Trying to do a Latham

Wednesday, 10 March 2010    

Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen.

T Abbott 22 July 2002

Whoops. When Abbott was blocking the possibility of paid maternity leave in 2002, he was doing no more than articulating the interests of business. That used to be the role of the Liberal party – to articulate the needs of business in as popular a way as possible. To be frank, Abbott never used to be that good at it. He may have known what the needs of business were all right, but dressing it up to make it palatable was never his style. Gerard Henderson seems to think Abbott’s reputation for lousy people skills was a figment of left wing journalists’ collective imagination, but they didn’t dream up Abbott’s historically rotten poll ratings. Taking the side of big business so far as to attack someone dying from asbestos-related illness like Bernie Banton, was the sort of thing that drove them.

That was then, of course. From being the keeper of the right’s flame, now we have Tony the populist – kind of. He’s still not getting anywhere near the level of support that Turnbull got at a similar stage, but it’s enough to get Henderson excited. What Abbott is doing, of course, is trying to wrap a revival of traditional conservative values around what is really anti-political attack on the government. So far he has got away with it as the government has become more vulnerable after Copenhagen. But trying to revive an establishment party of big business on the back of anti-establishment sentiment is a tricky business and sooner or later it will come unstuck. Especially as the government has recovered its poise somewhat with an anti-political agenda of its own.

It could be argued that Abbott’s paid parental leave is trying to detract attention away from Rudd’s hospital plan and is in line with a traditional conservative upholding of family values. But the whole point of the right’s ‘family values’ is to make sure the family (women) take the strain and not put it onto business. Making business pay for parental leave rather misses the point.

Abbott’s policy on the run has been compared to Latham’s but the reasons are quite different. Latham’s style was possible because, despite all the moaning in his diaries, he, like Rudd, faced a party too exhausted to assert its own agenda and happy to let them get on with it if it delivered power. The Liberals are not at that stage yet. Latham and Rudd may have not needed to consult their party, Abbott didn’t dare consult his. He has only got where he is on the promise to restore the brand. Yet as we have already seen with what Joyce has done to the coalition’s economic credentials, and now with this latest manoeuvre, trying to be populist is likely to only undermine it.

Rudd: the anti-politics campaigner – 2010 edition

Monday, 8 March 2010    

And I’d say to state health bureaucrats and disgruntled State politicians and other opposition types, I think it’s time just to get out of the way of fundamental reform.

K Rudd 5 March 2010

What is striking about those “opposition types” or, as we used to say, “political opponents”, is that they now stretch right across the political class. Read more …

The slow death of the state(s)

Friday, 5 March 2010    

The Coalition is right: Rudd’s hospital plan is a political plan more than anything else. However, that doesn’t make it any less significant. Read more …

Stoop low

Monday, 1 March 2010    

If the normal rules of the game applied, Rudd’s confessional moment on Insiders would have been a foolish move. Read more …

A step on from Beattie

Friday, 26 February 2010    

What we saw from the Prime Minister today was a Peter Beattie moment. The Prime Minister may not be much of a Queenslander, but he has learned this much from the former Queensland Premier: when your government has got it seriously wrong, you say, ‘Yes, we created the mess and here I am—I will fix the mess.’

Tony Abbott in Parliament 24 February 2010

Of course the Prime Minister is very much a Queenslander, politically at least. Read more …

The curse of anti-politics returns

Tuesday, 16 February 2010    

Kochie: Pauline Hanson says she’ll never run in an election again, what do you think about that?

Rudd: Matter for Pauline. She’s had a colourful political career, obviously I don’t agree with her political standpoint, but she’s had a rough trot from time to time. I think she’s just decided to move on and I think, frankly, the Australian body politic wants to move on as well.

K Rudd on Sunrise 12 February

No doubt the Australian body politic does want to move on, but it can’t. Because the forces that brought Hanson to prominence are back. Except this time it’s not in the language of anti-immigration, but climate change scepticism. Read more …

Barnaby’s game

Friday, 12 February 2010    

Tim Lester: Barnaby Joyce, Australians love your unfiltered honesty, so why on earth have you agreed to toe a party line instead of just giving us Barnaby’s view?

I’ll go if Tony wants it: Joyce – An interview with Barnaby Joyce

That’s a good question. Read more …

Is Turnbull a politician? – an update

Wednesday, 10 February 2010    

To watch Turnbull give his speech for the ETS two days ago was to be reminded of a few things. First, unlike many on the current Coalition front bench, he can actually string a few sentences together to make an argument. His subtle knifing of Abbott’s climate change plan as basically a slush fund to buy off polluters was, as widely noted, more damning and to the point than what the government has achieved over the last few days. Read more …

How the ETS became the GST

Monday, 8 February 2010    

Coalition politicians talking about the price of ice cream in supermarkets and Ministers rote-learning the prices of household goods makes it all seem as though we are having a re-run of the GST debate. Read more …

Destroying Abbott

Wednesday, 3 February 2010    

Now we know what Turnbull was talking about. By trailing the government on the ETS over the last two years, the Coalition had made sure that the argument over the ETS was essentially between the government and the Greens. The result was to make the government appear indecisive and unprincipled over an issue that, lacking any real domestic program, it desperately needed to give it a sense of purpose.

Now that the Coalition has decided to make an issue of the government’s plans, the debate has been transformed. Read more …