- Posted by Ad astra on February 9, 2010
It was never going to be easy to sell the Government’s CPRS. It is a complex plan to cope with a very complex problem – anthropogenic global warming. But as recent events have muddied the debate about carbon mitigation, the Government’s task is now even more difficult. So far it has not done a great job in selling its CPRS, perhaps distracted by its attempts to get the legislation through the Senate that would have succeeded but for Tony Abbott’s toppling of Malcolm Turnbull, and the Copenhagen saga. Ironically, in a speech in parliament yesterday it was Malcolm Turnbull who described lucidly what the CPRS was designed to do, more so than Government speakers.
CPRS and ETS will be used interchangeably in this piece.
Here are some of the issues complicating the debate:
Climate change sceptics/deniers have grown in numbers and loquacity. Whereas previously they could argue that climate has been changing for centuries and what’s happening now is just part of a natural cycle and has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or human activity, now they can reinforce their position by reference to instances of mistakes in the report of the UN International Panel on Climate Change, the ultimate and until recently unchallengeable authority on the science of climate change. Instances of sloppy, even deceptive science, and incorrect predictions based on poor documentation in the fringe literature or by inexperienced scientists, have also been cited. This has been grist to the mill for those who seek to tear down the validity and reliability of climate science and those who work in it. Well-funded globe-trotting climate change denialists are in full flight and attracting enthusiastic audiences to their heavily promoted performances.
Most members of the public have little interest in the scientific foundation of climate change and scant time to sort it out for themselves. So if they have an inclination to scepticism, these occurrences quickly confirm their suspicions that global warming is a hoax. This is despite the mountain of peer-reviewed scientific evidence in reputable journals that go to make up the first part of the IPCC report which provides such convincing evidence of AGW. It is in the second and third parts of the report that attempt to predict the consequences of global warming that some errors have been found, just a few despite the strident publicity that the sceptical press has given them.
The Opposition has several sceptics among its numbers who have seized on these errors to confirm their views: Nick Minchin, Wilson Tuckey, Cory Bernardi, Dennis Jensen, Andrew Robb, and of course Tony Abbott himself, who seems to waver between ‘absolute crap’ denial and reluctant acceptance of the need to take out some insurance against the possibility global warming might be happening.
Although among the general public there are an increasing number of sceptics, the proportion who want something done about climate change is a still a solid majority, and while support for an ETS has declined significantly, in this week’s Nielsen poll 56% still favoured an ETS while 29% opposed.
The other factor muddying the waters is the Coalition’s abandonment of bipartisanship and the introduction of a new policy that promises to solve the global warming problem with a ‘Direct Action Plan’ that on the face of it seems to cause little pain, is not ‘a great big new tax on everything’, is purported to be less costly than the Government’s CPRS, and uses ‘natural’ methods such as tree planting, sequestration of carbon in soil and algal synthesis, all laudable. It all sounds too good to be true, and it is according to analysts and yesterday none other than Malcolm Turnbull. But that will not stop many voters from giving it a tick.
When presented with a choice between the Coalition plan and the Government’s ETS, 45% of those polled by Nielsen preferred the Coalition plan and 39% the ETS. Yet when asked to choose between the Government’s and the Coalition’s approaches to climate change, the results were the other way around: 43 per cent chose the Government’s approach and 30 per cent the Coalition’s. Pollster John Stirton thought ‘the apparent contradiction probably reflected voters' low level of understanding of the schemes’. In Pollytics, Possum has done a more complex analysis of the answers to the Nielsen questions that will be of interest to those interested in the detail.
The selling of the CPRS therefore has to take into account not only the complexity of climate change, the scepticism surrounding AGW, the complexity of the proposed ETS and the way it will affect people, but it also has to counter the simplicity of the Coalition plan which has popular appeal to those who don’t wish to delve into the details and who don’t want to pay out of their own pockets to achieve success. Few will question the effectiveness and the real cost of the Coalition plan because it is via taxes - just so long as it’s easy to understand and seemingly painless.
So what are the messages the Government needs to promulgate?
First, it needs to convince the sceptical that global warming is real and that if left unchecked will irreversibly change the planet and all life upon it. The hard-core deniers are probably beyond persuasion.
Next, the Government needs to convince the people that the situation is urgent. What looks to be a long way off is so easy to ignore. So the Government needs to show that significant changes are already occurring all around the world, and how acting now will not only begin the process of reversal and avert calamity, but will cost less in the long run.
Then it needs to convince the public that humans are such a significant cause of global warming that it is their activities that must be curtailed to begin to reverse the adverse trends.
