The ABC is reporting the election outcome as 73 Coalition, 72 Labor, even though one National Party member has indicated he will not sit as part of the coalition. If they had made a similar choice favoring Labor (eg by accepting at face value the statement of the Green MP that he intends to support Labor) I’m sure the cries of bias from the political right would have reached the heavens.
Given the election campaign we have endured, the only just outcome is that both sides should lose. Amazingly, this is, more or less, what happened.[1]
There seems to be a significant chance that the election will produce a Labor government depending on Green votes in the Reps to provide a lead over the Coalition, and in the Senate to pass legislation. I find it hard to believe that the process we’ve just been through could produce such an outcome, not only matching my preferences but reflecting those expressed by the majority of voters, but that’s what some of the papers are saying is likely. We’ll just have to wait and see.
In place of the usual weekend reflections, here’s a forum to discuss the election. I’m feeling gloomy about the outcome, but I don’t claim any special insight and my gloom may just reflect the awfulness of the whole business.
It’s hard to say anything good about this election campaign, but it is a trivial problem compared to the disaster afflicting Pakistan. To get something good out of this horse-race, James Farrell has organized a tipping competition, with proceeds going to flood relief. Get over, make a prediction and pledge some money.
Tony Abbott demonstrates yet again why he is utterly unqualified to be Prime Minister, pushing the absurd line that “global warming stopped in 1998″ [1]. As John Cook points out, this silliness requires three separate cherrypicks, each worse than the last. And, as the same story shows, the rest of the Liberal Party is just as bad.
But is it any better to understand the science and do nothing about it as the Labor Party under Gillard is doing? The hacks and spin merchants who now control Labor policy are every bit as bad as Abbott. Delay is just as bad as delusion.
Truly this election is the most depressing I can recall in forty years. If there has been one in our history where both parties have so thoroughly dodged the issues, I’m not aware of it.
fn1. As previously stated, I’m not willing to debate the science of climate change on this blog, since there are plenty of better venues. But you don’t need much expertise in the statistics of time series to expose this line for the dishonest piece of cherrypicking it is. Anyone who espouses it is either a liar or a fool. If anyone wishes to put themselves into one or other of these categories in the comments thread they are welcome to do so.
As we enter the final week of the campaign, all the indications are that Tony Abbott and the Coalition have fallen short in their improbably near-run attempt to limit Labor to one term. If this happens, there can be few losers of Australian elections who have more richly deserved their fate. Sadly, there can be few winners who have deserved it less than Labor, on the basis of its performance since the abandonment of the ETS and the axing of Kevin Rudd. (In the event of an upset, both judgements would still be true). The media, for whom horse-race metaphors like the one I’ve used to title this post, seem to be the best they can do, can share in the credit for this depressing business.
A few probably forlorn hopes: First, it will be some consolation if the Greens win some Lower House seats. The very unlikely event that they might hold the balance of power in both houses would be the just reward to the major parties for their appalling performance. Nothing is impossible, but the odds against are long.
Second, win or lose, the ALP needs to sack Karl Bitar and his crew, and intervene in the disastrous NSW branch. The combination of corruption, thuggery and incompetence displayed by this mob is breathtaking, and they are a huge millstone around the neck of the Labor party.
Third, given the general dishonesty of the campaign, I would be perfectly happy to see Julia Gillard dump her absurd idea of a citizen focus group, and proceed to implement the climate policies we all know to be necessary.
A final point. When the Coalition has looked like winning, various people have pointed to this mildly snarky post in which I predicted we would never see another Liberal government. My point was not that Labor would be in forever, but that the Libs and Nats would have to merge before they could win. That has in fact happened in Queensland, which makes the continued existence of a separate, but permanently coalitional, National Party in NSW and Victoria even more absurd. But obviously, I was expecting Labor to stay in for at least two terms. At this point, I’m willing to renew my prediction, though obviously it’s a matter of probability rather than certainty. To be clear, I expect the Libs and Nats to merge at a national level before they regain government.
Tony Abbott got away with his howler on the effects of carbon taxes on electricity prices. But, in a piece of poetic justice, he’s now been tripped up by his ignorance of the technical issues underlying his broadband policy, not nearly as bad a piece of intellectual laziness, in my view, but enough to cement the (correct) impression that he is not across the details of key policy issues. To be fair, he doesn’t pretend to be: he offers simplistic slogans to the voters because that’s all he is capable of understanding. In the US, such self-confessed ignorance is a pre-requisite for political success, at least on the right. It seems we are heading the same way.
