Tag Archives: Tony Abbott

Manoeuvring the boats

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In a previous post, I described Labor as the “architects of unconscionable incompetence”, specifically with respect to the Malaysian Solution, at least temporarily defeated by the High Court. This post is motivated by the latest political manoeuvring on the issue.

I was about to declare myself wrong over the “incompetence” tag (but certainly not the “unconscionable” tag). It occurred to me that perhaps Labor was playing a Machiavellian political game to ensure that the “boat people” moral dilemma went away for good. They would put up with whatever short-term political damage they might incur, on the basis that eventually the policy really would actually stop the boats. If anyone arriving by boat really was transported to a place as hostile to refugees as Malaysia, it can’t have been long before Bowen’s logic – “breaking the people smugglers’ business model” – was borne out. The original crimes – abandoning the most vulnerable to stop anyone else even trying to ask for help – would eventually be forgiven by an amnesic electorate too wrapped up in future political issues. If the boats stopped, then it would no longer be necessary to invoke the policy, and so it would become invisible.

But no, not content to abandon human rights, Labor really does seem to have a political death wish. Once the High Court had made its ruling, it could have been foreseen that Abbott would block any attempt to change the law. He ostensibly wants to “stop the boats” too, and in that capacity the Government’s argument makes sense. Except that’s really not what he wants to do at all; at least, not until he becomes Prime Minister himself. As long as refugees continue to make the voyage from Indonesia to Australian waters, a disconcertingly large proportion of voters will continue to be outraged at the Government’s apparent inability to “protect our borders”, and will (by a trivial process of elimination) look to Abbott instead. Thus, for the moment, Abbott has a crucial political interest, perversely, in ensuring the boats do not stop.

Abbott did not have any power to actually act in this interest until the High Court ruling (along with the Greens’ opposition to off-shore processing). Now that his support is needed, he can casually mull over the effectiveness of any Government proposal, and then vote perversely. The likelihood of Abbott supporting any change is inversely proportional to its likely effectiveness (and legal robustness), because that’s what maximises his political advantage. Bowen has attempted to call him out on this, but Abbott plays the rhetorical game much more skillfully. The Government was extraordinarily foolish to even attempt negotiations under these circumstances.

Now, the Government has an untenable policy – both morally bankrupt and politically dead. If Labor had bitten the bullet and gone with the Left faction’s push for on-shore processing of asylum seekers, their policy would instead have been both (relatively) humane and politically viable. The issue would not have magically disappeared, of course – many “patriots” would continue be outraged at the thought of the hordes of persecuted foreigners being given safety and comfort. But what can be done about this? The issue will not disappear now no matter what the Government does.

Meanwhile, Abbott is seizing the moral high ground (rhetorically, at least) on asylum seekers – something many Liberals have long given up on. His excuse for not supporting the Malaysian Solution is that there are insufficient protections for those sent there. This excuse has the advantage of actually being a perfectly valid reason. I continue to say “excuse” though, because I’ve seen too much political expediency from Abbott to have any faith in his adherence to actual principles. The Malaysian Solution would have been a masterstroke of Coalition genius if Abbott had thought of it. But that’s hypothetical, and not many people are likely to care.

Abbott may yet “slip up” in a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, but I’m not counting on it. Indeed, I can only applaud his rejection of this particular policy, regardless of his actual reasons. I suspect the only way out for the Government is still to abandon off-shore processing, and live with the consequences. Of course, it may prefer its own approach of bludgeoning itself to death.

Question time psychosis

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I read (via the ABC) that our new Greens MP Adam Bandt believes that the hallowed institution of Question Time is in danger of becoming a farce:

There is a real risk that we are about to lose one of the key opportunities that Parliament has to hold the executive accountable and to ask ministers to think on their feet.

What really is the fulcrum of Parliament, something the nation tunes in to every day and an opportunity to put ministers on the spot, runs the risk of descending into a scripted farce.

At the moment we have the length of Question Time being determined by what time Play School comes on television.

I can understand and sympathise with Bandt, but this strikes me as being a little naïve. Question Time has almost never been anything but a farce.

