The Gillard government’s problems are deep-seated and not easily solved. This is a government so close to the edge of oblivion that the merest whim of an independent could kill it off. The only thing it really has going for it is Tony Abbott.
It’s increasingly clear an inability to sell its policies isn’t Labor’s problem, or at best is only a symptom of a more profound problem. The Prime Minister keeps evoking the Hawke-Keating government, but it lacks both the reform commitment and personnel necessary to come anywhere near the achievements of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Hawke governments had strong frontbenches. Keating’s first ministry did too, though the rot began to set in after John Dawkins bailed out. Even so, such was Keating’s reformist determination, he kept the momentum up on seriously big reforms such as competition policy, superannuation and enterprise bargaining.
The Gillard frontbench is weak. Yes, the loss of Lindsay Tanner and John Faulkner are blows from which any government would struggle to recover, but little talent has failed come through and replace them. Chris Bowen has stepped up, and Greg Combet too. But Stephen Smith is in Defence where, as was the case when he was Foreign Minister, his political strengths — primarily calm and a reassuring sense of knowing what he’s talking about — remain untapped. Tony Burke has struggled with water, Penny Wong has disappeared without trace in Finance and Bill Shorten has impressed everyone with how unimpressive he is.
In yesterday’s AFR, there was a piece from Sally Patten on how Shorten may be considering walking away from the financial services reforms to which Bowen committed last year — including on the “opt-in” provision. Nothing would better symbolise this government’s lack of reformist guts than for Shorten to turn tail in the face of a self-interested industry campaign on an issue that costs workers and taxpayers millions. Still, keeping the big end of town on side would be good for Shorten’s political ambitions.
But the biggest problem is Wayne Swan. Derided in the early days of the Rudd government, Swan slowly built a reputation for competence in the face of the GFC when the rest of the developed world went to hell. But as deputy he’s an ineffective support for the Prime Minister, more Brian Howe than Paul Keating or Peter Costello. He can’t prosecute a case in Parliament or in the press. It leaves Labor, which should be able to crow about the remarkable economic success Swan presided over and is partly responsible for, permanently on the defensive on economic matters. It’s worse on the carbon price scheme, where he carries the baggage of that fateful Rudd government decision to abandon the CPRS.
Reformist governments need effective treasurers, need senior personnel who can prosecute a case against their opponents and in favour of reform. Hawke had Keating. Howard had Costello. Gillard is not getting that support from Swan.
And in the end you wonder just how committed to climate change action the government is. The Rudd government was more interested in using climate change as a political tool than in seriously addressing it. And the two advocates of action in that debate to drop the CPRS, Rudd and Tanner, have been sidelined or left. For all the “Bob Brown is the real Prime Minister” tripe, would Labor be tackling a carbon price without the Greens pushing them?
The only joy is that, for all the bad polls — and the Howard and Keating governments recovered from worse numbers — the public seems pretty clear in not liking Tony Abbott. Abbott’s approval ratings have waxed and waned, but around a low level — he’s spent considerable time in net disapproval territory, but occasionally made ventures into positive territory in the past. But for Abbott to fail to build his standing in the face of what voters perceive to be a blatant breach of faith by the Prime Minister suggests voters have made up their minds on the man, come what may.
One’s instinct is to look at Malcolm Turnbull as the answer, but remember that he, too, suffered poor approval ratings, and not just after the Godwin Grech debacle. That might change given he has been purged of his sins in that regard by the ordeal of losing his leadership on principle, but the numbers show none of Brendan Nelson, Turnbull or Abbott achieved the sort of standing with voters that the last successful Opposition Leader, one Kevin Rudd, managed.
Still, with an eight-point lead and Labor struggling to convince on what will be the biggest reform of this parliamentary term, Coalition MPs don’t have to worry about that just yet.
The quality of the political staffer is more of an issue than the politicians. The role of politicians is to make tradeoff between policies, however the policies themselves should at least make sense. Currently, the model for carbon tax does not make any sense at all, which makes it impossible to sell. The same can be said for Tony Abbott’s staffer. His ‘direction action’ plan is nothing short of embarrassing.
and the constant negativity of the media, you included Bernard, doesn’t help the cause.
Big reforms cause big angst…
This email is doing the rounds at the moment, and I understand was sent to every MP last week, by someone in the Rural Independants seat.
You and all your Labor members are an absolute disgrace.
Your wasteful incoherent spending is destroying our beautiful country.
You have left us with no reserves. The Futures Fund was established by a responsible and wise Liberal Government
endeavouring to make our Country sustainable in times of disaster.
WE NOW HAVE NO MONEY – NO FUTURES FUND AND BILLIONS IN DEBT.
If your intention was to destroy Australia and bring her to her knees, then ‘Congratulations’ you are doing a bloody marvellous job.
Let’s look at your policy record so far:
1. Reneged on pre-election policies after the election.
2. Home Insulation disaster – Not finalised and Billions wasted.
3. The B.E.R. so called revolution disaster – Billions wasted with some schools worse off.
4. Laptops in every school. HO HUM!!!
5. Money for stimulus to avert the recession that was never going to happen, the majority being spent
on goods from overseas – bolstering other countries.