It’s often debated whether advertising in general, and political advertising in particular, is effective. I can say that the Liberal Party’s TV ads have been effective in ensuring that Liberal candidates will receive my coveted last preference. Of course, the ads aren’t aimed at me, so I just have to hope that the average Australian is not the bigoted fool the Liberal campaign supposes. And, of course, things would be a lot easier if Labor were aiming for something more than my second-last preference.
The question of Australia’s population is finally a matter of serious debate, after years of being settled by default and deceit[1]. As this surprisingly reasonable piece from Chris Berg of the IPA points out, even the Greens, who have generally been willing to “present clear policy where Labor and the Coalition just waffle”, have found this difficult to handle. Berg observes that the Greens are torn between general sympathy for those wanting to migrate and environmental concerns about the implications of population growth.
For Berg, a Big Australia advocate, the issue is simple. Environmental issues can always be fixed by economic growth and “high immigration … has been the fuel of the Australian economy for two centuries.” Implicitly, Berg asserts that more immigration will make current Australian residents better off. The problem, as Ross Gittins points out is that this generally isn’t true. Increased immigration doesn’t raise average income for those already here, and the need for lots of new infrastructure creates all kinds of economic and social stresses. Of course, the costs are even greater in the case of natural increase – Peter Costello’s fatuous suggestion that couples should have an extra child for the sake of the country was a prime illustration of his lack of any economic understanding, despite a dozen years as Treasurer.
So, there is no getting around the dilemma described by Berg. Considered in terms of aggregate numbers, we would be better off, economically, socially and environmentally, with a slower rate of population growth. But potential immigrants aren’t just numbers. They are people with a variety of good reasons for wanting to come here (to reunite with family members, or to take up a job to escape from persecution or just to get a better life). Refusing them admission hurts them as well as those in Australia (relatives, potential colleagues and employers, those who feel a moral obligation to help refugees) who want to welcome them here. There is no easy answer to this question, and the wishful thinking displayed by advocates of a Big Australia does not help to resolve it.
fn1. The most prominent example being the Howard government’s policy of ramping up immigration while playing on racist fears in relation to boat people. Under Abbott, the conservatives are at least consistently anti-immigrant. That makes them less dishonest, if no less ugly.
Unimpressed as I am by Labor Julia Gillard’s Prime Ministership, they (and she) remain far preferable to the alternative. For an illustration of what’s on offer, let’s look at Tony Abbott’s claim (repated on quite a number of occasions) that a $40/tonne carbon tax will double the price of electricity. For coal-fired electricity, CO2 emissions are around 1 tonne/MWh for black coal (a tonne of coal generates about 2.5 tonnes of CO2, and also about 2.5 MWh of electricity), and a little more for brown coal. So, a $40/tonne tax implies an additional cost of 4c/kwh. Electricity prices vary a lot, but currently the standard retail rate in Queensland is around 20c/kWh, so the price increase would be around 20 per cent for households. Businesses that use large amounts of electricity pay lower prices and would therefore face a higher price increase, but since the generator cost of electricity is typically more than $40/MWh, no one paying a market-determined price would face a doubling[1].
What’s really striking about this is that it occurs in a context where Laurie Oakes is questioning Abbott about his credibility. The next question, referring to previous inconsistencies is “But, isn’t it important if you become Prime Minister, that Australians can believe what their Prime Minister says?”. Oakes is pretty good on who said what and when, but he lacks the basic arithmetic skills and policy background to call Abbott out on an obvious lie. And if Oakes doesn’t think it’s important to understand basic facts about the policy issues, you can bet the same is true of the rest of the Canberra Press Gallery, who hang on his every word.
fn1. Probably there are some aluminium smelters on cosy deals from the 1980s and 1990s paying prices below generator cost, but the odds are they would have tobe compensated in any case, whether or not this is justified economically or socially.
To say this election campaign has been light on policy is rather like saying that the World Cup was light on quiet contemplation of the game.
In the hope of improving things, the Centre for Policy Development has published More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now. I have a chapter on financial development.
This account of how Labor choked on climate change seems likely to be the definitive one.