Each question from a Government MP is a blank cheque for the relevant minister to burble on about how great they are. Each question from the Opposition is just a rhetorical salvo designed to damage the government’s credibility. It’s been like that since the dawn of time, and our adversarial, two-party system almost guarantees it will stay that way. Independent MPs – including, presumably, Mr Bandt himself – are the only ones even remotely likely to use Question Time as a means of acquiring information and so informing the public. However, they get very few opportunities to do so, and such cool-headed rational discourse appears not to rate very highly in media coverage.

So, when Tony Abbott decides to disrupt Question Time with spurious censure motions over Gillard’s carbon tax, who really cares? Sure, he’s being a supercilious git, but it’s not as if he’s disrupting anything important. I shall elaborate by way of the following diagram:

If we can make Question Time not an unmitigated farce (or we can get rid of people likely to care about democracy), then we can worry about Abbott’s choreography.

Leader of the second bureaucracy

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Abbott on Gillard’s decision to establish a “rebuilding inspectorate”:

By putting in place this new body, this new bureaucracy to oversee the flood and the storm spending, they have accepted that the public don’t believe they can be trusted with money.

You should not need a second bureaucracy to ensure that the first bureaucracy spends money wisely.

Of course, Iron Man Abbott would conduct the entire reconstruction single-handedly, crafting thatched roofs from torn up NBN fibre. After all, we apparently don’t need him in his current role as Leader of the Second Bureaucracy. Isn’t that what the Opposition is for, after all?

Speaking of which, there is a reason Gillard is Leader of the First Bureaucracy, instead of Abbott, and it might have something to do with being “trusted with money”; specifically, $11 billion of it that didn’t really exist. If Abbott had been in power we might have needed a Third Bureaucracy to keep things in check, in case the Second Bureaucracy died from sheer exhaustion.

Abbott’s contribution

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There is something terribly misanthropic about this sentence:

PS. Click to donate to help our campaign against Labor’s flood tax

This is the flood tax intended to pay for the rebuilding of Queensland’s public infrastructure, and the sentence appeared in an email sent by Tony Abbott. I know it’s your job to oppose things Tony, but for the time being could you possibly focus your fundraising efforts on the unfolding disaster itself and not on your own political career?

The ABC reports that:

A spokesman for Mr Abbott says the link was added by the Liberal Party headquarters.

Oh good, so it wasn’t just one person but rather an institutional problem. How comforting.

Looking at the larger picture, Annabel Crabb points out that it surely doesn’t matter exactly how we pay for the rebuilding; whether the money comes from an extra tax or extra government debt. What matters – especially in the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi – is that the government has a plan. It doesn’t have to be the best plan, conforming to conventional political ideology – just a workable plan. A little bipartisanship wouldn’t hurt.

Taxing Tony

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First, the following disclaimer: hypocrisy doesn’t make you wrong (as I’ve mentioned before). I cannot therefore accuse Tony Abbott of necessarily having the wrong idea about Gillard’s flood levy, but I can say that the man is a weasely hypocrite:

  1. Abbott himself tried (during the last election campaign) to draw a ludicrous distinction between a tax and a “temporary levy”.
  2. Abbott’s own “temporary levy” to fund his parental leave scheme would have raised more money than the Gillard’s flood levy ($2.7 billion originally compared to $1.8 billion), and so presumably had a larger impact on the economy.
  3. Despite the Coalition cynicism over the “temporary” nature of the flood levy, Gillard has at least flagged an end date (12 months), while Abbott’s proposed “temporary” parental leave levy was actually open-ended.

The issue has briefly crossed political boundaries. It would be very, very easy for Colin Barnett to oppose the levy, considering WA’s innate conservatism and Abbott’s determined opposition, but instead he supports it, and on top of that also accepts the notion of reduced federal infrastructure spending. Meanwhile, Kristina Keneally wants special treatment for Sydney, which I think is little more than a parochial sense of entitlement, brought on perhaps by the looming inevitability of electoral annihilation. If we’re going to subject Sydneysiders to different income thresholds than exist elsewhere, then as a matter of consistency and fairness we should have a model that determines separate thresholds for every region in the country based on the cost of living. However, that starts to look a bit complicated (and presumably expensive to administer).

Things are not so complicated for Tony Abbott, for whom the mission is to find problems rather than solutions.

Abbott

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Tony Abbott is like Gaius Baltar – the anti-hero from Battlestar Galactica. Both are men motivated almost entirely by political expediency in pursuit of power, and seek to escape from the things they’ve said and done in the past.

