Action

Monday, 30 September 2013    

Let me make this point for Mr Natalegawa’s benefit: Indonesian boats, Indonesian flagged boats, with Indonesian crews are breaking our laws bringing people into our territorial waters. This is a breach of our sovereignty, and the Indonesians need to understand that, instead of a lot of pious rhetoric.

Alexander Downer, 27 September 2013

Well Alexander is Alexander, and I’m now the Prime Minister of our country.

Tony Abbott. 28 September 2013

It’s probably overdue to turn attention away from Labor’s convulsions and focus more on the Coalition now that it is in government. But it’s not easy.

The convulsions in Labor over the last three years have left a legacy not only with Labor, but with the Coalition as well. Behind the Rudd-Gillard feud was an institutional one between the reformers and the power brokers, but behind that was a more profound problem that affects both sides of politics: namely how parties, formed in the last century to represent particular groups in society, now adapt to having lost their social bases.

With Labor the problem is more an institutional one as it grapples with the decline of the unions as a social force. It is demonstrated by the eroding influence of the AWU within the party, with its leader flapping around like a fish in front of the cameras telling an uninterested nation why he won’t be contesting a vacancy that doesn’t exist (a wonderfully self-indulgent performance showing once again that Howes has still not kicked the habit of conducting internal Labor affairs in front of the TV cameras).

But this problem affects the Liberals as well. With unions no longer a thing, the point of the non-Labor parties primarily set up to oppose them is lost. While Labor’s is more an institutional problem, for the Liberals it tends to be felt as an ideological one.

The Liberals epitomise the paradox of modern conservatism. While feigning loyalty to traditional institutions, its purpose in opposing organised labour and the role of the state leaves it relying heavily on what it is against – even to the point of undermining the institutions it seeks to protect. This need to oppose is especially the case in Australia where the traditional institutions are weak and generally borrowed in a half-arsed manner from abroad.

When Menzies formed the Liberals to counter the rise of Labor, from its early years he relied on Cold War anti-Communism as the glue that cohered middle class support. Since the decline of the potency of the Cold War with the Vietnam fiasco, their record has been more mixed. Except for a few years backlash to the Whitlam government in the late 1970s and a few years following 9/11, the Liberals have never dominated the political stage as they did in the early decades.

More importantly, whereas in the past anti-Communism was a means to cohere support against real targets of organised labour and state welfare, for the last twenty years, ideological initiatives have tended to be an end in itself. Other than the War on Terror, Howard’s “culture wars” had more to do with giving the Liberals a sense of mission than any real impact out in the electorate.

It did however, have one other benefit: it fed into Labor’s insecurities about its own lack of base. Especially after 2001, Labor and the left could understand its lack of resonance with the electorate through issues such as asylum seekers on which Labor could tell itself it was simply too angelic for its own good.

With the fading of the War on Terror and the ascension of Rudd, the illusion that Howard’s culture wars had some electoral relevance could no longer be sustained. On the apology, climate change, asylum seekers, the Liberals were forced to abandon their own positions and follow Labor out of electoral necessity. When Abbott took the leadership in 2009 on a climate sceptic stance, it was fairly explicit that it was more to save the “brand” than win an election.

Then something happened. When Rudd was dumped and the power brokers reasserted themselves, all the excuses of the Howard years as to why they were irrelevant came back. Far from being merely a branding exercise, Abbott’s agenda was suddenly again tapping into the thinking of “real Australia”, that silent majority that continues to remain surprisingly silent even when talking to pollsters about climate change and gay marriage. Nevertheless, despite the lack of polling evidence, all you had to do was organise a Town Hall meeting in places where real Australians live, such as the regions and western Sydney, and the media would carry on as though something of significance was happening.

In this way Labor’s convulsions made the Abbott government. It was not just through Rudd’s failure to give it political content on his return, so leaving voters with the impression of chaos. Labor’s insecurities made Abbott’s agenda appear viable and rehabilitated an agenda that Howard lost on in 2007.

Yet not fully rehabilitated. One of the interesting things that happened in the last few months was that the sense that Abbott was connecting with the electorate on “values” faded. It was noticeable during the campaign that on climate change, women and gay marriage, Abbott was defensive. Progress could only be made through the classic Abbott “culture war three step”. Put something out there, like talking of a candidate’s “sex appeal”. Back track from it (without actually apologising). A few days later, put it out there again.

More striking still is that on taking office there has been little of the type of narrative the Liberals adopted in 1996 when campaign director Andrew Robb coined the term “Howard’s battlers” to describe the inroads Liberals were supposedly making in Labor’s base.

This time the narrative, if the writings of Brian Loughnane are any guide, have been much more modest. It is one simply of competence. Abbott is keen to be seen governing, hence the convoluted media strategy to pretend that there is no media strategy. But here we get to the problem.

The programme the Liberals have returned on is basically one that says the 2007 election, and all the backflips Howard made in the run up to it, never happened. Yet the conditions that allowed Howard to get away with the idea that we will decide what happens on the economy and at the borders are no longer there. On the economy Abbott is stuck with lousy revenues, but no real consensus to make significant cuts in the big-spending items of health, education and welfare to offset it. On climate, Abbott not only doesn’t have consensus at home to be a climate sceptic, but unlike Howard, does not have the support of a climate sceptic Republican Administration in Washington. It’s no wonder that on both issues there has been a tendency to step away from the commitments he made before the election. In the case of climate change, that means hoping the Senate will do the job instead.

But only if the party lets him. The problem Abbott faces is that there are real barriers to implementing his program but behind him is a party of which some sections are determined to make sure he does.