Next it must convince everyone that acting independently of the rest of the world is the way to go, that it will minimize costs and will give our industry a head start in creating renewable energy and the technology that reduces emissions, such as CO2 sequestration. There is a strong and persuasive argument that Australia should not go first and jeopardize its economy. Countering this will take a lot of effort. But suggesting the rest of the world are laggards and will eventually have to catch up, might appeal. Unfortunately the Government has used the ‘we’ll do no more, no less’ mantra so often that acting ahead of the rest of the world is now more difficult to sell.
Then the very basic messages about what the ETS is designed to do can be promulgated, namely limit carbon emissions, heavily penalize those who pollute so that they seek to pollute less, and compensate households for any increase in living costs that arise.
Finally, the Government needs to contrast its ETS with the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan and convince the people that the Coalition’s scheme is short-term, unlikely to achieve any mitigation of carbon emissions, is costly, and that it is the taxpayers who will pay the polluters to reduce their pollutions.
When one looks at the strength of the arguments that the Government could mount, it seems like a lay-down-misère, but it isn’t – it is probably the most difficult task for the Government in 2010.
Simplicity is essential in transmitting messages. So let’s try to draft some understandable but brief promotional lines. Please try your hand too.
On the reality of AGW
Global warming threatens our future
It is happening now
Human activity is causing it
We must act now before it’s too late
Acting now will reduce the cost
Acting now will boost our economy and create jobs
Acting now will give Australia a head start
The rest of the world will have to catch up
On the basic CPRS messages
The Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme:
Sets a limit on carbon pollution for the nation
Penalizes polluters, who pay heavily for polluting
Will reduce pollution
Will compensate households for any increased costs
Does not use taxpayer’s money
If the Government believes it needs to counter the Opposition plan:
The Opposition's Direct Action Plan:
Will allow polluters to go on polluting
Does not set a limit on pollution
Will not reduce pollution overall
Will use your taxes to pay polluters to pollute less
Will be very costly to the budget
Will not compensate you for increased household costs
All of these messages could be embellished by images that reinforce the message, and voice-over that adds impact if they are used in TV ads.
There’s a start anyway. I realize some of you will likely disagree with some of the premises that underpin these lists and no doubt will express your disagreement; you may want to change some of wording. But I hope you will try to improve the messages or add some if I’ve missed any out.
For what it’s worth, the final list could be sent to the Government as the view of bloggers on TPS.
Let’s have your suggestions.
- Posted by Ad astra on February 5, 2010
While someone as fit as you would usually have a slow heart rate, I expect your heart quickened when you read this week’s Newspoll, showing as it did a narrowing of Labor’s two party preferred lead since you took over, down to 52/48, but perhaps it skipped a beat when you saw that Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister stubbornly remained at 32 percentage points.
The fact that the Morgan face-to-face poll published last week carried the heading ALP strengthens lead after Summer holidays and showed a TPP of 58.5/41.5%, an improvement for Labor, and Essential Research Report the day before Newspoll showed a 56/44 TPP, the same as the two previous weeks, seemed not to dampen enthusiasm for this Newspoll result. Newspoll seems to be the ‘preferred poll’ of the pundits, particularly at The Australian, which understands it so well ‘because it owns it’. The fact that in early November there was another Newspoll 52/48 that bounced to 56/44 two weeks later and was therefore considered ‘an outlier’, has not deterred supportive journos from making a mountain out of the latest poll, not contemplating for a moment that this poll too might be an outlier. You probably saw its preliminary findings the night before. Have you noticed that if The Oz has results favourable to the Coalition coming up, there’s plenty of advance notice on its website – otherwise we have to wait patiently.
You may have derived some cheer from today’s Morgan face-to-face taken over the last two weekends of January that shows Labour down and the Coalition up, back to where they were at the year’s beginning, but your excitement may have been tempered somewhat by a TPP of 56.5/43.5, around Possum Pollytics all pollster trend for the last couple of years, quite different from Newspoll’s 52/48.
So enjoy – this is likely as good as it gets.
If the Newspoll was a true reflection of what the public thinks of your ascent to leadership we need to ask how this is so.
Over Christmas you had plenty of free air; Kevin and Julia and most ministers were having ‘a well-earned break’, something for which we should be grateful with a frantic year ahead. You even got a spread in Australian Women’s Weekly that ‘humanized’ you as a family man ready to give advice on moral as well as social and political issues. Perhaps it was this uncontested exposure that seemingly enhanced your connection to the people. Perhaps it was your policy pronouncements that attracted attention. There weren’t all that many and they were mainly contrary, but maybe they helped. Your promise to solve the problem of global warming, or should it be ‘alleged warming’, with a tax-free easy-to-understand scheme in which everyone is a winner, so attractive to those who wish climate change would go away, might have been a factor. Or maybe it was just the force of your personality. A recent Finnish study has shown that whether the elector liked or disliked a politician was more influential in deciding how to vote than was their policies. Democracy is a wonderful beast. Why bother with well thought-through policy if personality is the magic tool?
