The Liberal/National Opposition’s Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop and Eric Abetz, joined by Finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce, are seemingly carrying out a successful formula for losing the next election. The cute “in your face” attempts by these inept politicians (throw in Jamie Briggs and Alex Hawke for good measure as well) to win public support through constant attacks on the Government will soon wear off. The electorate will find the tactic tiresome and it will expose the reality that the Coalition has no solid policies or measures in place to govern the country should they win the next election.
Anti-WorkChoices Rally Nov 2006. Credit: Mushroom and Rooster/ flickr
With one term governments in Australia as rare as hens’ teeth, the current agenda by the Coalition surely cannot have been conceived to pursue a win in the next federal poll.
So what was the parliamentary wing of the Liberal Party thinking to install political buffoons into key leadership roles? Joe Hockey appears to be the only sane and effective shadow minister of the team, not that the bar has been set very high. He was seen listening intently to ousted leader Malcolm Turnbull’s dissection of Abbott’s climate change policy during last week’s climate debate in the House of Representatives in a show of unity with his former boss. Maybe he wanted to re-live the days of a driven, sane and politically astute leader?
However, this would constitute a special kind of lost in the wilderness.
Surely the Liberal Party’s parliamentary wing, silently supported by the Liberal Party machine, couldn’t have lost the plot so badly after suffering their 2007 election defeat? Though it was on the cards. The Prime Minister knew it, you could see it on his face in the last weeks of the campaign. So why would Abbott, Bishop and Abetz re-open the WorkChoices bogey man debate, the policy that the electorate rejected so decisively during the campaign three years ago?
Much has been said on this odd strategy and a lot more speculation has been proffered but whatever conservative political pundits say about WorkChoices , the truth is it’s far from dead judging from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s recent comments which appeared to support some aspects of the now notorious policy.
One only need look at the language used by Abbott, and others when questioned over the issue that many thought put the final nail in the coffin of the Howard years. “The phrase ‘WorkChoices’ is dead,” he says to reporters. Note the use of the word ‘phrase’ denoting the intent and purpose of WorkChoices is not dead, just the manner of its description.
Clearly the election of the Coalition will ensure even greater diminution of workers’ rights. If the electorate thought WorkChoices was bad in 2007, the current coalition combination would ensure fewer rights and entitlements, pay and conditions for working Australians.
Even with the slight boost in the primary vote for the Coalition, Abbott will inevitably lead them to their electoral doom. Their attempt to bridge their political wanderings on climate change was pitiful and essentially made everything contingent on gentlemens’ agreements and voluntary codes of best practice with big polluters. Hardly the stuff on which good policy is based nor something that would, in reality, have any impact on greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
The only factor working in favour of the Coalition at present is Environment Minister Peter Garrett’s failed insulation scheme. The lack of regulation for this scheme which was funded as part of the federal stimulus package has been a political disaster for the Government with the Prime Minister demoting Peter Garrett and elevating Greg Combet to fix the problem and end the damaging publicity. However, the Opposition — though sensing a weakness in the Government — have been over-playing the issue focusing solely on the issue during Question Time.
The Labor Party has effectively dealt with the issue though will have to carry out some damage control to ensure the new scheme is out before the federal election is called. This will help restore the electorate’s belief that the Government is serious about fixing the problems surrounding the now defunct scheme, and that it is a vast improvement on the discredited old scheme. The Liberal/National tactics will be to try to denounce the new variant of the scheme as pork-barrelling.
When this fails they will attempt to deflect attention and trot out the usual safe lines on law and order in the lead-up to the next election, which Abbott has already started to do with his recent comments about attacks on Indian students in Melbourne. And sooner or later the good old “boat people” issue will be thrown in.
With their current ditherings on key policy issues and only line of attack being on a now defunct scheme, the Liberals have little to fall back on. Abbott is proving to be a one-trick pony who is only capable of doing slightly more sophisticated media stunts than Senator Steve Fielding (although his efforts to date have been amateurish). It is unlike any other period in history for the Liberals, with possibly the exception of Menzies departure from politics in the 1960s. Unlike other periods of time for the Liberals, the Nationals are nowhere near their former power and incapable of propping up the weakening Coalition. The rank and file membership must be wondering what’s going on.
So what do Liberal rank and file members think? No-one knows. They apparently have no voice or say in what goes on within their own political party. They couldn’t like having a leader that is perceived as a bully and lout? They couldn’t like having a leader who wants to run an election campaign on the same policy that threw them out of government?
Clearly the Liberal Party of Australia is definitely experiencing a special kind of lost in the wilderness.
Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. Actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine, Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. Regional editor of theangle.org, he can also be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV.
