It’s rare that smartarse parliamentary tactics get such an immediate comeuppance, but when the Prime Minister and Anthony Albanese decided to give Tony Abbott ten minutes on health yesterday they evidently forgot that Abbott, like any politician worth their salt, can talk under wet cement. Perhaps they thought the lack of a Coalition policy, or being caught unprepared would faze Abbott, but from the Opposition Leader’s point of view, what was not to love about ten minutes of crucial Parliamentary time to flail Kevin Rudd? And that’s what he proceeded to do.
And sure, he repeated everything about six times, as you do when you have to fill in time, and he made a stupid remark suggesting a cancer centre in Darwin and a PET scanner in Sydney should be named after him, but he belted the Government, defended his own record and buoyed the spirits of his backbench. Offering Abbott five more minutes to keep doing it looked like Albanese trying hard to show that the Government’s effort to wrongfoot Abbott hadn’t failed.
Graciously, however, the Coalition returned the favour once Question Time had resumed, when it immediately raised the issue of election debates. Having devoted the week to insulation, asylum seekers and school buildings, quite why the Opposition chose that point to raise the wonkish issue of debates — about which no one outside the media and politics could care less about — remains a mystery. Rudd seized the opportunity and immediately suggested that they have a debate next week, on health.
Which, you can bet, wasn’t quite what the Opposition had in mind either in terms of timing or subject matter, as it keeps the focus right where the Government wants it.
Abbott’s two efforts to distract from health, first with his parental leave proposal and then with his comments about traditional owner acknowledgments, haven’t worked, and while the latter might have made for a nice dog whistle to some Howard voters who went Labor at the last election, the PPL proposal has only served to undermine further the Coalition’s economic credentials and erode the Opposition’s capacity to generate a scare campaign around the Henry review.
In retrospect Abbott might have been better off launching a full-scale assault on the health reform package the moment Rudd unveiled it, on the Karl Rove principle that you find an enemy’s strong point and attack it. Still, you live and learn.
If Abbott could spend Tuesday’s debate repeating yesterday’s dose and bagging the Government and explaining that he didn’t cut health funding, it’d be fine, but there’s now an expectation he must do more than criticise Rudd, that he must offer something positive. It obviously wasn’t in the Coalition’s planning to be producing a full-blown health policy at this stage. Rudd himself will presumably use the debate to make yet another of the many announcements about health funding that he promised back when he kicked off the health debate. If so, Abbott’s failure to produce something of substance will look particularly poor.
All of which is why, despite the alleged risks of debating your opponent, Rudd is happy to be doing just that.
Thank you Bernard, I was wondering why Rudd had so enthusiastically agreed to a debate this early in the piece.
While it may appear that Rudd and co. were hoping the Mad Monk would betray his lack of a health policy by giving him 10 minutes of free hits, it was a good move for other reasons. The more Abbott talks, the more he shows himself to be nothing more than a negative, loud, abusive, pugilist with no other instinct than to hit out at his opponents. He cannot conduct a calm reasoned debate on any issue, let alone health, which he is supposed to know something about. In my view the more chances he gets to display his ignorance, personal abuse and bile the better – because the public will come to see him for what he is, and it isn’t pretty.
Here here, Colin. I watched the house of reps yesterday … and Abbott doesn’t speak with the credence he should, as leader, on such topics. And the coalition’s question-time tactics leave a lot to be desired. You can see they have a rigid agenda, and when they repeat their questions (even when already answered) ad infinitum they start to look very silly.
I’m glad Rudd called Abbott’s bluff on the debate issue. The opposition must have been thunderstruck when Rudd gave him a date next week — I am sure they wanted to portray Rudd as scared because they were certain he wouldn’t bite — or almost certainly not immediately.
They must be racing around at 100 miles an hour trying to cobble together a health plan (that involves more than one hospital in Tasmania or a few hospitals in NSW & Qld. If they achieve what they did in terms of policy with the environment and parental leave — both of which lack any credibility.
I, for one, will be watching the national press club on Tuesday with great interest. Abbott doesn’t win many of the stoushes in the reps. especially because of the ‘no debate’ rule, and the libs will not be able to constantly interrupt with bogus ‘relevance’ objections.
What a load of hogwash, Bernard.
Its the government that are on the run. No better illustration of that is their desperate attempt to engage Abbott on their preferred ground, but by breaking a well established political maxim, and that is that an incumbent PM seeks to minimise his opponent’s profile as the alternative PM.
Labor are desperate. You can smell the FEAR. The Left are intellectually and morally bankrupt at the best of times, but when they break and run, it ain’t pretty.
Stories are beginning to emerge of “worried and nervous ” backbenchers and stories about how good Gillard looks compared to her leader.
Abbott absolutely tore Rudd apart in that debate, reminding all and sundry about the record of ‘Dr Death’.
Abbott hammered Rudd regarding his overturn of local boards in Queensland, where the health system is, of necessity, far more regionalised.
Bernard you have underestimated Abbo from the beginning, you and the rest of the Left’s commentariat. What was that about fear???
No wonder Rundle is staying in the UK.
He’s here every night folks!