Julie Bishop’s been copping it from unnamed “senior Liberals” for her poor performance as shadow Treasurer, who’ve helpfully implied Malcolm Turnbull shares their worries, and suggested a few names to replace her (Dutton, Robb, Hockey) for good measure.
While Bishop has been massively unconvincing in the Treasury portfolio, it’s not only the Deputy Leader who should be concerned over this latest outburst of leaks to The Australian. Malcolm Turnbull and the rest of the Libs should also recall that Brendan Nelson was brought down as much by the constant dripfeed of negative stories to their mates in the press gallery, as by his own hapless efforts as Leader. What is now being done to Bishop (and the articles have been cleverly framed to keep the “narrative” alive for quite a while - by forcing her putative replacements to deny an interest, and thus further fuel the story) could be done to Turnbull tomorrow. As if to lay down a few markers, Peter Van Onselen published an otherwise bizarre op/ed on Saturday praising Peter Costello as the best available leader.
I’ve observed before that the opposition’s coziness with the press gallery does them no favours. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way of resolving problems internally rather than in newspaper columns.
No doubt because Malcolm Turnbull has demonstrated his stunning grasp of economics yet again by claiming that the Commonwealth budget going into deficit is some sort of yardstick of economic failure, there’s been an immense amount of commentary on Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s willingness to utter the word “deficit”. The latest instalment in the saga is documented by Peter Martin here - Rudd’s conceded that Australia may have to sustain a “temporary deficit”.
Just as Turnbull is privileging politics over economics, so too the Rudd government’s tactics are - in part - about politics. I’m surprised, though, that there hasn’t been a lot of sensible discussion about what they are up to politically. Guy Beres provides a corrective:
In short, Kevin Rudd’s personal approach to the economic situation as Prime Minister seems to revolve around straight talking, with a cautiously pessimistic bent. If things could get worse, then the Prime Minister seems to want to make it clear to everyone that they should be prepared for things getting worse. Rather than trying to create an oasis of blissfully ignorant confidence at the head of government - something the Howard Government probably would have done in the same position.
Julia Gillard is certainly capable of a sophisticated negotiating strategy, and it’s been interesting to observe that the process of formulating the legislation to implement Forward With Fairness and replace WorkChoices - while managed largely behind closed doors - was accompanied over the year by a fair bit of crowing from business that they’d extracted more concessions than in the two documents released before last year’s election. However, the ALP caucus and the ACTU also belatedly secured more of what they wanted - particularly in last resort arbitration, multi-enterprise bargaining for low paid workers, good faith bargaining and union entry and records inspections rights. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if such changes were always contemplated, and certainly explicit attention to the needs of workers with poor bargaining power spread across a number of work sites (for instance cleaners or employees in light manufacturing) was part of the election policy. What is entirely predictable is the tenor of the business reaction, which you can get a sense of quickly by reading this story from yesterday’s Australian. Unions are back and the sky will fall in! In fact, the points business objects to really just serve to underpin bargaining. There’s an element of balancing equity with efficiency, which has always been part of the IR framework in Australia, but we certainly haven’t “gone back to the future”. In many ways, the legislation could legitimately have gone further in redressing some of the imbalance of power in the bargaining process.
If, although as one would imagine there’s some equivocation going on, the opposition allow the laws to pass substantially unaltered, the business whining will be futile. That in itself may push the opposition into a more negative stance. The passage of the laws through the Senate early next year could get interesting.
That’s a bit of irony, by the way! But I was interested to see Crikey come out with this:
But you get the sense Turnbull also gets worried whenever he’s out of the headlines for any length of time. In politics, sometimes a low profile can be useful. Sometimes it’s best to let attention focus on your opponents. But Turnbull may not have worked that out yet.
That’s actually what we’ve been saying for a very long time, most recently in this post.
What I’d add to it is that Malcolm also doesn’t realise that people aren’t all that enamoured of politicians constantly being in their face. That was one of the big things that played against Howard last year - people finally got sick of all the ranting and raving, the constant “changes of the national conversation”, bombastic personal attacks, etc, etc. This is why Kevin Rudd’s measured and calm style works politically - he’s positioned as the safe pair of hands, and the opposition come across as the permanent politicians. And guess what? (As KRudd might say) - Australians don’t like politicians as a rule.
Newspoll has Labor on 55% 2PP (up 1 point, within the MOE). Kevin Rudd is on 62% (up 3) on the PPM to Malcolm Turnbull’s 22% (down 3).