So the end-of-year break was a welcome opportunity for you to get started, free of a contest. Now that the political year has begun, welcome to the real world of politics as leader, something no doubt you’ve already discovered is quite different from being a shadow minister or even a minister.
Some journalists regard you as a fight-hardened and very smart political operative, not to be underestimated. They say that would be a big mistake. They portray you as someone who will ‘take the fight up to the Government’, a portrayal which your pugilistic nature would endorse.
As we look for evidence of this smartness we wonder why you appointed Barnaby Joyce as Shadow Finance Minister. You regard him as Australia’s best ‘retail politician’, whatever that means. If you mean he has a smart turn of phrase, you’re probably right, but his preoccupation with clever one-liners is detracting from his real job, in which his accountancy skills are a poor substitute for an understanding of national finances. Barrie Cassidy pointed out that he is behaving like a court jester. Yet he is in politics, not vaudeville. His performance at the Press Club this week was not a great start, and his foot-in-mouth media appearances have engendered confusion instead of confidence. Was it smart to put him up against one of the Government’s best performers, Lindsay Tanner, who already is running rings around him? Maybe he’ll improve; maybe he’ll learn his job; but he may turn out to be an albatross around your neck. Already you have had to hose down comments from him that the Coalition may cut public service jobs and the foreign aid program to fund its carbon mitigation scheme.
Was it smart to bring back on the front bench old-timers from the Howard era? That suggests a return to that era, so convincingly rejected by the people a couple of years ago.
After rejecting the Government’s CPRS after initially advocating that the Coalition pass it, you promised all the details of a plan of your own that would not be ‘a great big new tax’, but would solve the climate change problem with almost no pain to anyone. Was that smart? This week you delivered, but details were missing. You promised all would be revealed, but when your announcement was made, funding arrangements were missing, details which you now say will be revealed ‘well before the election’. By now your plan has been dissected and found wanting by Government, which insists it will increase not decrease emissions, will cost more, will provide no compensation for families, and does not reveal funding sources. Columnists are saying likewise. Was it smart to promise a detailed carbon mitigation plan when only a few weeks over the end-of-year break were available to do what Ross Garnaut and the Government took over two years to accomplish? Have you discovered what you accuse the Government of so often, that talk is easy, but action takes time and effort? Have you noticed that the mantra ‘great big new tax’ which you believed was such a PR winner is being countered by the Government’s description of your plan – ‘a climate con-job’? I wonder which one will stick harder?
Perhaps though you felt you were smart enough to front up with a partly developed policy without costings and lacking any information about where the bucket of money to encourage polluters to pollute less would come from. Did you expect the public to accept your thesis that the greed and the social conscience of the polluters would bring them into line and persuade them to pollute less? Perhaps you felt ‘business as usual’ for the polluters would appeal to them, but did you believe the public would swallow it?
Perhaps you felt you were smart enough to convince the people, struggling with the complexities of the Government’s CPRS, to warmly embrace a simple plan, especially if it caused almost no pain, no matter if it was ineffective. Did you believe the people would pick simplicity over efficacy? Comments by some journalists on air suggest that might be so. But that belies the inherent commonsense of the Australian public – they know a con when they see one. Lenore Taylor nails it in The Oz when she says in Initiative is about votes, not carbon: “This is a climate change plan to get Tony Abbott through to the next election, not a serious plan to refit the Australian economy so that it emits less carbon.”
Perhaps you hoped for some supportive comments from the media. You were not disappointed. Predictably, The Australian obliged with banner headlines Abbott’s cut-through climate plan. In contemporary politics, ‘cutting through’ seems to be the most salient operative endeavour. I suppose that means being understood by the people. The author of the article, Matthew Franklin, went on to support you with “...most business groups have backed the plan, agreeing with the Opposition Leader’s assertion that it is ‘cheaper, simpler, and more cost effective’ than Labor’s proposed carbon emissions trading scheme.” You know you can always rely on The Oz. Of course, as Franklin knows and acknowledges in another article, most business groups have not backed the plan; even some of those that have expressed interest, such as the National Farmers Federation and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, want more details before committing themselves, as does the Business Council of Australia. He should be more careful and consistent with his assertions.