Abbott, I think, must operate with the presumption that – if he eventually wins the Prime Ministership – history will not judge him on how he won. He must assume that the media narrative will extol his courage and determination, which would certainly be true, but to the exclusion of his almost pathological dishonesty and lack of vision. I imagine that there are elements of the media that would be eagerly complicit in this. Abbott may well be right in this assumption.

I don’t wish this to be seen as a plug for the Labor Party. Julia Gillard and her supporters in the Labor Party, in ousting Rudd and gutting some of their party’s core policies, have behaved in much the same way. However, I feel that Abbott has taken political deception to new depths. At least the Labor leadership and policy meltdown was plain for all to see. Consider Abbott’s own recent history.

In February, Abbott told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell that “we will fund our promises without new taxes and without increased taxes”. Just over a month passed before he announced a “temporary” yet open-ended “levy” on business to pay for the Coalition’s paid maternity leave scheme. Now, that scheme may or may not be justifiable on its own merits (I don’t wish to argue that here), but then why say “no new taxes”? Either Abbott was grossly incompetent for not realising that he’d need extra tax revenue to fund his election promises, or grossly dishonest for trying to have his cake and eat it too.

In justifying his backflip to Kerry O’Brien (on May 17), Abbott made the following truly extraordinary admission:

I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say. But sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm considered prepared scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is [sic] those carefully prepared scripted remarks.

Abbott quite openly admitted to being loose with the truth, and not just on one occasion but in general. He admitted that he lacks self-control. The fact that he made this admission so flippantly further suggests that he really didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with this way of doing things. The Opposition then tried to pass off this casual admission of a pattern of dishonesty as Abbott being “fair dinkum”. Apparently, the act of admitting guilt is such a high virtue that it completely overshadows the offence itself. (Then again, it’s hard to imagine what else they could have said, while saving face.)

Of course, politicians in general are not beacons of honesty (for complex reasons), but we’re not talking just about evading questions, putting words in your opponents’ mouths or using logical fallacies to attack their policies. I would be surprised if any high-profile politician is not guilty of all these things, and this certainly reflects very poorly on our adversarial politics. Abbott’s admission went beyond this, and raised fundamental questions about his motives and what he stood for.

There was also something more subtle that a lot of people didn’t seem to pick up on. Abbott was often paraphrased as admitting that he didn’t always tell the gospel truth, but that isn’t quite the whole story. He actually said that his scripted remarks were gospel truth; “absolute” gospel truth no less. There’s just a little bit of arrogance in that, considering Abbott’s strong Catholicism. Are we really to believe the Coalition’s scripted messages carry the same weight as the inspired word of God? I don’t believe in God and you mightn’t either, but Abbott certainly does – he takes it very seriously indeed. It’s the only thing we know he believes in with any conviction.

All of that helps to frame Abbott’s later antics.

What, for example, are we to make of the Coalition’s election costings? Where was gospel truth when it emerged that the Coalition was claiming $11 billion in “savings” that didn’t really exist, after running an election campaign largely centred around fiscal and budgetary responsibility? Their refusal during the campaign to have their figures scrutinised by Treasury (as per their own Charter of Budget Honesty), and even afterwards for a time until they finally gave in to the independents, was not a good look. Once Treasury reported back, it looked like the Coalition had engaged in a political fraud of unprecedented magnitude; one that would have remained concealed except for the unique series of events precipitated by the hung parliament. How do you begin to explain that away? High profile journalists, including George Megalogenis and Laura Tingle (whose papers – The Australian and the Australian Financial Review – are hardly friends of the Labor Party), quickly and bluntly stated that Abbott and the Coalition were simply not fit to govern.

Finally, what are we to make of Abbott’s refusal to honour an agreement on pairing arrangements with the speaker that would effectively give the speaker a vote (included as a part of a package of parliamentary reforms proposed by the independents)? Abbott claimed, after the fact:

The Coalition cannot accept the proposed arrangement for the pairing of the Speaker, because after careful consideration of the matter, we believe that it is constitutionally unsound.

The pairing arrangement was intended to ensure government stability (i.e. one more vote for the government), which is precisely what Abbott is now fighting against. His point is arguable, but the problem is that the Coalition did accept the proposed arrangement at the time. If it’s unconstitutional now (and this is disputed), it surely must have been unconstitutional when Abbott agreed to it in the first place. If Abbott is exercising careful consideration now, why didn’t he do so before he signed off on it?