Brendan Nelson peaked at 16%.
The Opposition Organ says:
But it remains substantially higher than his predecessor Brendan Nelson.
How substantial is substantial, I wonder?
Continue reading ‘He’s tanned, rested, and ready to lead!’
We’ve been pointing out in a range of posts here that Malcolm Turnbull’s “comment on everything” approach, and, for that matter, the preparedness of journos to let the Opposition lead a lot of the news cycle, may be counterproductive. And the fact that a lot of what he has to say is driven by a lawyerly knack for exploring supposed holes in government statements and announcements.
So, over the last few days, we’ve had Malcolm ask whether the government actually wants to subsidise unprofitable childcare centres, where the detail is on the $22 million support being extended to ABC learning, and so on. This is dumb politically. And the answers to the questions are obvious - that not for profits are negotiating with the receivers, that childcare centres which don’t make a commercial profit can reinvest any revenue in better services and care, and that the situation is a developing one. It’s not rocket science - people want to know that their kids will still have childcare places, not the sorts of answers Turnbull wants.
And Turnbull has been forced to clarify his statements to correct the impression - which you could easily get from his questions - that he wanted to let “market forces” close down the centres. Just as he was forced to clarify an impression left by the only thing anyone highlighted from his “media offensive” over the weekend - that he thought Therese Rein was rude by not becoming his buddy. Now we know that he just thinks Kevin Rudd isn’t polite enough to him.
Let’s be clear about this. Malcolm Turnbull has foot in mouth syndrome.
It was not without significance that Wayne Swan chose to release the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook on Wednesday - the day the news cycle (and the attention of political junkies) was focused on the election of Barack Obama. Whether or not you think Swan’s timing was calculated, it’s significant in that the shape of Australian politics also morphed - although in a minor key compared to what were world-historical events in the United States.
Laura Tingle, writing in today’s Financial Review, mapped the new political terrain neatly - the post-election “blame the Howard government” game is over. We’re no longer talking about the legacy of interest rate rises (and what about that “always higher under Labor” line?) and inflation. We’re no longer bemoaning the lack of investment in human capital and infrastructure in the Howard years and seeking to rectify it while the good times last. Because we’re about to find out what “beyond the mining boom” is like without the luxury of its dividends to spend in the cause of diversifying our economic base and an ambitious innovation strategy.
As Wayne Swan said, it’s the time for hard choices.
It remains true that we’re much worse placed to weather an economic downturn because of the policy laziness and wasteful spending and disinvestment of the Howard years than we might be. But it’s now up to Labor to demonstrate it can steer us into a better future. In many ways, opportunities for reform and a change in philosophy present themselves in a recessionary climate - as Paul Keating would know well - and Kevin Rudd’s statements today about avoiding “extreme capitalism” in the childcare sector mean more than they say on the surface. There are going to some shifts in economic thinking ahead - and some of the neo-Keynesian signs of the global financial crisis’ wake will write themselves into our economic narrative in this country as well.
Continue reading ‘The day politics changed’
I didn’t get a chance to link to this post during the American campaign, but I thought that Scott’s piece at Grodscorp on why a lot of Australians get into American elections with so much fervour was a top class piece of work. Other cogent explanations were offered, but the comparative level of excitement - and entertainment - is certainly one of them:
Conversely, can you imagine Kevin Rudd standing in front of 50,000 people in a sports stadium, making a stirring speech about his dreams and aspirations for Australia, causing every person in the audience and the millions watching on the telly to feel a tingling sense of national pride and hope for their country? Can you imagine John Howard visiting an army base, attracting tens of thousands of supporters, and bringing tears to the eyes of those assembled as he spoke of patriotism and sacrifice for an ideal? Can you imagine Steve Fielding being interviewed by a news program and looking dumbstruck when asked what newspapers he reads? “Well, just the Bible, Katie,” he’d say. “It’s got all the information in it that I’ll ever need.”
Of course, just as it’s true that many Americans rightly vote not on the basis of the putative celebrity status of candidates but for compelling public reasons, we Australians do get passionate about what matters to our collective future and our lives in the political sphere. But, I think, the point retains its force.
So yesterday, Wayne Swan was accused of releasing the midyear budget review on Presidential election day to draw attention away from the projections on growth and unemployment, the media tut-tutted because he couldn’t instantly recall the inflation number and had to consult notes, and Malcolm Turnbull accused him of lacking credentials on “economic management”. Just another day in Canberra…
Elsewhere: Gary Sauer-Thompson on the mid-year economic outlook.