Looking back to last year, for better or worse, you jumped into the ring, a place you’ve always coveted, or more correctly you were pushed into the ring by your seconds (good old Nick and Eric), and having recovered from the surprise of being chosen as the contestant to take on the champ, you’ve been throwing punches wildly, just like you always have. You may feel you’re ahead on points so far, but time will tell how many rounds you survive. When you have to move beyond domestic boxing to international bouts you may find that tricky, especially after Barnaby’s comments about cutting foreign aid. How do you propose to convince the public you can handle international bouts and perform competently on the world stage?
The life of a leader is not easy – ask Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. You and your Coalition colleagues seem to feel though that so far the bout is going well, that Newspoll and the bevy of sycophantic journalists are right. But if the first few days of real bare-knuckle politics are a guide, critics might conclude that unless you can lift your performance substantially, unless you can, Johnny Howard style, pull a few live rabbits out of the hat, you should enjoy this week’s Newspoll - you will likely find that right now is as good as it gets.
What do you think?
- Posted by Bushfire Bill on February 1, 2010
Watching the 10 Network’s So You Think You Can Dance on Sunday night reminded me of the political season about to begin this week.
The ikonic show, about undiscovered wannabees who, enraptured by high hopes of stardom and fame, enter a multi-stage dance competition – with us as intimate voyeurs of their every move - tells us a lot about human hope.
There was the plain, frumpy girl who believes Jesus is with her at every step. The lithe, enchanting young aboriginal man whose mum’s indifference to his dancing caused tears all around. The thirty-something hoofer who has been around the traps and is destined to stay trapped. The conga line of untrained hip-hop shakers and rollers with their limited talent no match for their unlimited energy. The semi-professionals, expecting to make it easily into the finals. The Hard Judge, the Mother Judge, the Cooly Professional Choreographer Judge. Hopes and expectations dashed. Dreams come true. Life in the raw, or as raw as a heavily edited commercial television show can present it: the Life Struggle, through the medium of movement, youth and expensive SMS voting fees.
On the political side of this metaphor we have seen the surprise elevation of Tony Abbott, a wildcard candidate, to the leadership of the Liberals, by one vote. The Glamour Boy, Malcolm Turnbull, has been voted off the show. The once fresh-faced newbie, Rudd, is now regarded as the stodgy old incumbent, araldited into the same seat as Howard, never seen in budgie smugglers, rarely out of a suit. His routine, especially in the Climate area, trashed with the disappointment of post-Copenhagen days, could do with some sprucing up as the bare-chested, lean-and-hungry challenger takes the fight to him. Abbott is flanked by the glamourous Ice Maiden, Julie Bishop, and the once-jovial but now permanently grumpy Joe Hockey who mocks every move Kevin Rudd, his former TV friend, makes.
The Liberals and Nationals, thrown out of a previous series in the grand final, decimated by the shock desertion or expulsion of senior members – Costello, Downer, Vaile, Howard, Nelson, Brough – have reinvented themselves as the underdogs, running a low budget campaign to steal the public’s hearts with honesty and true grit. Kevin, on the other hand, jets about the world like a Little King (how dare he use the Prime Ministerial plane for overseas jaunts?). He rarely utters an un-convoluted word according to his critics, who are many and mostly angry. The implication is that he is a phoney, couldn’t lie straight in bed. But you have to admit, the man has talent when it comes to winning the People’s Choice Award.
Abbott is a flawed character. He preaches against extra-marital sex, yet he fathered a child, then deserted both the baby and the mother, only to find that the baby never existed. Whether this is worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy or a comedy I cannot decide. He is a religious zealot who has a habit of sinning and then, in good Catholic tradition, confessing publicly. He is the whiskey priest, flunked out of the seminary for the green fields of Oxford and politics. By contrast, Rudd’s one known foray into the underworld, the Scores Incident, was so surprising to the voters that it saw his ratings shoot up, presumably in delight at the possibility of a glimmer of raunchiness in his character.
The common thread between each side of politics is that they both think they can dance.
Tony told us the other day that government is easy. You just make a promise and stick to it. You take a line and then abide by your decision. It’s a dangerous tack to sail for Tony, who has never been known to stick to any policy in his political life or, more to the point, has rarely been seen saying the same thing to any more than one group of listeners at a time. His waverings on Climate Change have wandered from True Believer, to pragmatic acceptance, to 'It’s crap', to his current position: although he doesn’t believe action on climate is necessary, he proposes to fix our environment by spending no money, using volunteers and 'incentives'. I can see the Hard Men of the coal industry dutifully falling into line on that one.
