Tony Abbott has learnt well from his mentor John Howard.
When he came to the leadership, many expected him to implode, wrecking his party along with him, as a result of his ideological fervour and indiscipline.
I suggested he would in effect destroy the Liberal Party, turning it into a “reactionary rump”.
Some rump. He’ll be Prime Minister within a few days, most likely.
Abbott did what Howard — who also had a reputation as an ideological extremist — did in his second stint as leader. He simply removed those elements of his political persona perceived as out of keeping with mainstream thinking. Instead of wanting to gut Medicare, Howard became “the best friend Medicare ever had.” Instead of stopping Asian immigration, Howard ran a high immigration program. Pressed on a GST, he declared “never ever” (although, thankfully, he recanted).
Abbott did the same. IR reform was nixed. His obsession with stopping Medicare funding of abortion — one of the first things Tony Abbott raised as Health Minister — was dropped. He adopted paid parental leave, which he had previously vowed to do everything to stop, with the passion of a convert, in order to demonstrate that he wasn’t the misogynist bogeyman of media caricature.
Like Howard’s transformation, it worked in convincing the electorate of his fundamental trustworthiness as a candidate for the Prime Ministership. Tony Abbott’s “unelectability” wasn’t a myth created by the left-wing media and the ALP. It showed up time and again in focus group research. Abbott was perceived as mad. But he assiduously worked to correct that.
That other successful component of Abbott’s strategy was to relentlessly target Labor’s incompetence. As a former journalist, Abbott is deadly at settling on a simple, appealing narrative and locking his opponents into it. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard repeatedly failed to deal with this, and in effect allowed Abbott to set the terms of much of the debate over the last 9 months, particularly on fiscal policy.
In this, he was helped no end by a compliant, or in the case of News Ltd, partisan media. But Abbott was always at his best when negative; whenever he switched to positive policies, he struggled, even during the campaign. It will be fascinating to see if he continues this in office, in effect become Prime Attack Dog, particularly given the dearth of quality on his frontbench.
The only problems for Abbott (apart from his triumphalist speech last night, which may yet have repercussions electorally) have been the performance of the NSW and WA Liberal Parties. This has been one of the real shocks of yesterday. I expected the LNP to fail Abbott, given the shenanigans that went on up in Queensland for much of the last two years. But in spite of that, the LNP came through, picking up what looks like 6 seats. But in regional NSW the Liberals actually went backwards, with seats like Page and Eden-Monaro swinging to Labor.
And the results of the campaign in western Sydney are still unclear, with the likes of Lindsay still in the balance. And that Labor is still in with a chance in Hasluck is remarkable, given the weight of mining industry money that flowed into WA Liberal coffers.
Had the Liberals put in even a competent performance in NSW and WA, they’d now be in government.
Even so, the best part about the result for the Liberals is that, compared to a year ago, when they faced oblivion, this is a superb outcome regardless of whether they form Government or not. They are indeed, as Abbott said last night, back in business.
Not really. A superb outcome would have been a bad loss for Abbott in which case Turnbull would have retaken the leadership and a carbon tax would be implemented which would be good for the major parties and the country.
Abbott as I sort of stated on the live blog last night is the genuine Howard younger, unlike ‘me too’ Rudd. And all this ex post facto about Gillard removing Rudd – he was sick (medically) and he had to be be replaced for his own health.
But Abbott is – and this is a simple message – a dog. You could say this is gratuitous name calling. But I’ll explain – when I got home to my Lindsay pad I noticed the landlord’s dogs had got into the composter and ferreted out the putrid and rotten. God knows they must be sick by now.
Abbott is the same on policy. Oakes called it a nicer term – weather vane. What he might actually have said was – weather VAIN. Like Napoleon Howard they are both sociopaths who will say or do anything if they think it will work. The Iraq War – remember that? A million dead – never mind. It was only politics and necessary to hold power. This is a sickness that has to be confronted for the evil that it is.
Fortunately The Greens in the senate by next year will do that action to confront a sick sick puppy in doggy Abbott. Come to think of it he’s the only dog I’ve ever seen who can whistle other dogs – the infamous “illegal arrivals” actually here under UN treaty.
Does Dog even contemplate the climate refugees (20M flooded out Pakis)? He thinks the boats are a problem from 2 wars he encouraged? As Professor Frank Fenner has implied, he hasn’t seen nothing yet on the climate front.
Bernard,
Oppositions don’t lose elections, Governments lose them.
Swing to Tory’s and their country mates 2%
Swing away from labour 6%
Swing to greens 11%
Why:
– ETRS trashed by Truss, Robb, Minchin and Brown et al
– Insulation debacle, because State governments don’t regulate safety in the building industry. It’s all been outsourced to private building surveyers who do nothing except take fees guranteed them by the Governments
– Miners respesenting 1.5% of employment didn’t want to pay tax and blitzed the
media; result Queensland and the West gone west.
– Crap Labour Governments in NSW and QLand; result punish Labour federally.
Abbot stands for elimination of unions, further marginalisation of powerless workers, the pushing of Catholic Dogma, victimising the unemployed and unemployable, promotion of the power of big business and his own promotion.
He has lied about all of these apart from the things he will do to the unemployed because the idea of feckless unemployed resonates with the “battlers” The battlers get nothing from Government and resent what anyone else including the unemployed and aboriginals get.
Under the last Liberal, government, inequality has increased across Australia. UnderAbotts leadership the same trend will continue only faster.
It’s time the media grew up and stopped promoting the personality cult for our leaders and concentrated on where we are going as a society as a whole including the poor. Good policy is what we want. Not bullshit from egotistical bullies like Abbot. I don’t expect much from Big Media, but I would have thought that the independent media like Crikey would make some effort.
At least The Age came out and said give labour another go after the sterling job they did in avoiding a major recession.
I agree that Abbott’s speech was premature and inappropriate, but I’m not sure what you mean by it having ‘repercussions electorally’. Even if we have an unstable minority gov of either flavour that goes to an election early I can’t see how that speech will make much of an impact on anything??
Robert Garnett obviously lives in the other planet named Melbourne.
So do I, come to think of it, but he really really belongs there.
In terms of an assessment, I can only say: what a load of codswallop!
Not a single point made was intelligent.
Although…… I suppose if we’re all dirt poor, we’ll all suffer somewhat more equally…….
I thought both speeches were excellent but Abbott’s in particular had meaningful bite in addition.
He must be quite concerned that the broadband issue might sway the now important trio to an unnatural alliance.
Because make no mistake a huge price will be extracted.
But Bob Brown is the big winner and Australia the even loser if Labor collaborate with the evil Green’s support.
Not particularly intelligent on the Libs their part to have preferenced Bandt in Melbourne. It does them no service only shame.
Labor would be better to exit honourably, lick their wounds and rebuild under Gillard.
Abbott also copied Howard’s re-election strategies – the “stop the boats” line and the attack on Labor’s economic management – both of which the ALP couldn’t counter. The Liberals even went back to Menzies with the “faceless men” slur. For their part, Labor could only try to rerun the WorkChoices scare.