Whenever the topic of voting for the Greens comes up, the question arises of whether this involves “splitting the progressive vote” or “wasting your vote”. In large measure, this suggests results from confusing the Australian system with the “first past the post” (plurality of first preference) system that prevails in the US and Britain. In all Australian voting systems it is possible to vote Green with a second preference for Labor. Obviously, if you don’t do this (by preferencing the Lib/Nats or by exhausting your ballot where this is an option) the result will be to reduce the chances of a Labor candidate being elected. But are there any other cases where this is a risk?
For single-member constituencies, the most common case is where the Greens are sure to run third. In this case, their preferences are distributed, and a Green vote with a Labor second preference is functionally equivalent to a Labor first preference, although the views they express are different. In the rare cases where Labor is sure to run third, the opposite is true. The only interesting case is where the order in which Greens and Labor are going to finish is unsure. In this case, the outcome that gives the best combined Labor-Green chance is that the candidate with tighter preference flows should finish third. That way, there is less leakage of preferences to the conservatives. In practice, I don’t think this is a big deal, but to the extent it is at all relevant, it usually suggests that progressives should vote Green. But there is a problem with this, in that, if people really acted on this analysis, there would be a reward to the party whose voters were more likely to split their preferences.
Broadly speaking, the same analysis applies in the Senate. Most of the time, the total number of Green and Labor Senators elected will be the same regardless of how preferences are arranged between them. Given the complexities of the system, especially with voting both above and below the line, anything can happen, but since these complexities are almost impossible to predict in advance, they can’t really influence a decision on how to vote.
I restarted the blog so I could comment on the election, but I’ve found it too depressing to do much. The major parties are engaged in a race to the bottom in every respect, announcing silly focus-group-driven policies and appealing to the worst instincts of the electorate. The mass media have encouraged this, obsessing over trivial scandals and personality issues and disregarding our real economic and social problems. The only serious hope for progress on policy is the Greens but they remain marginalised. I’ll try to offer some discussion of the Greens policies on various issues but at this point, I think, there is little reason to follow the main campaign.
Julia Gillard has announced an Australian version of the cash for clunkers program of the Obama Administration. Reader Ben Elliston writes
read an article some months ago by Jeffrey Sachs evaluating a
similar policy from the Obama administration:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-clunker-of-a-climate-policy
It turns out that the Gillard proposal is even worse than Obama’s.
Sachs calculated the greenhouse gas abatement value of Obama’s scheme
at US$140 per metric tonne. Gillard’s policy will reduce emissions by
1 million tonnes at a cost of $394 million dollars ($394/tonne).
My only observation is that Ben’s estimate is taken directly from the government’s press release, which is almost certainly overoptimistic. For comparison, at about $25/tonne, brown-coal electricity generation becomes uneconomic compared to gas and black coal. At $100/tonne, just about all the alternatives (including wind, nuclear, CCS, and solar) look pretty good. Cash for clunkers is, as Sachs concludes, a clunker of a policy.
And just in case anyone has forgotten, Abbott’s anti-policies are even more focused on this kind of nonsense/
My column in yesterday’s Fin (over the fold) advocating agreement between Labor and the Greens on a short-term carbon price was rendered obsolete almost immediately by Julia Gillard’s speech (as it happened, I was in the building next door when she gave it).
Gillard’s non-policy represents a failure of leadership. The best that can be said for it is that the delay generated by this process is only supposed to last for 12 months, and that 150 randomly selected Australians could scarcely do a worse job on this vital issues than our political leaders have done.
But, as is so often the case, Abbott is even worse, offering an anti-policy that would represent an obstacle to any real action. I’m feeling happy about my decision to vote for the Greens. With rather less enthusiasm than before, I’ll still give Labor my second preference.
As I said last time, I’ll be advocating a vote for the Greens. Unlike some commenters here, I plan to give my second preference to Labor[1]. To justify my second preference first, I regard the Liberals under Abbott as utterly unfit for government. Abbott has behaved as an unprincipled opportunist throughout his period as opposition leader, denouncing “great big new taxes”, then proposing taxes of his own with no regard for consistency or good public policy. In office, I expect he would discover that he had a mandate for the hardline rightwing policies he has always favored.
Coming to the choice between Labor and the Greens, this isn’t the first time I have given a first preference to the Greens, but it’s the first in some years. The main substantive issues that concern me are economic management and climate change, but these issues (and particularly climate change) can’t be separate from questions about process and principle. The government has done a good job on economic management, while the opposition has been consistent only in error. On the other hand, the government has made a terrible mess of climate change policy, almost entirely because of its reluctance to deal with the Greens and to confront the opposition and the lobby groups that back them. In the long run, the only way they will be able to govern effectively is through co-operation with the Greens, and the sooner they are forced to realise this the better.