Kevin, despite the misery of Copenhagen, in the face of continuing revelations of flawed climate science (even if only here and there), is sticking to his guns. There are too many eggs in the basket of ETS to abandon it now. If he did so it would likely signal the beginning of the end of his government. Tony has given the public an out, an excuse to reject action on Climate Change. Sure it’s an impossible dream, but this is Reality TV, not reality. Kevin’s performance on Climate, supposedly his strong suit, has been technically difficult and reasonably well-executed, but is starting to be seen as too clever, lacking panache.
Never mind his brilliant performance in the GFC round, where he danced rings around several challengers in a largely impromptu performance that saw Australia come out on top of the world. Never mind the lowest interest rates in decades, the best prospects for infrastructure, comparatively modest unemployment, an about to re-boom economy, Kevin’s government is still seen as the least preferred Economic Managers compared to the Coalition. It makes you wonder what else “Good Economic Management” is about if it is not about these things. According to Essential Research the voters believe the parties who would have had them out of work, their schools without infrastructure spending, their industries fending for themselves and who told us first there was a Rudd Recession and then there wasn’t... are the savants of economics. Go figure! I guess it’s all about presentation on the night.
Which brings us to the media, stacking the studio benches with loud adoring fans, spruiking a miracle Coalition resurgence in a loud attempt to try to cover up for policy holes and inconsistencies you could drive a debt truck through. To get around Tony Abbott’s predilection for inventing policies on the run, for making it up as he goes along, they have invented the myth of the “Conviction Politician”. Tony Abbott is man who believes in what he says, at the time he says it, no matter how many times he contradicts himself. This isn’t political cynicism on Tony’s part. It’s a genius for improvisation. The conservative Papist, whose sins (long forgiven by a supportive press) prove merely the morbidity of the flesh, is up against a government that is given only grudging praise for its great successes so far, and whose Prime Minister is mocked and condemned for the slightest falter, be it fairly shaking a sauce bottle (instead of sucking it), or swearing at a poor young flight attendant. Rudd’s government is supposed to have defeated the GFC and kept all its promises, while all we have from Tony Abbott is promises to produce glittering prosperity from the Magic Pudding of 'budget savings'. Never mind that 'budget savings' means a sharp curtailment of social welfare, infrastructure and spending on other government priorities, the Conviction Politician will see us through... somehow. We can worry about that later.
So, as we exit the preliminaries and get to the series proper, junkies on both sides will eagerly await the Reality TV show called Question Time. They will hang off every word and nuance, forgiving on the one hand, condemning on the other. The wannabee from two seasons ago has become the solid favourite. The reactionary Catholic man we thought we all knew as an opportunistic hypocrite, preaching what he never practised, has been reinvented as the plain-speaking saviour of the nation. On the sidelines it will be a fascinating exercise in whether the media, deprived of the river of gold of government advertising (a promise kept, but rarely referred to), still have the clout they believe they should have.
They all think they can dance, but can the fat lady sing?
- Posted by Ad astra on January 28, 2010
We all accept that Australia’s population is ageing. Demographic evidence shows that life expectancy at birth is now 78.9 years for males and 83.6 years for females. These figures are from the CIA World Factbook 2009 and from the 2006 revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects report for 2005-2010. Although there is a suggestion that with the growing epidemic of obesity, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, future generations may be the first to not enjoy the same longevity as their predecessors, we will have an ageing population for the foreseeable future.
This piece begins to address the ageing issue. No doubt much will be written about it, although to date the MSM has not given it much attention. Much of what appears below is drawn from Government documents heralding the Third Intergenerational Report: Australia to 2050: Future Challenges that will soon be released by Wayne Swan. This post is offered to furnish some facts and figures, to offer some opinions, to encourage debate, and to kindle ideas about how this country should address the ageing challenge.
The First Intergenerational Report 2002-03 was released by Peter Costello in May 2002 with the 2002-03 federal budget. The Second was released in April 2007. The Third Report will describe the challenges facing Australia over the next 40 years, the result of the demographic changes resulting from the ageing of our population. It is hereby acknowledged that much of the following is extracted from an advance notice of that report:
The bare essentials
Today there are 22 million Australians; by 2050 it is estimated there will be 36 million – reflecting natural population growth and a continuation of migration trends of the past forty years.
Today, 14 per cent of Australians - one in seven - are over the age of 65; by 2050, 23 per cent – almost one in four - will be over 65.
The ageing of the population is expected to reduce the workforce participation rate from around 65 per cent now to around 60 per cent by 2050. This will lead to changes in the ratio of the number of people of working age (and paying taxes) to those aged 65 and over: Forty years ago, in 1970, the ratio was 7.5 people of working age to every person 65 and over. In 2010, the ratio is 5 to 1, and in 40 years' time, in 2050, it is projected to fall to just 2.7 people of working age for each person aged 65 and over.
