In discussing Joe Hockey’s latest musings on the need for tens of billions of dollars of spending cuts yesterday, I wondered whether the Libs had conceded the next election, and were trying to position themselves for the one after. I also speculated that it might just be random, and that to imagine that the opposition had a coherent political strategy might be to impose a bit too much form on chaos.
There’s an interesting piece by Alister Drysdale in Business Spectator this morning, which rips into the Liberals:
There is no sign whatsoever of alternative public policy – just oppose. For Rudd, Gillard and Wayne Swan the Opposition modus operandi – exemplified by Question Time idiocy – must give them not a moment’s lost sleep. They’ve been lashed by the proverbial wet tram ticket, and feel no pain. And for that, we all lose.
I don’t know Drysdale’s work, but it’s interesting to see this sort of critique in a publication targeted at a business/finance readership. The alienation between business and their natural political allies is one of the most interesting and least analysed stories of the Rudd incumbency.
It’s also ironic to see John Howard ‘stirring from his sick bed’ to denounce Labor in opposition for, well, opposing. (Not that I think the great debate Dennis Shanahan and his mates claim is occurring on Kevin Rudd’s latest red rag to the bulls is pre-occupying public attention).
For all the claims from the Libs and their media mates that Rudd and co are pre-occupied by the media cycle, it’s clear that Labor has successfully laid down a narrative and shaped public opinion. Drysdale’s argument is that the Liberals are narcissistically obsessed with popping up on Sky News and tweeting to political tragics, and have eschewed all the things oppositions should do in favour of playing to the press gallery’s short attention span. He’s right.
No wonder the polls never perceptibly budge.
It’s difficult to see what else the Libs can do. They don’t have the intellectual capacity or resources to develop coherent policies. And even if they did, the Government would use all the resources at their disposal to debunk them. Far easier and safer to oppose everything now, and wait until the election to announce policies.
I’m not so sure about that. They’re not all stupid, and if they mended some fences, they could call on outside policy advice. If they were playing a smarter game, they could be reaching out to interest groups, not just the press gallery pundits (who are pretty much irrelevant). Not that you’re wrong, but I think they’re heading the way of a lot of the state conservative oppositions over the last decade or so – a constant stream of negativity, then cobbling together nonsense policies on the back of an envelope as soon as an election is called, which then seals their doom.
Drysdale is an eminence gris of the Liberal Party. Been around for decades. Was Malcolm Fraser’s Press Secretary.
OMG! “rising from his sick bed”.
I keep thinking about how back around both the 04 and 07 elections , there was analysis and polls showing that Australians would actually prefer if their tax dollars were spent on infrastructure rather than just pushed back to them in yet another tax cut. It was a small common-sense narrative that got lost in the great ‘policy’ debate of how much cash to hand back to the upper and middle classes as typified by Howard et al.
Of course fearing being gazumped at the outset Rudd squibbed and ‘me too-d’ the tax cuts in 07, but of course since then he’s seized on the need for stimulus to deliver what a lot of Australians actually wanted (whether he’s delivering the particulars we wanted like an improved health system; and whether this increasingly concerning profligacy in buildings for schools is appropriate is another debate).
So it seems to me that the Opposition are on a hiding to nothing by talking about massive spending cuts. The Libs neglected serious infrastructure investment during their tenure except for pork barrelling opportunities, and the result is most of us are surrounded by crumbling facilities and services. My gut feel therefore is that apart from enjoying the $900 largesse rolling about, Australians are also enjoying seeing major investment in their local schools, in community projects, the promised broadband, the major reviews to health services etc, and aren’t likely to welcome the threat of that being stopped anytime soon.
Spot on, myriad
The ‘wet tram ticket’ is lovely imagery. Still, I feel that ‘limp lettuce leaf’ is more appropriate to describe Turnbull’s flailings. Call me a traditionalist if you will.
I think more of blackadder myself:
BaldrickHockey: “I have a cunning plan sire!BlackadderTurnbull: “Really – a plan so cunning you can stick a tail on it and call it a weasel?And in terms of their parliamentary performance
“Well bugger me with a fish fork” seem an apt Blackadder summary of the situation there.
Money quote:
“Maybe Hockey’s tweet dedication to his job and his priorities could provide inspiration to teachers, doctors and company directors all over Australia to tweet from their workplace during classes, brain surgery and board meetings.”
