Here’s the distinction:

“Repellent” and “Repulsive” both speak to dri­ving oth­ers away, but REPULSIVE is more REPULSIVE than REPELLENT is REPELLENT.

Repellent is more about distaste.

Repulsive is more about disgusting.

Here’s the context:

Malcolm Turnbull risks punishing more than nine million workers with higher taxes on their retirement savings as he prepares a drastic change to superannuation alongside controversial plans to increase the GST.

The super changes would hit every worker earning more than about $18,000 a year if the government proceeds with a tax ­increase on super contributions, highlighting a grave political danger at a time when Coalition MPs are nervous about a GST hike.

Modelling obtained by The Australian shows the government would have to scale back the super reform — and sacrifice $6 billion in extra revenue — in order to limit the damage to millions of workers on average incomes.

The modelling also highlights the challenge the government will face to ensure 200,000 Australians earning more than $300,000 are not left untouched or even better off under the key super ­reform plans being considered.

Angry MPs are pushing back at the Prime Minister’s reform ambitions amid fears of a voter backlash against a GST increase, but the increase in the consumption tax and the separate overhaul of super tax breaks remain the leading ways to pay for generous cuts to income taxes.

I get it, they are going to raise taxes so that they can cut taxes. Makes as much sense as the rest of it. Cuts to spending are for a parallel universe. Taxing superannuation so that they can blow more of our money on projects of their own choosing is not only a loser so far as the economy is concerned, it is a vote loser as well.

The fact that Labor is worse only works for someone like me since there are lots of other issues that matter. But this business how Julie prefers Rudd to Helen Clarke as Secretary General of the UN only makes her marginally preferable to Tanya, and that is only because of the party she represents and whose standards she must more closely conform to. What she personally believes about anything at all I have almost no idea. How Tony must have suffered having to deal with such people over the years.

When you finally get down to it, this is the Turnbull strategy for the likes of us. To be less repulsive, if even only by the slimmest of margins, than Labor. But you try for a 50% increase in the GST and then raise taxes on super, even if you did get my vote you will lose millions more along the way at the same time. Malcolm has the worst political instincts of anyone I have ever seen in politics, with the possible exception of John Hewson, whose own fate he may soon himself mirror.