We’ve had almost a week now of the press gallery writing about the alleged effects of the bank guarantee deposit on managed funds. With lots of alarums… Commentators who were praising Kevin Rudd a couple of weeks ago for “decisive action” to address the financial crisis are now bemoaning “policy on the run”. Is this as good as it gets when it comes to serious analysis of the economy and of Australian politics?
It’s crystal clear that the government was never going to offer a guarantee to bail out investors in market-linked funds. There’s no surprise here - Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd both said so days ago, yet we’ve had the media either speculating on whether they will or attacking them for not being clear about their intentions for days. Nor was the offer to allow managed funds to become banks some silver bullet. It was obviously something of a feint to urge the big banks, who in many cases are the owners of such funds, to provide liquidity and capital and/or rejig their corporate structure. Meanwhile the government has been exploring the possibility of allowing ASIC to grant permission to such funds to allow redemptions in the case of urgent financial need, something that is currently restricted because of legislative requirements to treat all investors equally. But the tone of the commentary is that was meant to have been done yesterday.
Of course, if it had been, it would have been “policy on the run” and dire “unintended consequences” would no doubt follow as night follows day in the meaningless 24/7 media cycle. And you’d need to have been reading the Fin Review to know that there are current regulatory and legislative barriers to action. The rest of the press gallery apparently think there are a stack of magic wands lying around in Treasury.
Malcolm Turnbull blew this story out of the water by his admission that he’d bailed out of his own property fund investments - before the bank deposit guarantee supposedly distorted the market. Not so much because of the attack line Wayne Swan used - though there is actually some truth in pointing out that he’s radically inconsistent and supremely opportunistic in his rhetoric on the financial crisis - but because it reinforces the point that you have to have a fair bit of dosh in the first place to be an investor in such funds. Toffee voiced members of the haute bourgeoisie popping up on the news to complain that they won’t be able to afford their contemplated holidays on the Riviera (I kid you not…) haven’t helped much either in popularising the opposition and media’s “struggling retirees with millions of dollars they can’t access because of teh Government!” narrative.
So there should be no great surprise that Kevin Rudd’s been throwing out a bit of a “we feel your pain” lifeline to folks with big credit card debts instead, prompted by Sydney University research finding that one of five workers are struggling to meet personal debt and mortgage repayments. Continue reading ‘The politics of debt and liquidity’
The headline numbers of today’s polls are above, and there’s more detail at The Poll Bludger.
For mine, what’s more interesting is some of the questions in the Essential Research poll. In particular, it’s interesting to compare the disapproval ratings of Rudd and Turnbull - 22% (down 8%) and 36%. There’s only a 4 point gap between Turnbull’s disapproval and approval numbers, while Rudd has 44%. That suggests to me - when combined with the 60-19 PPM figure and the 72% approval of the government’s actions in combating the global financial crisis - that Kevin Rudd has occupied the sort of territory John Howard used to - as a strong and safe national leader, but without the negatives. Malcolm Turnbull, by contrast, is dangerously close to numbers which suggest a polarising politics as usual carping oppo leader.
In light of what Mark’s been saying about Turnbull’s strategy on economic management, it’s worth asking if it would have been a much better strategy for the opposition to keep a relatively low profile and stick to the statespersonlike pose thing. Point scoring and politicking are the worst look possible for the Libs at the moment. The problem is they just can’t help themselves.
It might take another election defeat for the primadonnas on the Coalition frontbench to realise they shouldn’t be constantly in the public eye declaiming and condemning. It’s the same thing that benefited Rudd last year - the Howard government providing constant alarums and colour and movement just turned people off - Australians aren’t that interested in the political game and just want the government to govern. Kevin Rudd understands that well. The opposition - and their mates in the meejah - are clueless, and won’t get a clue whilever Malcolm’s ego is on the prowl 24/7.
The Coalition’s apparent belief that everything that they read in the (Australian) newspaper must be true has got them into all sorts of trouble this week. The bizarre spectacle of a gaggle of Liberal Senators piling on Treasury Secretary Ken Henry in Senate Estimates was quite extraordinary… and all this to score what would have been quite a minor debating point, if there’d been any veracity to the story in the first place. It was quite clear in fact that it was wrong, or w r o n g ! if you prefer, before the inquisition even began, but that didn’t stop Eric Abetz and Helen Coonan from reviving some courtroom tricks. In fact, the spectacle of George Brandis in full flight - declaiming as though the Treasury Secretary were some sort of a hostile witness in a criminal trial - was really quite the thing to behold.