Meanwhile, Ratty comes to us straight out of Moliere. Tartuffe, any one? (Its been years but I think I’ve got the play right – A Physician in Spite of Himself.)??
I agree: all tactic (note, no plural) and no strategy. Its so Latho. But let’s be give Turnbull the benefit of doubt here and analyse more closely. The closest things to a strategy I can see are:
1. If his yapping head irritates the Oz public constantly enough they will vote him in just to shut him up.
2. The government will fall over. In the face of his invincible will-to-be PM, or, um, something to do with debt.
Naturally, neither has buckley’s of success. He’d have been better off focussing on making the Liberal party his in the first term.
I agree: all tactic (note, no plural) and no strategy. Its so Latho. But let’s give Turnbull the benefit of doubt here and analyse more closely. The closest thing to a ‘strategy’ I can see are:
1. If his yapping head irritates the Oz public constantly enough they will vote him in just to shut him up.
2. The government will fall over. In the face of his invincible will-to-be PM, or… something to do with debt.
Naturally, neither has buckley’s of success. He’d have been better off focussing on making the Liberal party his in the first term.
Oops, accidental repost.
OMG! “rising from his sick bed”.
Knew that Lazurine triple bypass would strike him down one day.
Lefty E…accidental repost or copying Lib media strategy?
Has no-one but me noticed the (unconscious, I’m sure) irony of Howard accusing someone (anyone) else of mendacity?
no, no you’re not alone David I (NR). You say irony, I say ‘hide’.
..and the irony/mendacity of Howard saying that he would not be commenting on matters currently political.
“Never, ever.”
Again.
Just returned from your link to the Shanahan article, Mark, and as usual I found the reader feedback far more interesting than the article itself. I am always heartened by the intelligence, coherence and style of those on the left! Ahem.
That phrase about Coalition “tactics without an objective” was also used by a “Concerned of Killara” today (if only more North Shore residents were of a like mind!) and it made good sense to me.
But even their tactics are pretty useless! Hardly surprising since they dangle so disconnectedly. Even with my limited understanding of party political activism I thought that tactics should form part of a plan, which is there to meet an objective. Objectives are part of programs which reflect policies. And policies are about achieving aims. And aims are about intentions. Intentions, if sincere, come from beliefs. Beliefs come from the heart as well as the head.
The Coalition has not just lost hope after this electoral defeat. It has lost its heart and certainly its conscience as Judith Troeth showed us the other day.
Rediscovering core beliefs and generating policy with committed consensus in their current woeful condition and with their current leadership is a near impossibility. Paradoxically few of us on the left think that’s a good thing.
By the way I’ve had trouble accessing LP via my usual search path and others.
Drysdale of that Sept. 11 article sounds like he has either read
Glenn Milne’s article of Sept. 7th, or been briefed by the finance minister as the black dwarf was:
As to Labor being accused of opposing in opposition, I thought they were accused of me-tooism at the time. This is another example of “hide” from Howard, given the Libs current tendency to oppose absolutely everything the govt says or does. That in turn smacks of a less deranged version of the current US Republican modus operandus, and look how that’s working out for them in the polls Malcolm.
When it comes to the stimulus that averted a recession, it might be better to be able to say come election time “Oh yeah, we were totally in on that.”
/end of free advice
As Sun Tzu put it – “Tactics without strategy is the noise just before defeat.”
The irony of Dennis Shanahan telling the Rudd Government not to focus upon name calling and trivia is astounding. Has he read any of the columns of his colleague Glenn Milne?
The sooner this group are behind the News Limited pay wall, the better.
This article really is so much childish rubbish.
The big forces determining the level of support for governments and oppositions (like length of incumbency and economic conditions) are far more important than anything the week-to-week or even the month-to-month political tussle throws up.
Australians like to give their governments a good run before they even entertain skepticism. We haven’t had a one term federal government since the early 70s remember, and even that didn’t end by the usual means.
And the only PMs to not hold office for more than three years were the ones who weren’t boring – Whitlam and Keating. Hawke – question mark there. But Fraser, Howward, Rudd – all boring.
The Landlords, sorry, ex-John Howard Party won’t accept Hockey for much longer!
Actually, PaulW, even Whitlam got re-elected. He went rather early (double dissolution, iirc), then there was the dismissal, which is why it only adds up to about a full term.