Thus Australia faces higher costs in catering for the aged, yet slower economic growth as there will be fewer workers.
The report projects that average annual growth in real GDP per person will fall to 1.5 per cent over the next 40 years, in contrast to an average increase in GDP per capita of 1.9 per cent per year over the past 40 years. Therefore average family incomes will grow at a slower rate than in recent years.
The Government believes it must act now to counter the projected decline in economic growth in the years ahead by enhancing productivity growth and workforce participation. By lifting productivity and participation, a higher rate of economic growth could be achieved. A Treasury analysis shows that if average productivity growth was lifted back towards the 1990s mark of an average 2 per cent per year - up from the 1.4 per cent to which it declined in the decade just passed - this would produce enormous benefits: Australia’s economy would be $570 billion bigger in 2050 and on average, every man, woman and child would be $16,000 better off a year in 2050.
The advance report, used by Kevin Rudd in announcing its advent, asserts that: “It is productivity growth that must play the central role in building Australia's future economic growth. Productivity is about how we use labour, capital and technology across the economy. It's about working smarter - rather than working harder, or working longer. Productivity depends on all of us - workers, businesses and the Government - but the Government plays a vital role in facilitating long-term productivity growth.”
Productivity – the crucial element
The report continues – “To lift productivity we need broad economic reforms” , as follows:
First, Treasury projections suggest we can increase productivity by building 21st century infrastructure. An increase in the public infrastructure stock by 1 per cent would lead to an increase in output by around 0.2 per cent, and improving the efficiency of our energy and transport infrastructure could increase GDP by nearly 2 per cent, the equivalent of around $75 billion or $2,000 per person in today's dollars.
Second, we can increase productivity by building a highly skilled, highly trained workforce. Improvements related to education and training - early learning, higher education attainment and increases in numeracy and literacy - could raise aggregate labour productivity by up to 1.2 per cent. If we could boost GDP in 2050 by 1.2 per cent, that would amount to around $45 billion in today's dollars - or the equivalent of around $1,200 for each Australian.
Third, we can increase productivity through microeconomic reforms - such as the reforms the Government is prosecuting to build a seamless national economy. National Competition Policy and related reforms during the 1990s increased Australia's GDP by 2.5 per cent. Further microeconomic reforms can build on this achievement and continue to lift GDP and productivity. Tackling social exclusion can also contribute to increasing workforce participation and productivity growth by removing barriers to work and improving skills among the most disadvantaged, such as Indigenous Australians, unemployed youth and the homeless. These measures would also help the 2.6 per cent of Australians - around 570,000 - who were left out while the nation reaped the benefits of the mining boom in the past decade.
The downside of an ageing population
The report then sounds a more sombre note: the challenge of the ageing of our population to the sustainability of future budgets. Unless the Government can achieve higher levels of productivity growth and workforce participation, we face either generating large, unsustainable budget deficits into the second quarter of the century, or reducing government services. The report asserts that the task has been made more difficult by the aftermath of higher budget expenditure during the past decade, which has locked in a permanently higher spending base. During the growth period of the 2000s, the average real growth in government spending increased to 3.8 per cent compared to an average 2.5 per cent annual real growth in spending during the growth period of the 1990s.
The Government insists that it is committed to a medium-term fiscal strategy that will deliver a permanent structural improvement in Australia's public finances so that by 2049-50, the Budget outcome is projected to be around 3.5 per cent of GDP better off – that is $130 billion in today's dollar terms.
Let’s look at some of these data:
The projected population growth to 36 million is applauded by some but others are appalled and assert that Australia cannot support that number. But to restrict population growth, natural growth would need to be discouraged, not something some religious groups would approve, or migration restricted. Since immigration has given this country great impetus and prosperity, restricting it sharply might prove to be counterproductive. You can see fertile grounds here for partisan conflict.
The uncomfortable truth about which little can be done is that the proportion of those over 65 will jump from one in seven to one in four by 2050, and that for everyone over 65 there will be only 2.7 wage earning tax payers in 2050, whereas now there are 5.
Clearly the productivity of those who are working will need to rise to support the over 65s, many or most of whom will be retired and on welfare.
Improving productivity
Hoping to avoid criticism for expecting people to work harder and longer, the Government suggests instead that they work smarter. That is good advice, and is one way of lifting productivity. Another is to have more people participating in productive work.