The clearest example is the third key part of Abbott’s platform, where there are also significant barriers, stopping the boats. The significance of Rudd bringing Indonesia into the asylum seeker debate is still being missed by political commentators. The aggressive, and unprecedented, upping of the ante by the Indonesians over their objections to the Coalition’s plan is a direct result of this. By breaking the consensus over Indonesian involvement, Rudd effectively gave Indonesia leverage to go in hard against the Coalition on the basis that there will be political payoff for the Coalition’s opponents, i.e. Labor, if it does.

This means Abbott is forced to tread a fine line in keeping the Indonesians on-side because the Liberals know that as in 2001, Indonesian cooperation is critical for border control, while still maintaining the illusion that “we will decide”. The trouble is that maintaining this balance is made more difficult because this is such a key issue for the Coalition.

For Labor, asylum seekers was mainly about insecurities over the lack of relationship to its base. For the Coalition, the issue is even more important as it is about precisely what they say it is about, sovereignty – something very dear to the right’s heart. Hence, while Abbott was trying to play down Indonesian objections as a ‘minor irritant’, we had the more inflammatory comments from Downer. Given Downer was Foreign Minister, he would know how unhelpful his comments would be in Jakarta, but as a leading Liberal figure would know it’s a critical line to draw at home.

As we saw over the last six years, Labor dealt with the most fundamental issues over its existence in the full glare of government. Having hidden behind those disruptions, Abbott’s Liberals now look set to do the same.

Unity

Tuesday, 17 September 2013    

Kevin Rudd has destabilised the shadow foreign minister Laurie Brereton, opposition leader Simon Crean, opposition leader Kim Beazley, prime minister (Julia) Gillard and, consistent with that behaviour, would be highly likely to destabilise any new opposition leader.

Dr Emerson

In his post political life perhaps Dr Emerson should try his hand at a book on Labor history. He certainly has a different take on it. Read more …

Relief

Monday, 9 September 2013    

We did it before, we can do it again.

T Abbott

A curious flatness accompanied the change of government on Saturday. It was partly rationalised as a result of those polls in the final days suggesting a wipe-out that never materialised. But in the end the result was pretty well as predicted by the national polls (if not the seat-by-seat ones) and the Coalition has ended with a comfortable mandate. Read more …

An incomplete revolution – an update

Friday, 6 September 2013    

So New.

I have respectfully decided not to be present at next Sunday’s campaign launch because I simply do not want to distract in any way from Kevin Rudd’s powerful message to the Australian people.

J Gillard

We would have won.

@johnmcternan

As noted at the beginning of the campaign, Labor was not bringing that much to it. Of course, Labor had its “Positive Plans for the Future” like the NBN and new funding for schools and hospitals – but infrastructure projects and some different way of funding services hardly make an agenda. Read more …

AdWatch: Labor’s negative ads

Sunday, 25 August 2013    

As with the debate-nobody-saw on Wednesday night, the contest should be more open than the polls suggest. Yet as with the debate, while the Coalition remains surprisingly exposed given what the government has been through over the last three years, Rudd’s campaign seems reticent to take advantage. At least it became clearer that the public doesn’t mind negative at all, it’s what to be negative about that’s the issue. But the debate showed how much Rudd, rather than maintain the aura of incumbency he so well established when he returned, has needed to take up the negativity himself. Shouldn’t the ads be doing that? Read more …

Momentum

Monday, 19 August 2013    

One of the myths about the major political parties is that these days they are primarily focussed on winning elections. This may seem terribly hard-edged and cynical but, like most hard-edged cynicism, is delusional. Read more …

Caught in Howard’s “neoliberal” trap

Wednesday, 7 August 2013    

It is an historic fact that interest rates have always gone up under Labor governments over the last 30 years, because Labor governments spend more than they collect and drive budgets into deficit

JWH 29 August 2004

Within a day of writing how the economic debate has changed to the Liberals’ disadvantage, we had the perfect example of it – their response to the interest rate cut. Read more …

Running on empty

Monday, 5 August 2013    

Political leaders have to manage economic circumstances that we’re confronted by. We don’t manage the global economy.

Penny Wong on Insiders 4 August

So many decks, so much clearing.

The start of the election campaign has at least confirmed it will be what it always was going to be on, the economy. Even the Daily Telegraph couldn’t keep up the pretence that asylum seekers would be an issue with its “representative” sample of Western Sydney voters, whose concerns over cost of living, health and education seemed no different from what the nation as a whole has been telling pollsters. Maybe Western Sydney tells us about nothing more special than the current state of Labor/Liberal insecurities.

But having decided it will be on the economy, we now have to find out what that means. It is not exactly clear. Read more …

Realignment

Tuesday, 30 July 2013    

The most effective politics is that which most closely reflects reality. There are three chief distortions of the current political scene that Rudd would need to expose to support his case for re-election. Read more …

The New Regionalism

Thursday, 25 July 2013    

The High Commissioner of Papua New Guinea to Australia, today warned Australian politicians to observe international protocols and courtesies when discussing relations with other friendly sovereign nations and not impugn the dignity of our leaders who are attempting to assist Australia in this very complex regional and international issue of Asylum Seekers.

The PNG High Commission 24 July 2013

OK. This is getting ridiculous. It was bad enough Indonesia intervening in Australia’s domestic affairs but Papua New Guinea?!? Didn’t we own these people not so long ago? If the intervention of the Indonesians was such a shock to the political system that it was ignored by both sides until the return of the Great Destabiliser, then PNG’s intervention risks making slapping down the Australian Right a deeply disturbing regional free-for-all. Read more …