It’s obvious at this point that the CPRS proposed last year is dead, and that a new ETS will have to be developed, hopefully when we have seen some more progress in other countries. For that reason, I think a carbon tax, with few exemptions and a tight cap on compensation to emitters is the best way to go. The Greens idea of a two-year interim carbon tax would be a good starting point for discussion and there is still time for Labor to announce in-principle support for a deal of this kind.
On other issues such as asylum seekers, the government’s position is carefully ambiguous, while the opposition is as close to overt racism[2] as it has ever been. A big vote for the Greens would force the government back towards a decent position.
Then there is the machine politics that led, first to Rudd being forced to dump the CPRS, and then being sacked when this decision had such disastrous consequences. Without excusing Rudd for some earlier failures on the issue, this alone would be enough to deprive Labor of my first preference in the presence of any decent alternative.
It seems reasonable to hope that the Greens will get enough votes to hold the balance of power in the Senate from July 2011. It seems unlikely, except by a fluke that they could do the same in the House of Representatives. But the loss of even two or three inner-city seats would put Labor on notice that its core support can’t be taken for granted.
I’m even marginally hopeful as regards the seat of Ryan, where I live. The incumbent Liberal, Michael Johnson, has been disendorsed over corruption allegations, but claims to be the victim of factional smears and is running hard against the official LNP candidate. The Greens have done well in the past, and might benefit from a flow of preferences.
fn1. This assumes that there is no preference deal made that would lead me to think otherwise. For example, if Labor were to preference Steve Fielding or the like again, I would consider exhausting my Senate ballot in a way that gave a preference to neither major party (to see how, read here.
fn2. The one genuine example of “political correctness” in Australian politics is the one that prevents us from using the word “racist” to describe racism, but there’s no doubt that’s what it is.
The final proofs of Zombie Economics went off to the typesetter this morning, and you’ve all seen this evening’s news. So, I guess it’s time for me to end my hiatus, and make whatever contribution I can to the marvel of democracy. Not to keep anyone in suspense, I’ll be advocating a vote for the Greens.
Not that long ago, I said that, in the absence of a policy change on privatisation, I’d be putting Labor last on my next Queensland ballot, behind the Greens and, more relevantly, the Liberal National Party. Doubtless as a result, the LNP has promptly imploded.
I’ve been arguing for a while that, after a long defensive struggle, the left/labour movement needs to start thinking about how to respond to the opportunities created by the intellectual collapse of the right and the economic failure of market liberalism. In a lot of areas, such as those of the welfare state, and community services, the defensive struggle was reasonably successful, and the question now is how best to move forward.
That’s not true of worker and union rights, where the left has lost much ground over the past few decades: drastic declines in union membership, a declining wage share, and the expansion of managerial power and managerialist ideology. On May Day, the traditional day of celebration of the trade union movement it’s natural to focus on the question of how best to push back against these forces, and where we should be going. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I’ll throw in a few points (not all that well worked out) and open up for discussion.
Among the recent successes of the worldwide labor movement, the ACTU’s “Your Rights at Work” campaign was one of the most notable, not so much for its concrete achievements (which included a significant contribution to the defeat of the Howard government, and the partial repeal of its anti-worker laws) but for the way it turned the debate around. It was entirely successful in posing a rights-based argument that workers do not (or should not) have to trade away their human rights for a job. The government’s “WorkChoices” rhetoric proved utterly unappealing to most Australians. And, while the Rudd government has disappointed in many respects, it not only scrapped the worst of WorkChoices (following some backdowns under pressure by Howard), but pushed forward with initiatives like parental leave[1].
It seems to me that this is the right way to go. The old-style politics of class (with the working class represented by male manual workers, gathered in large, naturally solidaristic workplaces) is no longer relevant to the great majority of Australian workers. That doesn’t mean that class has ceased to matter, but it does mean that workers experience class and power relationships more in terms of individual experience than as collective interactions between classes. So, in particular, unions need to be seen more as mutual aid associations that protect their individual members against exploitation and unfair treatment than as vehicles for the mobilisation of the working class. The kinds of legal changes sought to reverse the generally anti-union trend of past decades needs to reflect this orientation.