Retirement age
Australia would have more people in work if we had a higher retirement age. Can we afford to have a retirement age of 65? Already there are moves to lift it to 67, starting in 2017 and completing the change by 2023, a very modest rise over a long period. Since 65 was set as a retirement age a century ago when longevity was much less than it is now, would it not be reasonable to raise it to say, 70, and to raise it faster. For those doing heavy physical work that might be a big ask, but if graded diminution in physical effort was accompanied by shorter working hours or a shorter working week towards the end of the working life, would there not be many who would welcome the opportunity of continuing to be productive and earning. During the GFC business showed it was willing to make such flexible working arrangements to avoid sacking workers. Those doing less arduous work might leap at the opportunity of avoiding retirement for a few more years. Many professionals are already working well beyond the statutory retiring age and loving it. Governments are too reluctant to address this issue; the fact that Tony Abbott has given some support to it might embolden Kevin Rudd to re-consider this matter.
Up-skilling the workforce
Productivity can also be raised by up-skilling the workforce. This needs to begin in pre-school and continue as far as each individual wishes to, and is capable of going. That will lead to smarter working. The advent of super fast broadband will open up opportunities for smarter working, and possible vastly different working opportunities. Could not more opportunity be taken for working at home some or all days of the week, using fast broadband for rapid communication? Videoconferencing is becoming commonplace; it could substitute for workplace meetings and conferences. This would reduce wasteful travel time, unclog our roads and reduce air travel.
Workplace patterns
Although politicians will be unwilling to even mention these measures, could not work patterns be made more efficient by restricting such time-wasting habits as attending to personal email and engaging in social networking during working time, having frequent smokos that now requires workers to leave the workplace, spending too much time chatting around the coffee machine (not about work, but cricket and football), partaking in long lunches that sometimes leave employees alcohol affected, taking ‘sickies’ simply to use up sick leave, something the self-employed eschew. This might sound rather puritanical, but can we afford to preserve such workplace ‘sacred cows’ when we’re facing the crisis of an ageing population. Many workers really do need to work harder and longer.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure improvements in rail, roads and ports will improve efficiency and productivity by removing bottlenecks, something the Government keeps emphasizing. This takes time to stoke up, so the faster these progress the better.
Microeconomic reforms
The microeconomic reforms that are underway are designed to make business more efficient by removing red-tape, unnecessary restrictions, conflicting rules and interstate blocks, and streamlining business across states and regions. COAG is already addressing this, but as is the rule with bureaucracies, progress is slow.
Health care reform
The health care system is another major area where improved efficiency is needed and where major cost saving could occur. After sixteen months of data gathering and deliberation the Hospitals and Health Reform Commission has delivered a report with over a hundred recommendations that will be implemented starting this year. Nicola Roxon says she has almost completed negotiations with the states. Hopefully state bureaucrats will not obstruct progress.
Tax reform
The Henry review of taxation promises to reduce the complexity of taxation and transfer payments, and thereby reduce the cost of administering them.
The consequences of failure
Unless these measures can improve productivity, increase participation and lower costs, all those who pay tax will be faced with higher taxes, or reduction of government-provided services, neither of which anyone would applaud. The alternative – increasingly large budget deficits, is unacceptable.
The object of this piece is to stimulate debate on the crucial issue of how to cope with Australia’s ageing population.
Please tell us what you think. Let us have your ideas.
- Posted by Ad astra on January 25, 2010
Bushfire Bill struck a respondent chord when he argued the case that the Liberal Party had earned the label ‘The Grumpy Old Party’. In commenting on this piece, Bilko said “...a pervasive state of denial afflicts the Coalition”, and Michael said the same when he wrote “...their grumpy army can still NOT BELIEVE that the Coalition was voted out.” HillbillySkeleton said something similar “Their criticism of 'Debt and Deficit' appears predicated on a complete denial of the intervention of the GFC into the economy over the last couple of years (an almost farcical, 'Don't Mention the War' posture), and the subsequent actions of the Rudd government, by going into Deficit, to ameliorate the worst effects of it on our country, appear to them to just be a socialist government showing its true colours.”
Denial seems to be a central component of the Liberal mindset. This piece suggests it underlies the ‘grumpiness’ that Bushfire Bill described so well.
I have written several times on TPS about this attitude of denial, and I’m not referring just to the current theme of denial of climate change. It permeates the thinking of many senior Liberals. In several pieces I’ve argued that Tony Abbott was, and I believe still is, in a state of denial about the validity of the election of the Rudd Government and the Coalition’s defeat in 2007. “We were such a good Government”, Abbott laments, the implication being that it did not deserve to be thrown out, especially during such prosperous times. He still has not grasped the essence of the defeat, acknowledging only longevity of the Howard Government, WorkChoices and the Coalition’s attitude to Climate Change as the prime factors, and now that he’s leader he’s even resurrecting elements of WorkChoices, despite proclaiming the title dead, and his climate change position continues to reek of denialism.
