It’s the nearest thing to kabuki in Parliament: the Government repeatedly attacks Tony Abbott for his “$1b gouge” out of the health system during Question Time; at the end of Question Time, Abbott rises to make a personal explanation that he didn’t do anything of the sort.
“Does the member claim to have been misrepresented?” inquires Harry Jenkins, managing each time to sound as though he would be astonished that such a thing might happen. “Most grievously,” replies Abbott.
Quite.
Like kabuki, the ritual goes back centuries, or at the least modern political equivalent, to the early days of the Hawke Government, when Hawke and his frontbench would slam John Howard for the monster budget deficit he had left them. This was in the days before Howard and Paul Keating fell out and there was an air of mutual respect between the Labor leadership and Howard. Nevertheless, Labor never let an opportunity go by to refer to “disgraced former Treasurer John Howard”.
When Howard got into office, he applied the same treatment to Kim Beazley, with the “Beazley black hole”, the $10b deficit Howard and Peter Costello pinned on Beazley, who had been Finance Minister in the dying days of the Keating Government.
Keating and Ralph Willis had undoubtedly left a large deficit, courtesy of a jobless recovery and that fate of all long-term governments, fiscal indiscipline. But the $10b figure was a crock, padded with all sorts of rubbish to make it appear much bigger. As a pencil-pusher in the Department of Transport, I was amazed to discover that an ambitious Finance official had slipped in hundreds of millions of dollars in transport infrastructure proposals that had never been anywhere near the Keating Cabinet.
Still, the tag had enough truth to stick, and stick it did. Which brings us up to the present day.
The $1b “gouge” is, like the $10b Beazley black hole, rubbish. The Howard Government did not cut $1b out of the health budget. Adjustments to the rate of increase of funding in Forward Estimates, particularly relating to Commonwealth-State funding agreements, are not the same as reducing funding. But the claim has just enough truth to stick if you repeat it often enough — and the Government is repeating it often enough.
Quite what Abbott can do about it isn’t clear — especially when it is repeated in Parliament, where formal rules prevent him from replying during Question Time, when the cameras are on — although he tried yesterday. Every time he jacks up about it, he runs the risk of drawing attention to it. But to sit there and cop it isn’t an option either.
Not that he has helped himself with his various explanations of the reduction, which the Prime Minister used to mock him yesterday. Bear in mind figures are not Abbott’s strong point — this is a bloke who couldn’t be sure whether his paid parental leave proposal related to companies paying tax of $5m a year or with taxable income of $5m a year.
The Government is on stronger ground with its attacks on the chronic disease dental scheme. Expect to hear more on this. For two days running, Chris Bowen has been given a spot in Question Time to savage Abbott over health costs, and yesterday it was the blowout in the costs of Abbott’s own chronic disease dental scheme, which has been the subject of Medicare investigation for rorting. If Abbott wants to push the line that the Government can’t manage programs, the Government is equally keen to show that Abbott couldn’t either.
The Government’s attacks on Abbott are ironic, though, because he talks about small government and cutting taxes but he’s at heart a big government tax-and-spender. Governments should be trying to rein in growth in health spending, particularly by making patients pay more for health services, not succumbing to this learned helplessness that admits defeat in the face of ever-growing health budgets. And in the wake of the first Intergenerational Report Peter Costello commendably took some initial steps to curb the rise in health spending, particularly on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Labor shamefully blocked those reforms for two years.
But instead of defending that legacy, Abbott feels compelled to deny it. What a strange leader of the Liberal Party he is.
Perhaps BK you need also to take courage and say how it is, The Mad Monk is a liar and a hyprocrite. It appears the media at large, besotted by a catholic running the ship, at the beheast of his boss the bishop pell, is too afraid of the ramificarions of the confessional and the eating of the piece of wafer on a Sunday, to have the guts to tell the public just what a wanker Abbott is.
Certainly the $1B gouge got a major run in Question Time today.
I thought Piers Akerman was hopelessly out of his depth in his sledge of Liz Jackon’s 4 Corners show on Abbott. There was alot of new footage and individuals never seen by the broader polity today. Even if it did corroborate much of the general story about Abbott already on the record. What it did was unsanitise the official narrative.
My understanding from interviewing a student uni political rival of Abbott, namely Peter Woof, is that Abbott was a rich kid and a protected species, to the extent he could punch his rival in the face as a twenty year old with legal impunity.
I don’t think in particular women of Australia are really that impressed with that kind of “virility”. No doubt the (far) Right will admire such muscular aggression. Certainly the general public have a right to know the character of the aspiring Prime Minister of Australia. Not least his acquiescence in the disaster of the Iraq war. A war I seem to recall Cardinal George Pell has never spoken against either before or after (?)
“..and the Government is repeating it often enough.”
No doubt, but it is Abbott who is “cutting through”. Rudd is desperately trying to shift public focus to health, and away from his ETS, but that cannot be sustained. Sooner or later, Rudd must come back to his $40 billion dollar impost on every business and household in Australia, or as Miranda Devine stated on Qand A this week, “wrecking the economy”
The insulation scheme is continuing to bleed, and if the Liberals win in SA or Tasmania ( or both ) COAG meetings will take on a very different complexion.
I dont think NSW will back Rudd on health.Labor in NSW is desperately trying to build Kennealy’s profile and the last thing they need is suggestions that, by signing onto Rudds plan, many rural and smaller state hospitals will no longer be viable. It is quite interesting watching Kennealy talk about ” her achievements” in her first 100 days, and never once mention the word ‘Labor’ .
Abbott is like a boxer working his attack to the body before he moves for the knockout. As I’ve said before, he is a much better communicator than Rudd, and it is priceless watching the sweat pouring from the brows of Labor as they seek to take Abbott out.
@JJ: JJ has, of course, provided nothing at all to justify his mantra that “Abbott is a boxer working his attack before going for the knockout blow”.
His actions and words during the past several years lead me to see him as a thug, an amoral user of women, a denier of his own past and a fool, reliant on his self-belief despite clear indicataions that his illogical thought processes are evidence of an unhinged mind. He is shallow and an incipient public fail.
OK, I am similarly displaying my opinion and justifying nothing. I will leave it you you, dear readers, to decide which description best typifies the Abbott.