Parliament’s first sitting bloc of the year is over, and the Coalition has scored an easy victory.
Another fortnight of Labor talking about itself. Another fortnight of a beaming Kevin Rudd popping up on TV. Another fortnight of the corruption claims in New South Wales and Craig Thomson. Another fortnight in which you have to admire Julia Gillard — however grudgingly — for getting out of bed in the morning.
Labor has five more sitting sessions to turn the situation around before the September 14 election (and one of those sessions is Senate only).
And one of the approaches the ALP has used effectively to attack the Coalition — Tony Abbott’s lack of policy substance — has begun to change, ever so slightly.
Two policy proposals — for development in the Top End, and more dam-building — have been leaked recently. There will be more to come. You may not agree with the policies themselves, but if you’ve railed long and hard against Abbott’s policy vacuum, give the Coalition some credit for doing something about it.
Andrew Robb and Tony Smith have spent more than a year leading an internal Coalition policy committee. Expect a focus on “cutting government waste” and building physical infrastructure that paints Abbott as an action man. Don’t expect much structural economic reform. Expect more Institute of Public Affairs-sponsored policies in the Coalition armoury — as we point out in Tips and Rumours today.
This presents a challenge and an opportunity to Labor: to shift gears from the “no policy Abbott” attack towards effective policy demolition.
But to do that, Labor would have to stop talking about itself. Based on the last fortnight, that’s a challenge indeed.
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For all the talk generated by these two propsoals being bandied about do not ever try and refer to them as policy – they are though bubbles only trying to gauge acceptance.
If they fail, they were only general ideas and nothing the coalition would ever feel compelled to tie themselves to, or the MSM continually bring up as a broken promise.
If they are accepted, then the general idea may find its way into policy, but even then only enough for the support and not actually to do anything.
Only recently Crikey proposed to set up a register of promises to try and get some semblance of accountability in the coming months. This itself look to be a failure if Crikey can’t even get the concept of what is or isn’t a Policy straight.
What Frey said. I can’t believe you are dignifying these half-arsed ideas with the word “policy”. Or are we back in the per-election false equivalency “insider baseball” mode that Joan Didion rubbished so thoroughly more than 2 decades ago?
Please. Words mean something. You guys are professional writers.
Coalition floats trial balloons. Crikey treats them seriously.
This is great!
The coalition has floated two forward looking big ideas and the ALP has fallen over itself to attack them with relentless negativity with added personal insults such as “Troppo Tony”.
This is a reverse of 2007. The coalition is positioning itself as a party looking to the future while the ALP is looking oblivious to anything going on outside the Canberra beltway.
It’s all got zero detail of course but why put out serious and costed policy when big ideas like this do the job?
The frothing at the mouth by left elites just adds to the fun.
Aspirational policies and promises. Well …what can one say, except its a start!