The Prime Minister’s first week back from holidays has been given over to his Things Are Seriously Bad tour, involving gigs in all state capitals, to give Australians the lowdown on how bad things are and what he’s doing about it.
But even in the space of four days, things have got markedly worse.
In a week featuring one of the traditional set pieces of American political oratory, the contrast between Rudd and that American guy when it comes to speechifying has been fairly stark. Still, no one ever accused the Prime Minister of being a great speaker, least of all the man himself.
Rudd has abandoned a lot of last year’s rhetoric and keywords. “Working families” have been banished. “Decisive action” has been abandoned. “Tough decisions” are forgotten. Instead, day after day this week, he has hammered the same messages:
This is awesomely bad and it’s come from the US
Market fundamentalism is at fault
Barack Obama is the big hope of the world and he believes the same things as me
The Government has made an unprecedented response
Jobs matter the most
We’re all in this together
There’s occasional stumble. Yesterday in Melbourne the Prime Minister declared there were four key dimensions to the Government’s response, and then reeled off five. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. But the key message is about being in this together. It’s the Prime Minister’s new catchphrase. Expect to hear it a lot more.
Each day this week, though, his tone has got darker as more bad news emerges overseas. By Tuesday, Rudd was talking about contingency arrangements to cover the retreat of foreign capital. Yesterday he was citing the latest British banking rescue package and Chinese growth, or lack thereof.
News of China’s anaemic growth rate yesterday must have sent a shiver through the Government. That will feed directly into the remaining success stories of the Australian economy, WA and Queensland. It came out just after lunchtime, and Lindsay Tanner, filling in for Wayne Swan who is travelling to the US, rapidly called a press conference in Melbourne. His very first words were
Today’s growth figures from China are bad news for jobs in Australia and bad news for economic growth. They’re worse than market expectations and they confirm that the Chinese boom that has supercharged the Australian economy over the past five to seven years, is receding rapidly. That’s a big problem for Australia.
No mucking around. There’s something reassuring about Tanner’s preference for plain speaking and unwillingness to run the rhetorical lines devised in the Prime Minister’s Office. He also avoids Wayne Swan’s appearance of having rehearsed his talking points extensively beforehand — and saying certainly every second word — instead giving the impression that, you know, he’s actually telling you what he thinks.
He also displayed a refreshing honesty about the ACTU’s call for a jobs summit. “Bear in mind that ultimately summits are about talking,” he said. “The primary thing that the Australian people want here is action.”
Ouch. Cop that Sharan Burrow.
While we’re on the Government’s rhetoric, it may be insignificant, but over the break first Julia Gillard, and now the Prime Minister, have stopped referring to the commencement of the ETS in 2010, instead preferring to emphasise how the scheme proposed in the White Paper “gets the balance right”.
A commencement in July next year has been the mainstay of the Government’s attempts to demonstrate it is serious about climate change. Now that employment is the Government’s priority, and industry is ramping up their claims that the ineffectual paper chase proposed by the Government will cost jobs, a twelve-month delay might suddenly look a politically attractive option. The Coalition persists in talking about delaying the scheme to 2011 or beyond, and it might be the price of getting it through the Senate.
Blaming the financial crisis and declaring that the Government will delay its unilateral 5% target for a year in the event nothing emerges from Copenhagen later this year would be a backflip, but a politically useful one as unemployment rises. It’s not like the Government has much climate change credibility left to lose.
Don’t think it could happen? These are, as the Prime Minister has explained all week, tough times, and each day they seem to get tougher.
Time for Labor to move to the ‘A’ Team of Gillard/Tanner instead of continuing to play the ‘B’ Team of Rudd/Swan?
Change we can believe in.
No…. They can’t!
Not yet….
I enjoyed the article. Thanks.
Rudd is a New World Order man. He has already told us so.
He is merely playing his part in bringing about a new world financial system.
If it is fiat based it will crash as well. These guys haven’t factored in the role of market sentiment
and fiat currencies have just about had it.
Rudd is clearly doing a terrific job of selling gloom and doom. Not sure he’s the right person to get the country in a frame of mind to get up and on with the job. Sounds more like he’s telling us not to bother to get out of bed for a few years. I’m really getting fed up with him these days. He’d be okay if the economy was going along all right, but he’s not exactly inspiring when times get tough.
I do hope the practical people rather than the idealogues get the upper hand in government. (I suspect we need someone like Keating right now.)
Most disquietening have been predictions of 10-11% levels of unemployment. A broad section of the business community have been pleading with the government to review its IR legislation but Gillard is not for turning. I think that the government is exhibiting the same doctrinaire inflexibilty of which it accused John Howard. With the ETS and IR looking to impose further costs on employers it will be interesting to see Labor plead its case in 2010. With a little luck, Nathan Rees will still be premier in NSW. Talk about people waiting on their verandahs with baseball bats. And Rudd has to go first!