pulpit to welcome the unfolding French Revolution. Burke commented that while he could understand the enthusiasm for a change of regime, the revolution would ultimately end in tears. Burke is famous because, of course, he was right.
Within two years of Reflections appearing, the Terror began. Within a decade, France had a dictatorship.
Be careful what you wish for, was Burke's credo. Business in this country said it wanted a carbon tax. But the carbon tax is the reason there's no reduction in the company tax rate.
To give itself any chance of surviving at the federal election, the government has to be seen to compensate families for the cost of living increases resulting from the carbon tax.
Another reason Burke is famous is because he had a great turn of phrase.
Here's his description of politics in revolutionary France:
''Every thing seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror.''
He could have been writing about the tragi-comic condition of federal politics in Canberra.
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