Citizen Wilson Tuckey’s excuse for this is that the agreement was negotiated “under duress”. The absurdity of the Coalition being under duress is delicious. Not getting your way (e.g. forming government) is not called “duress”, except by the most petulant of protagonists. Was Abbott tied up and prodded with a hot poker until he signed a confession? Not exactly. The only “duress” he suffered was the stark, horrific thought of not seizing the highest office in the land. However, follow this logic to its conclusion. If Abbott doesn’t need to honour this part of the agreement, then he doesn’t need to honour any part of the agreement, or indeed any agreement at all that helps him attain power. To claim duress, you would have to suppose that it was Abbott’s natural, inalienable right to be Prime Minister, as opposed to a privilege granted by the people, or at least their elected representatives.

What makes it particularly cynical is that either side would have relied on this agreement to help ensure a stable, working government. Abbott would have needed it just as much as Gillard does now. After Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie sided with Labor, Abbott needed all three remaining independents. Having a Coalition speaker would have reduced the Coalition’s margin in the House of Reps to just one vote – 75 to 74. Included in that fragile 75 would have been both Bob Katter and Tony Crook, neither of whom would want to be taken for granted, as well as  Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor who both favour some of Labor’s policies (hence why they eventually did choose Labor). I can’t see the Coalition bemoaning the unconstitutionality of the agreement under those circumstances.

What do we make of Abbott after all this? What does he have to offer, as the alternative Prime Minister? His deceptions are manifold to the point that his word is essentially meaningless. He actively seeks to hide everything he truly believes in, and what remains of him in public view is pure noise. For a Coalition leader to hold to a socially conservative or free-market ideology is one thing. Tony Abbott, however, would probably tell us that he breeds unicorns if he thought he could squeeze a single extra vote out of it.

The danger with this strategy is that, left too long, enough people will see him for what he is, and his claim to be a man of action will start to ring a bit hollow.

Tony Abbott is like Gaius Baltar – the anti-hero from Battlestar Galactica. Both are men motivated almost entirely by political expediency in  pursuit of power, and seek to escape from the things they’ve said and done in the past.

Abbott, I think, must operate with the presumption that – if he eventually wins the Prime Ministership – history will not judge him on how he won. He must assume that the media narrative will extol his courage and determination, which would certainly be true, but to the exclusion of his almost pathological dishonesty and lack of vision. I imagine that there are elements of the media that would be eagerly complicit in this. Abbott may well be right in this presumption.

I don’t wish this to be seen as a plug for the Labor Party, because Gillard and her supporters have behaved in much the same way, but I feel that Abbott has taken political deception to new depths. Consider his recent history.

In February Abbott told Neil Mitchell that “we will fund our promises without new taxes and without increased taxes”. Just over a month passed before he announced a “temporary” yet open-ended “levee” on business to pay for the Coalition’s paid maternity leave scheme. Now, that scheme may or may not be justifiable on its own merits (I don’t wish to argue that here), but then why say “no new taxes”? Either Abbott was grossly incompetent for not realising that he’d need extra tax revenue to fund his election promises, or grossly dishonest for trying to have his cake and eat it too.

In justifying his backflip to Kerry O’Brien (on May 17), Abbott made the following truly extraordinary admission:

I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say. But sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm considered prepared scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is [sic] those carefully prepared scripted remarks.

In this one interview, Abbott quite openly admits to being loose with the truth, and not just on one occasion but in general. He admits that he lacks self-control. The fact that he made this admission so flippantly further suggests that he really didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with this way of doing things. The Opposition then tried to pass off this casual admission of a pattern of dishonesty as Abbott being “fair dinkum”, as though the act of admitting guilt is such a high virtue that it completely overshadows the offence itself. (Then again, it’s hard to imagine what else they could have said, while saving face.)

It’s not especially controversial to say that politicians are not beacons of honesty, but we’re not talking just about evading questions, putting words in your opponents’ mouths or using logical fallacies to attack their policies. I would be surprised if any high-profile politician is not guilty of these things, and reflects very poorly on our adversarial politics. Abbott’s admission went beyond this, and raised fundamental questions about his motives and what he stood for.