We also need to go beyond national perspectives in responding to a globalised economy. Big business has been globalised for decades, and labour has been slow to respond, but the Internet has evened things up to some extent. Organizations like LabourStart do a great job, but we need a lot more.
More May Day thoughts from Mark Bahnisch.
fn1. Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s opportunistic attempt to outbid the government will make it difficult for any future Liberal government to reverse this advance.
I’ve been off the grid for the last few days, during which the Rudd government seems to have been making big decisions, or repudiating old ones, every day. The biggest, clearly, was the dumping of the ETS. In one sense, it’s hard to regret the abandonment of the failed deal with Malcolm Turnbull, which was probably worse than no policy at all. But the government should be negotiating with the Greens and holding the Liberals and independents to account, instead of caving in to the politics of fear, tribalism and ignorance.
On the positive side, the end of tobacco labelling is an important step forward in drug policy. It would be good to see drugs like marijuana treated in the same way as we are going with tobacco: legal but discouraged in every way possible.
A striking feature of these two issues was the appearance of the Institute of Public Affairs (long the paid mouthpiece of Big Tobacco and Big Coal) which was happy about the first, and critical of the second. Anyone who deludes themselves that they are “making up their own mind” to disregard the scientific consensus on the risks of tobacco smoking and climate change should realise that they have been sucked in by the IPA and similar hacks.
That’s all I have time for, and there’s the Henry Review and the Budget to come. Have a good weekend.
Possum at Pollytics reports that Andrew Leigh, economist and blogger has won Labor preselection for the seat of Fraser. A great choice by the preselectors.
Tony Abbott’s latest move, floating the idea that people under 30 should be denied access to the dole, is clear evidence of why he should never be Prime Minister. For that matter, it’s an illustration of the weaknesses that made him a second-rate (at best) minister under Howard.
The political calculation is obvious, although the arithmetic looks dubious to me. The idea is to appeal to the anti-youth prejudices of the older voters who form the core of Liberal party support. But older voters are hard to shift in general, and the kind of people who would like this proposal are mostly rusted-on Liberals, though they might once have been One Nation types. By contrast, Abbott’s overt appeal to bigotry against the young will surely cost the Libs votes among this group at a time when their attitudes are still being formed
Coming to the policy merits, Abbott’s supporting “reasoning” if such a term can be justified is that this measure will encourage people to move to “areas where there are skills shortages, such as in the Western Australian mining sector.” We are talking here about the age group where most people start forming long-term relationships and having children (median age for first child is 29, and appears to be declining at the moment). And, even if they are temporarily unemployed, most people in this age group have made career choices that are unlikely to be consistent with a flit to WA to work in the mines. And, even with relatively strong conditions, I doubt that the demand for labor in the mines extends say, to a cry for hairdressers, or bartenders or shop assistants, to pick a few occupations at random[1].
This idea seems too silly even to come from a focus group. In fact, it seems about on a par with the ideas I come up with after a triathlon and a few glasses of muscle relaxant. I usually manage to refrain from communicating these marvellous ideas on the blog, let alone announcing them to the public at large.
fn1. ABS used to publish data on unemployment by usual occupation, but they seem to have stopped.
(H/T Nancy Wallace).
Update: More from Kim at LP
I spoke yesterday at a Forum on the Bligh government’s privatisation program. I got a presentation ready (it’s over the fold) but spoke off the cuff instead.
As well as my oft-stated critique of the government’s case for privatisation, I took a look at the broader budget problems facing Queensland. Although the government has overstated these problems to promote the privatisation push, they are real enough.
The fundamental problem is that the government is committed both to high quality service and to keeping Queensland a low tax state. According to standard measures, Queensland’s tax effort is about 85 per cent of the Australian average, which amounts to a shortfall of around $1.5 billion, or pretty much the gap the government is trying to fill. In addition, Queensland provides more business subsidies and incentives than any other state, most notably the indefensible Investment Incentives Scheme. To the extent that these incentives actually attract new business to the state they increase the demands on infrastructure and thereby create even more problems. Mostly, though, they are just a waste of money.
The government has committed itself clearly and publicly to providing Queenslanders with services that are as good as those in other states. That can’t be done while also holding down tax revenue.
Looking at the political situation regarding the asset sales, it seems to me unlikely that they can be stopped while Bligh and Fraser are in charge, and unlikely that Labor will change leaders unless electoral defeat appears inevitable. I’ve therefore concluded that, in the absence of such a change, I’ll be giving the Greens my first preference and the LNP my second.