Henry’s testimony led to a most unedifying spectacle where Malcolm Turnbull failed pathetically to dig himself out of his hole on the 7 30 Report. It was - quite seriously - one of the most appalling interviews I’ve seen a political leader give.
Michelle Grattan claims, in a column that - among other things - recites some of Turnbull’s own talking points, that the opposition leader suffers from “periodic bad judgement”. I’d like to ask - quite seriously - if someone can instance for me an example of Malcolm Turnbull exercising good judgement. When are the media going to realise that Turnbull’s not the Messiah, just another arrogant barrister with an inflated ego?
Update: If anyone was wondering about Dennis Shanahan’s “we were right!” stuff in today’s Australian, Bernard Keane puts it to the test and gives it the epic fail.
As I’ve commented before, it’s always a bit difficult to keep track of Malcolm Turnbull’s economic narrative du jour. At least with Emo Man Brendan Nelson, we could always rely on undiluted populism with not even a minimal pretense at making any sense. Turnbull’s supposedly better than that, but in the lead up to the budget we had accusations that Labor were wimping out by not cutting spending aggressively enough, followed in very short order with claims that the surplus was unnecessarily large. We’re being treated to something comparable now, with the switch apparently flicked randomly between solemn appeals for bipartisanship, insinuations that the fiscal stimulus package is too big, loose language - subsequently repeated - about the global financial crisis being “hyped”, and now I think the beginnings of a “don’t spend the surplus” theme.
Jacques Chester, I suspect, has pinged what’s going on with all this:
It’s a lawyerly way of arguing. Pick an argument, any argument, that might be plausible, and throw it at the judge. You never know, it might stick.
There are certainly some straws blowing in the wind over the past few days, which in the way of these things, either represent columnists in The Australian flying kites for the opposition to grasp, or reciting lines fed to them by the Coalition. Continue reading ‘Malcolm Turnbull haunted by Paul Keating’
One of the most puzzling lines Malcolm Turnbull came out with as shadow Treasurer earlier in the year was his claim that Labor had talked inflation into existence. This was part of some sort of complex juggling act which allowed the Coalition to try to claim that all had been going swimmingly until November 24 2007, and that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan had been jawboning the Reserve into raising interest rates and/or exaggerating the need for a $22 billion surplus. It was an appalling political theme because it was too confused to be simply communicated, and left Turnbull wide open to charges that he was out of touch with the strains folks felt from higher prices.
Now he’s at it again.
On the news last night, this grab from Turnbull’s appearance on Insiders featured prominently:
And Kevin Rudd has hyped up this crisis or this financial crisis by saying it’s a rolling national security crisis.
If you read the quote in the context of the whole interview, it makes more sense - because Turnbull’s making a reasonable point about accountability to Parliament (which Andrew Bartlett also makes in somewhat different terms). But the politics are just awful - it allowed Wayne Swan to quickly swat Turnbull away, again making him appear as if he was out of touch and disconnected with what voters are feeling and fearing.
Continue reading ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s faith based economics’
Just before last year’s federal election, I read Neal Blewett’s Cabinet Diaries. The book is a good read, but I was also interested in reminding myself - in the dying days of the Howard Era - what a Labor government felt like. One of the things that really jumped out at me was regular discussions around the Cabinet table about assistance for the unemployed, and several of Keating’s measures to stimulate the economy were targeted to people on the dole, among others. Those with longer memories might recall Labor’s opposition to Malcolm Fraser’s “fight inflation first” austerity regime in the late 70s. Mike Steketee has a very good column today which shows just how much things have changed in the era of the deserving poor (and not so poor) and the undeserving poor. He rightly points out that some of the pensioners receiving payments will have substantial assets and incomes of up to $66000, and self-funded retirees with incomes up to $50000 for singles and $80000 for couples will also receive the one off payments. It would be very hard to argue that they are the folks in the community doing it toughest, and as Steketee suggests, there’s no guarantee the money will be spent rather than saved.
What we’re seeing here, I think, is a combination of Kevin Rudd’s very conservative personal values and political calculation.
Continue reading ‘The stimulus package and fairness’
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