There was also something more subtle that a lot of people didn’t seem to pick up on. Abbott was often paraphrased as admitting that he didn’t always tell the gospel truth. No, he actually said that his scripted remarks were gospel truth; “absolute” gospel truth no less. There’s just a little bit of arrogance in that, considering Abbott’s strong Catholicism. Are we really to believe the Coalition’s scripted messages carry the same weight as the inspired word of God? I don’t believe in God and you mightn’t either, but Abbott certainly does. It’s the only thing we know he believes in with any conviction.

All of that helps to frame Abbott’s later antics.

What, for example, are we to make of the Coalition’s election costings? Where was gospel truth when it emerged that the Coalition was claiming $11 billion in “savings” that didn’t really exist, after running an election campaign largely centred around fiscal and budgetary responsibility? Their refusal during the campaign to have their figures scrutinised by Treasury (as per their own Charter of Budget Honesty), and even afterwards until they finally gave in to the independents, was not a good look. It looked like a deliberately engineered political fraud of unprecedented magnitude; one that would have remained concealed except for the unique series of events precipitated by the hung parliament. How do you begin to explain that away? High profile journalists, including George Megalogenis and Laura Tingle (whose papers – The Australian and the Australian Financial Review – are hardly friends of the Labor Party), quickly and bluntly stated that Abbott and the Coalition were simply not fit to govern.

Finally, what are we to make of Abbott’s refusal to honour an agreement on pairing arrangements with the speaker that would effectively give the speaker a vote (included as a part of a package of parliamentary reforms proposed by the independents)? Abbott claimed, after the fact:

The Coalition cannot accept the proposed arrangement for the pairing of the Speaker, because after careful consideration of the matter, we believe that it is constitutionally unsound.

The pairing arrangement was intended to ensure government stability (i.e. one more vote for the government), which is precisely what Abbott is now fighting against. His point is arguable, but the problem is that the Coalition did accept the proposed arrangement at the time. If it’s unconstitutional now (and this is disputed), it surely must have been unconstitutional when Abbott agreed to it in the first place. If Abbott is exercising careful consideration now, why didn’t he do so before he signed off on it?

The Coalition’s excuse for this is that the agreement was negotiated “under duress”. The absurdity of the Coalition being under duress is delicious. Not getting your way (e.g. forming government) is not called “duress”, except by the most petulant of protagonists. Was Abbott tied up and prodded with a hot poker until he signed a confession? Not exactly. The only “duress” he suffered was the stark, horrific thought of not seizing the highest office in the land. However, follow this logic to its conclusion. If Abbott doesn’t need to honour this part of the agreement, then he doesn’t need to honour any part of the agreement, or indeed any agreement at all that helps him attain power. To claim duress, you would have to suppose that it was Abbott’s natural, inalienable right to be Prime Minister, as opposed to a privilege granted by the people, or at least their elected representatives.

What makes it particularly cynical is that either side would have relied on this agreement to help ensure a stable, working government. Abbott would have needed it just as much as Gillard does now. After Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie sided with Labor, Abbott needed all three remaining independents. Having a Coalition speaker would have reduced the Coalition’s margin in the House of Reps to just one vote – 75 to 74. Included in that fragile 75 would have been both Bob Katter and Tony Crook, neither of whom would want to be taken for granted, as well as  Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor who both favour some of Labor’s policies (hence why they eventually did choose Labor). I can’t see the Coalition bemoaning the unconstitutionality of the agreement under those circumstances.

What do we make of Abbott after all this? What does he have to offer, as the alternative Prime Minister? His deceptions are manifold to the point that his word is essentially worthless. He actively seeks to hide everything he truly believes in, and what remains of him in public view is pure noise. He would probably tell us that he breeds unicorns if he thought he could squeeze a single extra vote out of it.

The danger with this strategy is that, sooner or later, the people whose support he needs will see him for what he is. It’s possible that they already have. Rob Oakshott:

there’s quite obviously not the goodwill on that particular item in the reform document that I thought there was

Tony Windsor:

I think Tony Abbott has just reinforced our decision that he couldn’t be trusted.

We bought you fair and square

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Hot custard pie is still dribbling off the faces of Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb and Joe Hockey. They offered Andrew Wilkie $1 billion (a sum he himself apparently asked for) and they were rejected. Rejected! Oh the injustice. Clearly bribery isn’t having quite the anticipated effect.