In a democracy, it’s important that parties should alternate in office to some extent, and it follows that it can’t be reasonable always to prefer one major party to the other. As a general rule this hasn’t had any practical implications for my vote – for most of my life, long-running Labor governments were a rarity. But Queensland Labor has been in for 20 years, with only a brief interruption under Borbidge, and it shows. It looks like it’s time to give the other side a go, unimpressive as they are.
Update More from Mark Bahnisch at LP
The announcement that Malcolm Turnbull will not recontest his seat is a big loss to Australian politics, though maybe not as big as some of his admirers have claimed. He is undoubtedly a man of great ability. But, all in all, I’d rank him below all those who’ve held the office of PM in my adult life (that is, from Whitlam to Rudd). On the other hand, I’d rank him above everyone else in that time who has been seriously mentioned as a possible PM, but hasn’t made it[1].
Looking back, Turnbull did surprisingly well in straight political contests – displacing a well-liked sitting member for Wentworth, forcing his way into the Howard Ministry, taking the Liberal leadership and most startling of all, coming within one vote of retaining it when everyone had written him off. On the other hand, he was far less successful on substantive policy issues, even though he was usually on the right side.
On the Republic, Turnbull and the ARM made the totally mistaken judgement that most Australians love the current system, and that the most saleable republic is one that changes nothing – with a president appointed, in effect, by the PM, just as currently happens with the GG. He managed to push this model through the Convention, thereby falling into a trap laid by Howard. For the average person (including me) the idea that we would throw the Queen over for a President, but then have the President chosen for us by a politician, is just silly.
Turnbull also made a bad misjudgement in taking on the water portfolio. I met him when he was in this job, and it was clear he understood the issues and that, left to himself, his policy line would have been identical with that of Penny Wong. But, with Howard as PM, he got nowhere. Howard’s National Water Plan set Australian water policy back a decade and Rudd and Wong are still trying to clean up the mess. Turnbull was in a strong position, and should have insisted on a free hand before he took the job on.
The Grech fiasco, I guess, could happen to anyone, and a large share of the blame belongs with other Liberals, notably Eric Abetz – Abbott is crazy to put this guy up as Senate leader, but that’s by the way.
Finally, there was the ETS. Turnbull’s decision to cut a deal with the government was strategically correct. Strategically, Abbott’s embrace of climate delusionism is a disaster that will haunt the Liberals for decades, if, indeed, they survive it. No matter how many talking points can be brought up, the fact of climate change will force itself on the attention of even the most wishful thinkers, and those who have denied and delayed will pay a high price. Tactically, however, Turnbull was out of luck. Oppositions are naturally predisposed to oppose, and the failure of the Copenhagen talks to come up with a binding agreement made this look like a winning strategy.
There’s no doubt that he leaves a great gap. Add up everyone whose name I can remember on the Opposition front bench (Abbott, Hockey, Bishop, Truss, Abetz, Robb, Joyce) and put them together. They don’t match Turnbull in ability or capacity to make a serious contribution to policy. For that matter, they don’t match up to any of the leading figures on the Labor side (Rudd, Swan, Gillard, Tanner, Faulkner). Put them all together as a tag team and they’d be a good match for, say, Steven Conroy or Jenny Macklin.
fn1. If you agree with this point, that the set of PMs {Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd} absolutely dominates the alternative set {Bury Snedden, Hayden, Peacock, Hewson, Downer, Beazley, Crean, Latham, Nelson, Turnbull, Abbott} as well as the coulda’been contender set {Bjelke-Petersen, Costello, Elliott, B. Bishop, Hanson, maybe some others I’ve forgotten} it looks as if the Australian political process is doing a good job of putting the most able people into the top job.
Further point Taking this exercise back to WWII adds three PMs of exceptional ability (Curtin, Chifley, Menzies), one definitely sub-par (McMahon, who got the job by intrigue, and lost it at the first election he faced) and two (Holt and Gorton) who are hard for me to assess because they served brief terms before I was old enough to worry much about politics. Of those who missed out, Evatt and Barwick were both reminiscent of Turnbull. Calwell was a fair average opposition leader, comparable to the others I’ve listed, but not outstanding.
Over the fold, a couple more paras on population, which is becoming a very hot issue.
