I was on my way to bed when The Australian dropped something so disturbing it’ll likely give me nightmares.

Deputy Liberal Leader Ted O’Brien has decided the Coalition will ‘[leave] the door open to striking a deal with Labor on increasing taxes on high-value superannuation balances to help address structural budget deficit’.

In return for this immense generosity regarding other people’s money, O’Brien wants Treasurer Jim Chalmers to drop his unrealised capital gains tax.

For this piece, we are going to set aside the valid and deep objections to the existence of compulsory super along with the stupidity of a so-called Liberal government supporting the concept.

From a purely strategic political perspective, Chalmers was on the cusp of destroying financial support from powerful donors while setting a flock of screaming journalists on his arse. He has spent every day since the election being picked apart like a chip at Circular Quay.

But here’s what O’Brien should be thinking about – Chalmers has also risked support in the Teal seats.

The lucrative Teal, Labor, and even some Green seats are the most angry with Chalmers.

All the Liberals need to do is leave Chalmers alone in the middle of his self-created mess and the voters will flock back to the Liberals to protect their nest eggs.

Ted O’Brien’s suggestion that he’ll back a Labor super raid against electorates who would be natural Liberal voters is just mad. It is incomprehensibly dumb.

‘If Jim Chalmers is prepared to be humble for a moment and realise he’s made a mistake and wishes to engage with me, my door is open.’

No, O’Brien. Your door should be welded shut with a ‘Lower Taxes!’ sign on the front of it.

Increasing revenue from super makes the Liberal Party look just as greedy as Labor. If the Treasury is out of money, it’s because they wasted it on nonsense. Order a reform. Do some leg work finding out where it’s all going. Threaten to investigate Labor’s spending in a Doge-like witch hunt of all things soggy and Woke. That would scare the heck out of Chalmers.

Offering to help the Treasurer take more private money to spend on Net Zero is just … I have run out of words.

Spectator Australia writer Michael de Percy has a few: ‘I won’t forgive the Liberals for striking a deal with this socialist government, ever. The true Liberals of Sir Robert Menzies, my political hero, are dead to me. Sir Robert Menzies is dead, and the Uniparty Liberals killed him…’

Is this really what Ted O’Brien thinks his Liberal voters want? More of their retirement money going to Labor? Please. Let’s hear that argument.

After the election, O’Brien said, ‘I don’t think we had an economic narrative that the Australian people could see their aspirations realised through.’

And what, taking their super is your plan?

‘We are at our best when Australians understand that if they work hard, they can achieve anything, because the Coalition is empowering them through economic management.’

O’Brien, think about what you are telling the taxpayer. You are saying, if you work really hard, you might reach the glass ceiling of super where the government will immediately turn your hard work and economic management into a cash cow for a wasteful Treasury.

That’s the message I am hearing.

I don’t like it.

Nothing about it screams, ‘Vote Liberal!’

One comment left on The Australian said: ‘Goodness me… Where have the Liberals parked their brain cells?’

Another said: ‘Just spend less.’

And another: ‘Sometimes you just have to wonder where this Liberal Party is heading because it isn’t anywhere the Liberal voters want to go.’

Listen Ted, Net Zero is the political equivalent of a crack cocaine habit which is both screwing with the government’s collective mind and sending it into nearly a trillion dollars of debt.

The solution is not to take more money from the productive, hard-working private sector to feed this drug addiction.

It’s to take away the drugs and send the user to therapy.

Taxpayers are so unbelievably tired of tightening their belts and coughing up cash so political parties can claim they are being economically responsible.