The party that stuffs up the least between now and the election will win it.
Not since 1990 has there a pending clash of two less competent leaders. Back then Bob Hawke, summoning the last of his fading political powers, took on Andrew Peacock, the sun-tanned soufflé leading a hopelessly divided Liberal Party so disorganised it didn’t actually work out a health policy in time for the election. The leaders’ debate was like watching a couple of toothless sharks trying to maul each other.
Like Hawke, Kevin Rudd used to have electoral appeal and an iron grip on how to communicate with voters. That has now vanished. Hawke’s appeal faded over three terms. Rudd’s has disappeared so quickly you have to wonder if he’s been spirited off, Harold Holt-style, in a Chinese sub and replaced with a bad impersonator with all the charmless mannerisms and none of the 2007-vintage skills.
The Abbott-Peacock comparison doesn’t, alas, hold up beyond the glowing physical vanity — and even there, Peacock rarely got more exercise than pulling his Gucci luggage around the Macquarie Hostel here in Canberra. Abbott has put in a bravura performance whenever negativity has been required. The moment he has tried anything positive, he has transformed into the most maladroit politician since Alexander Downer’s comic turn in “I Say, Wouldn’t It Be A Jolly Jape To Run A Party!”. That Abbott comes apart so easily under relatively mild pressure from journalists should be a cause of deep concern among his colleagues.
So we end up with the bloke who can’t communicate what little he stands for versus the bloke who can’t handle pressure. Peter Costello might be wondering why on earth he turned his back on politics right now.
This is far worse for Labor than it is for the coalition. History says the coalition should face at least two terms in opposition. They have nothing to lose. But Labor faces the horrible truth: given how well the economy is performing, and how utterly inept the opposition has proven to be on policy, they should be murdering the Liberals. Instead, by some measures, they’d lose an election held now. And they’ve now got two weeks of Parliament, and Senate estimates, giving the opposition plenty of time and coverage to get their messages out there — a rare opportunity between now and the likely election date.
For all the media and opposition stirring about Julia Gillard, one of Labor’s core problems, especially in prosecuting its case for the RSPT, is that it lacks a Keating figure who combines a gift for condensing messages into cut-through phrases, economic gravitas and a capacity to intimidate industry and his political opponents. Gillard can condense issues but she’s not central to the economic debate in the way Keating and Peter Costello were. Lindsay Tanner is adept at arguing a case but is confined to the finance portfolio. Wayne Swan now owns the Treasurership in a way he didn’t two years ago, but it’s unlikely too many business executives live in fear of receiving an angry phone call from him. Swan’s been ramping up the aggression towards the mining companies in recent days and he needs to keep doing it even while negotiating with the more sensible mining execs about the introduction of the RSPT.
Swan’s prosecution of the case for the RSPT is crucial not merely to Labor’s electoral fate but to the future of good public policy in Australia. If a bunch of whingeing foreign mining companies can derail a sensible tax reform through an hysterical propaganda campaign and buying the support of a major political party, we may as well sack elected politicians and put business executives and share market screen jockeys in charge of the country.
What garbage. No-one is seriously going to throw out a new government and where the hell you get this whine of incompetence is beyond my ken.
Really and truly you are sounding like the morons in Bolt world without telling us one fact.
The mining tax is just another damn tax, what is the big deal and why on earth does it have to be “sold” to anyone.
Were other taxes on other things “sold” or just imposed by parliament, which is their job.
Good lord some little people in this country have a weird idea of the importance not only of themselves but the silly rubbish they write.
Why is Rudd on the nose? No-one cared too much about the ETS because it gave vast amounts of compensation to the coal companies and ALCOA and didn’t mitigate emissions by too much.
And if no-one else in the world is working up a cap and trade who the hell do people think we would be trading with?
Honestly, the reportage standards in Australia are third world, with some rare exceptions because none of you know the work of any parliament.
Rudd is on the nose because of a vicious hate campaign launched by Chris Mitchell when Rudd wouldn’t let him get his own right wing way in the OZ.
That’s the nub of it and if I was Rudd with some of the drivel published I would scream at the lot of you in anger and frustration.
It is actually to his credit that he has not.
I note the OZ are still running the stupid line that a 10 x 4 metre tuck shop is 10 times bigger than an 8 x 3 metre tuck box and they do it with a straight face.
Look though at the schools site and the halls and others buildings are actually very beautiful where they are completed and the schools who have them are indeed very grateful.
This is totally over the top and smacks of the hysteria Keane rightly accuses the mining companies of stoking. There are so many ‘structural’ elements that favour the government in the run-up to the election that they rightly remain odds-on favourites to win. Much of the recent slump has been ‘protest polling’ (ie analogous to protest voting in by-elections), it does not mean that people are wishing to elect Abbott to power.
Some of the more ‘structural’ elements that favour Labor include – a coherent policy position, having revenue and spending ‘cards’ on the table, the advantages of incumbency (including the ability to shape the debate – eg on health), superior personnel etc etc.
The Essential Report released within the last hour now has Labor ahead 52-48 and it is very possible that this presages at least the partial restoration of the government’s previously strong polling lead.
Marilyn your rants are becoming more delusional by the day. Everything alright dear?
Rudd is in real trouble because people are starting to no-longer listen to him.
He is in trouble for the next election when enough swinging voters in margin seats stop listening. (What is the polling of this small minority of voters saying??)
But I think (hope) that Rudd is also in trouble because voters who support progressive actions have started to realize that Rudd stands for nothing and that all his revolutions have just been spin.
The spin that Labor is somehow progressive or left is starting to wobble as actions speak louder than words.
When Howard said “This war is right” I believed that the thought this, but strongly disagreed with him. Howard had some integrity.
When Rudd says “This government is still passionate about taking action on climate change” I do not believe that he thinks this. He does believe that he needs to fool the public into thinking that he cares, but that is all.
I loath and detest both Howard and Rudd, but at least Howard had some integrity.
Football teams call it ‘running out the clock’ – and it’s boring as hell to watch. I’d predict the rest of the year will be, politically, as interesting as this.