It will be interesting to see how Abbott handles it. As with the parental leave tax, he has run with a populist position, apparently taking no trouble to square it with his business base, which is already causing trouble. Since he was supporting high immigration intakes only a couple of months ago (in the context of an attack on asylum-seekers), it’s hard to see how he can escape charges of opportunism. In fact, it’s hard to think of a major issue (tax, climate change, parental leave, WorkChoices) on which Abbott has not been, in Malcolm Turnbull’s memorable description, a weathervane. I suppose that’s what authenticity means.
It will also be interesting to see how his 9-day, 1000 km cycling/listening tour affects both his substantive position, and his ability to manage the debate[1]. Presumably, touring through rural areas, he’ll find it hard to back away from calls for a cut in immigration, but the Liberals are all over the shop on this.
The government has its own problems. Rudd’s “big Australia” is popular with business and some elite groups, but the case hasn’t been made to the rest of the country and I doubt that it can be. As I say over the page, it would probably be better to make the case for migration at the individual level (why should person X not be allowed to come/stay here) than in terms of aggregates. But if the Libs keep on messing things up, it will be relatively easy for the government to adjust both its rhetoric and his substantive position.
I’ll try to write a bit about Malcolm Turnbull’s career when I get some free time. In the meantime, with Minchin also leaving, I thought I’d point out how little is left of the Howard era in Australian politics, at least on the conservative side. Howard, Costello, Downer, Vaile, Nelson, Turnbull, Minchin and a host of lesser lights have all gone, one way or another. Assuming, as seems plausible, that Abbott will lose the next election and be dumped thereafter (I don’t think a losing conservative leader has ever avoided this fate in national politics, though both Peacock and Howard managed comebacks), there will be hardly anyone left except Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop, both very junior figures under Howard.
I don’t have a good feel for how unusual this is. Quite a few Labor figures left after 1996, but I don’t think it was such a wholesale cleanout. Commenters are invited to do the spadework on this.
Having just watched the media tear down their former darling, Lara Bingle (I tried to avoid it, but omnipresence defeated me), it seems likely we’ll now see the same with Tony Abbott.
The most common comparison has been between Abbott and Mark Latham, but we’ve seen plenty of examples of the celebrity style of reporting applied to rising politicians – Bronwyn Bishop and John Elliott were prime examples.
Celebrity politics has a well-established story arc – the fresh face, not scared to say what they think, with off-the-wall new ideas is built up until everyone is on the bandwagon. At that point, the only new angle points down, to the feet of clay. The alpha wolf in the journalistic pack is the one who can pick this moment to turn. Then the rest follow and before you know it, yesterdays fresh face is today’s wet-behind-the ears, authentic becomes aggressive, create ideas become a sign of flakiness. (sorry for all the mixed metaphors – it’s impossible to write this stuff any other way).
My guess is that Tony Abbott’s performance at the Press Club marks the turning point in the celebrity narrative. His bungle on maternity leave and the attacks from Keating and Costello set him up for the make or break performance in the movie. The fading star (Piaf, or maybe Rocky) has to go on stage and win over a hostile crowd. Instead, he ended up with rotten tomatoes.
To break away from meta-narrative for a moment, the debate reminded us that Abbott was an undistinguished health minister whose policy agenda, to the extent that there was a consistent one, went nowhere. His only contributions of any note were attempts to turn his personal prejudices into law. Now, he has no policy, and it’s a safe bet that anything he comes up with won’t stand up to even momentary scrutiny, as with his alternative to the ETS.
As Mark Bahnisch observes, lots of members of the commentariat have egg on their faces after tonight’s state elections, particularly in SA where, at least by the ABC estimates, Labor’s parliamentary majority has barely been dented, despite a big swing. If it weren’t for the pre-election spin, these results would be pretty good for the Libs. But, as it was, Rudd’s decision to stick with the standard “we’re the underdogs” line, looks a lot smarter than the actions of those Liberal apparatchiks who were confidently predicting the end of Labor dominance at the state level.
The Tasmanian Libs, having received marginally more votes than Labor, will presumably get a chance to form a government. But that’s something of a Greek gift. The Greens are sure to demand a high price (starting presumably, with a swift heave overboard for Gunns’ current management and what’s left of their plans for a pulp mill). And in the two-party preferred terms relevant for a Federal election, the result looks awful, with Labor and the Greens getting a combined vote of nearly 60 per cent.
Given the extent to which Abbott’s bogus “authenticity” campaign relies on momentum, this could be a big problem for him. Or maybe not. Despite the Libs pre-election spin, tonights votes had very little to do with Federal politics, and rightly so
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