David Irving (no relation) @16, that comment coming from the Rodent did cause me to choke on my cornflakes! Not bad coming from the bloke who made mendacity an art form.
@18, yet another non-core promise, I presume.
Terry @23, has he read his own columns, I wonder?
Paul, that’s true. And most early-stage governments look like geniuses and the new oppositions look like duffers because one mob gets access to the collective wisdom of the bureaucracy and one lot loses it.
However, the Liberals are looking unusually inept even by the low standards of first-term oppositions.
We can forget that Kim Beazley went quite close to winning the 1998 Federal election, and the ALP got >50% of the 2PP vote. I can’t see that happening that the next Federal election for the Coalition.
That said, Terry, he was aided by a government that went to the polls on a policy it knew to be unpopular.
That was perhaps the one electorally brave thing Howard ever did in government.
Terry, the Keating Government lasted a shade a bit over 4 years. Doesn’t Rudd spending a decent amount of money on social housing, for instance, get your blood running? Give me Rudd’s social democratic substance over Keating’s one-liners any day.
It’s good to hear Joe Hockey blurt out today what Libs really believe – that interest rates matter more to them than employment.
This fits a pattern: one of Turnbull’s first questions in Parliament after the election was a smart alec question about the NAIRU. The media focused on how Swan flubbed the question, not that Turnbull was asking, essentially, what was a desirable rate of unemployment – a lunatic question, politically.
It shows starkly the Libs’ lack of intellectual consistency. In government they attacked “job snobs” and introduced Work for the Dole because, apparently, unemployment was caused by a lack of work ethic on the part of the jobless. But now Hockey has basically admitted that a certain level of unemployment is desirable and something to be engineered by the Treasury and the RBA.
Joe’s having a shocker – I’m amazed this hasn’t got more of a run in the media. The government should hammer the Coalition over this.
Oh, the old schtick that Howard was politically brave to run on the GST.
I would remind you that he had absolutely nothing else to run on. His government was seen as totally untrustworthy, having broken virtually every promise it had made, and having abandoned any pretence at principles after sacking a slew of Ministers.
Running on a totally unexpected big picture issue was the only option he had left.
As someone running a campaign at the time, I can attest that the focus of interest switched overnight from an examination of the Howard government’s proven unfitness to govern to the question of whether or not we should have a GST. We tried to run on other issues, but the media wasn’t interested in anything but the GST.
So Howard gambled and won – but it wasn’t courage, it was desperation.
“Joe’s having a shocker – I’m amazed this hasn’t got more of a run in the media.”
Joe, like Fielding, can do no wrong. The more they bumble along the more the media love them.
End of Dog Bone Week!
Drysdale’s comment is a huge raspberry from a significant section of the Liberal Party toward Malcolm Turnbull. Note a complete vote of confidence, but within the Liberal Party the message is: Point Piper We Have A Problem.
Sam’s right about Drysdale and Fraser. Drysdale started as a trotting correspondent and working for Fraser gave him entree into what was then old-money Melbourne. Since then he’s been a key link between business and politics in that city. It was Drysdale got Jeff Kennett to tone down his boofhead tendencies to become electable, a task made easier by the fact that the Cain-Kirner government was the last Labor government in Australian history to regard business as Teh Enemy. One of the lessons John Howard learned over his period in Opposition was to reach out to people like Drysdale if he wanted to become Prime Minister.
Drysdale is not just another bomb-thrower looking to pile onto whoever is leading the Liberal Party this week. He’s highly respected within the Liberal Party, to the point where anyone within that party who went after him would just look silly. The easy reaction would be for Turnbull to return fire at Drysdale, but he has to reach out to the sort of people Drysdale represents: the kind of people who can’t quite accept that the balance of power in this country has shifted to NSW and Queensland.
So, the country isn’t run by old-school Melbourne any more – but this is not to say that these people are irrelevant, especially within the Liberal Party on a national level. For Turnbull, Drysdale’s article is like a spot fire on a hot and windy day – it’s no small thing, best for Turnbull and his supporters to deal with it right away before it becomes fatal.
Free market rhetoric unites the Liberal factions whereas they disagree on social policy. Hockey is improving his standing with conservative opinion-makers as a man of substance. Is he inspired by how Howard wooed the media in opposition?
There is no such thing as a free market! These people are inspired by nothing more than a push to crush the victims of circumstance!!!