In the 1980s he was not part of the debates on deregulation/privatisation etc, in the way that Howard, Costello, Reith and even poor old Ian McLachlan were. Say what you like about their positions in those debates, but give them credit for going all out and being part of it, and risking having their views changed by changing circumstances.

He was a senior advisor to John Hewson. He witnessed Fightback! up close. As I’ve said elsewhere he clearly learned nothing from the experience.

He was a minister throughout the whole term of the Howard government. In none of the economic debates – Asian financial crisis, GST – in none of them did he do anything but passively trot out the party line when asked by a journalist.

Read Battlelines – I’ve seen more in-depth economic thinking in pub toilet graffiti, but maybe that says more about the pubs I used to drink at.

Abbott’s economic critique does not extend beyond:
- Debt; and
- Tax tax tax; and
- Nothing. There is no third thing.

Any fool can waddle around a supermarket with a tray of lamb chops.

Consider that Paul Keating left school at 14 and had a far more sophisticated grasp of economics that Abbott has shown to date. Consider that the same can be said for Wayne Swan, and weep for the facts that a) he isn’t a Sydney Uni graduate either and b) he’s a Queenslander. Less grasp of economics than a Queenslander!

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/02/01/newspoll-labor-52-58-watch-the-political-narrative-shift/

We should always be too wary of reading too much into one poll – and the last Newspoll which had the 2PP 52-48 saw a quick bounce back to 55-45 in the subsequent one.

Having said all that, I have no doubt that you’re right in one sense – the bipartisan suite of ‘economic reform’ measures, such as privatisation, have never been popular with voters. There’s very little support among the electorate, as opposed to policy and political elites, for liberal economics.

Big Joe, Bronny Bishop,…. whoever. Newspoll will earestly reveal the same boilerplate figures about the new leader “closing the gap” as they did for Nelson, Turnbull and now the Mad Monk.

The approach relies on the ease with which any green intiative gets quick and superficial positive press(a million solar rooves yay! I like the sun!) and also the difficulty of getting positive press for the CPRS because it is complex.

Daddy, I will have to kill you………..

Where’s Casey?

Okay, so the basic model Menzian tradition is pretty useless when it comes to the politics of the era of colour TV (I don’t like using that idiot Kelly’s ‘post-Australian-Settlement’ meme to describe the country as it’s been since We Realised Things Had Irrevocably Changed).

But I don’t see nice-but-dimism being the issue we are confronted here when it comes to the Monk.

I reckon Abbott looks at everything through the lens of culture warfare, with a particular anti-Whitlamite mythos informing the way he looks at Australia, though I grant him he is very good at convincing people that this is an inherently Catholic trait he has and not just a cranky, navel gazing ‘Oddrant’ posture—he’s framed many of his opponents on the Left at places like this into ‘I hate Captain (all) (Catholic(s)’, or alternately, ‘Yeah, he’s telling the truth when he implies he’s the second coming of Santamaria’—the kulturkampf today has it’s own modern logic people, don’t let him fool you into thinking it’s the same old same old.

(FWIW I think a fundievangelical Protestant like Eric Abetz could perform the same role if he’d had the talents to get the top of the greasy poll in Liberal Oppositional politics, Papism is not really central to the New Reaction.)

Anyway, the problem with the anti-Whitlamite Mythos is that it ignores the fact that the Whitlamites were never the true radicals (not unless you’re still upset by the demise of White Australia, and it was the Liberal members of Gough’s generation who started all that), and that Hawke et al stood on the shoulders of that seventies reformism.

But recontextualising contemporary history is hard and boring when you already know all the answers, as Tony does, and it’s not as if he’s some wussy loser like that bad retired Liberal PM, the one who capitualated to the degenerate Femintern New Class* after he was given the keys by the valiant Sir John.

*Abbott openly called the ALP the Femintern New Class.