6. Money meant to stimulate the Australian economy of $2,000 per person sent to Australians overseas,
Working Visa Students who had paid a small amount of tax and returned to their own countries & best of all, Cadavers.
Wonderful – more money wasted.
7. Toyota company – Millions of dollars they did not even want and the program a flop!!!
8. N.B.N. that will cost Australian Taxpayers about $50,000,000,000.00 of wasted dollars for a technology that will be outdated well before
completion. The Queensland floods are estimated at 10 -12,000,000,000.00 which gives an idea of what you are proposing.
YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE. WE HAVE A GOOD SYSTEM AND THIS WILL BE EVEN BETTER WITH
NEW STATE OF THE ART TECHNOLOGY.
9. Housing refugees in five star accommodation when you have not had the guts to go back to John Howard’s
policy of stopping the illegal boats. Where are our own homeless people? – THEY SLEEP ON THE STREETS AND GO
HUNGRY WHILST ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE TREATED LIKE ROYALTY. CHARITY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME.
10. Determination to open a refugee camp in East Timor (which is not wanted by the Timorese people)
when there is a suitable camp in Nauru. More Millions wasted if you go ahead.
11. Policy for Asylum seekers is an absolute shambles and totally irresponsible. How many terrorists have infiltrated our country?
12. Asylum seekers have right of appeal in the courts. What is going on? They should have no rights – they jumped the queue illegally.
The whole programme is a debacle like everything else you touch.
13. Australians desperately needing Housing watching homes intended for them being given to illegal refugees.
14. Fuel Watch – a non event
15. Grocery Watch – a Non Event
16. Green Loans – a fiasco
17. Mining Tax – a debacle
18. Climate Change – a debacle
19. Carbon Tax – confusion
20. Solar rebate – reneged on and cut short.
21. Promise to stop Japan from Whaling – a non event.
22. Garrett denying a Dam to be built in Queensland.
23. Giving $500 million dollars to Indonesia for another disastrous B.E.R. AND
24. Finally, adding insult to injury condescendingly offering flood victims a paltry $1 million dollars which was an insult.
DON’T YOU REALISE THAT THEY HAVE LOST EVERYTHING!!!
ARE YOU SO INANE THAT YOU CANNOT SEE THAT IT IS THE AUSSIE WORKER’S AND BUSINESSES THAT MAKE THE MONEY TO
PAY TAXES WHICH YOU ARE INDISCRIMINATELY WASTING. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!!!! FOR THE DUMMIES – IT’S SIMPLE!!!!!
NO BUSINESS – NO WORKERS – NO TAXES – NO COUNTRY.
YOU ARE BORROWING SHAMELESSLY AS IF THERE IS NO TOMORROW.
BUT IT ALL HAS TO BE PAID BACK.
MARGARET THATCHER WAS A BRILLIANT POLITICIAN WHOSE PHILOSOPHY WAS
“YOU CANNOT TAKE OUT OF THE PURSE THAT WHICH DOES NOT GO IN”. GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.
SHAME ON YOU ALL.
Now Let’s look at what you have achieved:
1. We now have a larger debt than the Unites States Of America, costing taxpayers millions of wasted dollars every day in interest.
Another bloody fiasco.
How much longer can Australians be expected to pay the ultimate price for your massive waste?
The sooner you are out of office the better chance we have of recovery.
God Save Australia AND THE ONLY WAY TO DO THIS IS TO GET RID OF the Labor/Green Government.
[Yes, the loss of Lindsay Tanner and John Faulkner are blows from which any government would struggle to recover]
But why did they lose those two in the first place? Faulkner may have been simply tired. But Tanner seems to have been alienated when the gang of four became a gang of three, which used Tanner to give it respectability, but cut him out of key meetings when he tried to inject some economic knowledge into their economic discussions.
In the end they had to tar Tanner with an accusation of leaking, which continued to stick to him even later when Rudd looked more like the source. So Tanner resigned. That cleared the way for Swan to continue his economic shamanism unopposed, claiming among other whoppers that miners were wrecking the economy by raising the exchange rate, and even more comically trying to argue that a tax isn’t really a tax if (like 50% of the taxes we pay) it’s not pulled directly out of your salary.
The choice of Swan as treasurer is even more inexplicable when you consider there are economic heavyweights like Martin Ferguson on the team.
If an old professional like Faulkner were already wondering when enough was enough, you can see why he would take into consideration that the best of Labor was behind it.
As for Malcolm Turnbull, a factor which has received no attention is that during all but the last two months of his leadership, Liberal party forces agitating for Peter Costello to take the helm worked actively to destabilize the party to that end, with the support of some editorial elements at The Australian. For example the newspaper accepted essays from Turnbull which it either buried in inside pages or sabotaged with unfavourable commentary and images. Essays which would have received very different treatment if they had been rejected by the Oz and printed in Fairfax.
Costello announced his resignation in October 2009 and Turnbull’s terminally damaged leadership came to an end two months later. The Liberal party then put a stop to most of the internal agitation, leaks and undermining, and started pulling together once more. The Oz resumed business as usual, in favour of the Liberals. The Rudd government proceeded to self-destruct. Tony Abbott did a great job of helping it do so, but without looking anything like an alternative PM. Anyway, he had a far easier run than Turnbull did–because of Costello’s resignation.