Regardless of what you think of Andrew Wilkie’s honey pot style of negotiation, it did at least tell us a bit about the Liberals’ style of negotiation. Quite simply, the Liberals were more desperate; more willing to give in to arbitrary demands. I have no idea how much money was actually appropriate. The Liberals’ offer may well have been better for Wilkie’s local constituents, but it probably wasn’t better for the country.

Hockey and Robb are outraged, but they only have themselves to blame. The $1 billion was their offer, irrespective of who first suggested it. Wilkie himself pointed out the obvious recklessness, especially when combined with the Liberals’ newly-revealed $7-$11 billion worth of “assumptions” that Treasury inexplicably doesn’t quite have a handle on.

If Andrew Robb honestly believes now that $1 billion to fix Hobart Hospital is a “wise investment”, as he told AM, why wasn’t it proposed during the campaign? Why wasn’t it proposed before the Liberals’ suddenly needed the support of one Tasmanian independent? I’m sure that Wilkie could easily have made a convincing argument for fixing the hospital, but if there really is $1 billion to spend, perhaps we should consider all the potential projects it could fund.

The Liberals’ ran their entire campaign (except, of course, for the incoherent ravings about “the boats”) on fiscal/budgetary responsibility. I didn’t buy into it at the time, and now – more than ever – it looks like a complete charade. It looks like they were prepared to promise anything to anyone, merely to get into power.

In the end, Wilkie’s negotiating style may also pay off simply by breaking precedent (or even setting a new one). If negotiation with independents is needed again in future, the major parties may be a little more hesitant about how much money they throw to special interests.

And for my next wish…

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Just as I hoped, we have a hung parliament.

A few days after the event, all I can say is this: Rob Oakeshott, you legend. Oakeshott, one of the three independent kingmakers, has proposed a unity cabient, wherein the two major parties would share power.

Doubtless there is much scepticism to be had over whether this could actually work, but in principle it has great appeal. This was the way the system was always supposed to work. Oakeshott and his colleagues Bob Katter and Tony Windsor are espousing the high-minded ideals of parliamentary democracy, wherein parliament becomes a mechanism of government, not just a rubber stamp for the ruling party.

On the other hand, there is another tempting argument: neither party truly deserves to be in power. As punishment for their vicious, purile and jaw-droppingly narrow-minded political strategising, we should now force them kiss and make up, and more importantly to swallow their poorly-chosen rhetoric. As punishment for their lack of competence and vision, we should force them to pool whatever little talent they do possess and share both the power and the responsibility. No more blaming it on the previous government, or snide armchair governing from the comfort and financial wonderland of opposition.

Of course, there can only be one Prime Minister, but it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s Julia or Tony so long as both are involved, along with their ministers. Stick Adam Bandt in there somewhere for good measure.

But they hate each other, I hear you cry with horrified incredulity. Why yes – that’s largely the point. If they can’t get along, they’ll make each other miserable. I call it a win-win.

“The worm doesn’t like me”

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Pity poor Mr Abbott – it’s so unfair. Apparently he’s expecting the “worm” to turn on him again in the coming debate:

Certainly I know the worm dislikes Liberals, the worm’s always hated Liberals, and I suspect that the worm’s not going to change its character.

So I’m expecting to see a pretty unenthusiastic worm tomorrow night, but I know that I have good arguments on my side.

The worm, as you might know, is merely the aggregated reactions of a set of randomly-chosen people. Thus, though a little crude, it’s not really unfair to substitute the word “people” for “worm”. That’s essentially the point of the worm, after all. So let’s give it a try:

Certainly I know people dislike Liberals, the people have always hated Liberals, and I suspect that the people are not going to change their character.

So I’m expecting to see a pretty unenthusiastic people tomorrow night, but I know that I have good arguments on my side.

Just as well he has those arguments, because apparently we all hate him.

Abbott is, of course, merely trying to inoculate himself against the effects of his own oratory skills, or lack thereof, which I think is somewhat in vain. Personally, I’m not expecting much insight from the worm, or indeed the entire debate. Indeed, political debating is really nothing more than a democratic sheen on crass and adversarial political propaganda. At the end, proponents for both sides claim victory on behalf of the candidates and everybody watching is just a little bit dumber.

Was it right? (part 2)

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This is a counterargument to a previous post, in which I argued the case for switching from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Prime Minister Julia Gillard (or rather, why certain objections were unfounded).

Gillard’s rise to power may have restored Labor’s popularity for the time being (and certainly at a very opportune moment), but the party has done very little to actually deserve this electoral reward. I also spoke about Gillard and climate change in my last post, but here I’m going to bring Rudd back into the picture.

Gillard’s position on climate change is essentially the one that Rudd had announced in April – that nothing would happen prior to 2013. This new policy decision is largely thought to have instigated Rudd’s (and Labor’s) precipitous fall in popularity in the first place. To rule out both an ETS and a carbon tax for another three years is an act of utter recklessness, as Rudd himself had passionately argued, and is inexplicable both pragmatically and idealistically. Further, it’s an insult to our intelligence for Labor to change the unpopular leader but not the unpopular policy.

But it’s more than that. The ETS delay was not truly Rudd’s policy in the first place. It was the NSW Right faction that pushed Rudd to delay emissions trading, one of the groups that lent its support to Gillard’s subsequent coup. Rudd was hamstrung by his own party and then scapegoated for the consequences of that very mistake. An anonymous Labor factional leader gave this assessment:

This crypto-fascist made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll, has deserted him he is gone.

This gives some strong hints as to the extent of Rudd’s unpopularity within his own party, but it’s hard to argue that this in itself justifies the demise of a sitting Prime Minister. Labor’s internal party politics are certainly no substitute for the will of the people, and Rudd’s poor showing in opinion polls is hardly unusual for a first-term PM, nor was it even necessarily of his own making. In his press conference on June 23 (on the eve of his dispatch) he gave a glimpse of his views, and foreshadowed Gillard’s policy positions:

If I am returned as the leader of the party and the government and as Prime Minister, then I will be very clear about one thing. This party and government will not be lurching to the right on the question of asylum seekers, as some have counselled us to do. Also, on the question of climate change, we’ll be moving to a timetable on emissions trading, which is of the government’s decision, contrary to the views of some, in terms of when that best occurs.

Contrast the last sentence against Gillard’s “citizens’ assembly” idea. Rudd seems to be preemptively attacking Gillard’s appeal to populism, and so this meme must have been floating around in the party for a while. (I don’t even see what political advantage a “citizens’ assembly” could really convey. It won’t legitimise anything. It may involve “ordinary Australians”, but most ordinary Australians will be quite distant from it. The Opposition, not being constrained by reason or evidence, can paint it and its outcomes however they like.)

Gillard’s other major policy initiative that clearly distinguishes her from Rudd – offshore refugee processing (also alluded to in the above quote) – was very poorly handled. It was clearly designed to neutralise the Liberals’ xenophobic ramblings over boat people, but it sounds awfully like giving in to them. The other problem is that the policy relies entirely on international co-operation that had scarcely even been sought. It’s not clear that this co-operation will ever be forthcoming (except from Nauru, which would probably be too humiliating to consider, since it would nail John Howard’s colours to Labor’s mast), leaving this policy in limbo and playing right into the “failed-policy” mantra of the Liberals. Rudd, the diplomat, clearly wouldn’t have made such a fool of himself.

From one point of view, Gillard is an important symbol. Hopefully she can inspire future generations of women to fight their way to the top. Her rise to power may also have helped legitimise non-belief. (By contrast, it seems almost inconceivable that a US politician could openly admit to being a non-believer. Look what happens when one shows signs of doubting the complete literal truth of the Bible.) Neither Rudd nor Abbott, through no fault of their own, can be such a symbol.

Like most senior politicians, I’m sure Gillard does ultimately have what it takes to run the country. Even Abbott does, I’ll concede – it’s not as though we’re dealing with an Aussie version of Sarah Palin, after all. However, unlike Rudd, neither seem to have much vision – much sense of how the country could be made better. Gillard and Abbott play politics like chess, where the only objective is victory over the other; victory for its own sake.

Neither do they seem to have quite the expertise that Rudd possesses. Australia needs a delicate approach to foreign affairs; balancing our interests – and humanitarian interests – with the pragmatic realities of international relations. We probably owe much of our prosperity and security to good relations and carefully-negotiated agreements with other countries. I still trust Labor to handle this better than the Liberal party (mostly because a large part of the Coalition’s support these days comes from that section of the community that doesn’t understand why other countries even need to exist). However, Rudd was surely the better choice.

Whoever does win the election will have to work hard to prove retrospectively that they deserved it.