A 'denialist' is defined as 'one who excessively denies the truth.' That descriptor seems to fit the Liberal Party. And it’s not a recent thing; it’s chronic. ‘Denialism’ is defined as ‘choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It is the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event.’
In his book To the Bitter End, Peter Hartcher points to the layers of denialism in the Howard Government leading up to the 2007 election. Despite the gathering evidence, to the point of it being overwhelming, “Howard used every moment before election day to shake up the sense that the outcome was a foregone conclusion, to demand that voters reconsider. He tried every possible device and stratagem, thrashing around in a desperate series of twists and turns, prepared to try anything to win. Anything, that is, short of breaking solidarity with George W. Bush [about not signing Kyoto and on Iraq] or handing power to Peter Costello.” Howard, perhaps understandably, was denying the inevitability of defeat, but more significantly was denying the negative impact on the voters of his unshakable allegiance to George W. Bush.
Ideologically driven, Howard continued to deny the negative effect on voters of his WorkChoices legislation, until, when it was already too late, he introduced the ‘Fairness Test’ in an attempt to assuage the anger of the electorate. The voters saw it as the cynical exercise it was. Likewise, when facing defeat in his own seat he started to pay attention to his electorate, his denialism showed again. He turned up to events, such as the Granny Smith Festival, that he had never ever graced with his presence. The electors saw him as ‘on the make’. Again, as was his habit, he tried to buy votes with massive handouts ‘in the national interest’ which too often were nothing more than pork-barrelling. His state of denial obscured the fact that his actions were no longer effective – the people saw through them. But he persisted.
With the Reserve Bank continuing to raise interest rates, even during an election, an event Howard in his mind denied could or should happen, as Hartcher put it, “Howard misread the changing times – he misread the economics, he misread the way the Reserve Bank would react to the economics, and he misread the politics.”
His obsession with holding onto his Prime Ministership, his denial of the adverse effects of this on his party, hastened his downfall.
Enough of Howard’s denialism – he’s gone – what about his ministers, many of whom still adorn the Opposition benches? Howard seems to have instilled in them the same denialist mindset.
Tony Abbott, the new leader, is denialist-in-chief. He still bridles at the reality of the Coalition’s defeat by a sleepwalking electorate. He still believes that the electorate will sooner or later wake up to the 'hollowness' of Kevin Rudd – 'all talk and no action' – and will return the Coalition to its rightful seat of power.
In the lead up to the election Howard ministers denied the adverse influence Howard was having on their election chances. Even those who saw this put it aside and took no effective action to replace the man inexorably leading the Coalition to defeat. The debacle around APEC time where several ministers thought Howard should go was another example of denialism, or at least the gutlessness of some of them to insist that he went. Denialism in the sense: ‘How could this man who had led them to four successive and increasingly strong victories lead them to defeat?’
Every time Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey uttered the ‘debt and deficit’ mantra they were denying the reality of the GFC and the need to take radical action at the time, even if it incurred debt. They must have believed that repeating that mantra often enough, Goebbels-style, would wake up the electorate to the Government’s 'profligacy'. Abbott’s and Hockey’s unwillingness to give appropriate credit to the Government for its actions, actions that just about every unbiased observer now accepts saved Australia from recession, rapidly rising unemployment and business failure, is denial at its most flagrant. And the Government’s contribution to consumer and business confidence and retail sales too is denied. Even The Australian, which has not been a conspicuous supporter of the Government, this past weekend named Kevin Rudd as its ‘Australian of the Year’, and cited his efforts in combating the effects of the GFC as the main reason for its selection.
Joe Hockey is in denial when he asserts that the three interest rate rises in the last few months are not due to the buoyancy of the economy and the threat of that to inflation, but instead due to the Government’s ‘reckless and unnecessary spending’.
The sustained attack on the Schools Stimulus program by Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey, Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne and just about any other Coalition member who could get a word in, was an unseemly exercise in denialism. The fact that only about sixty problems arose in the 24 000 projects in 9 500 schools was enough for the Coalition, and it must be said parts for the Murdoch press, to deny the beneficial effects to thousands of schools, the children and their parents.
Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Scott Morrison and many others are in denial when they discount the ‘push factors’ that have influenced the recent boat arrivals, insisting that it is only the ‘pull factors’ – ‘Rudd’s failed border protection policies’ – that are operative.
Just this morning Peter Dutton, talking about the Government’s ‘failure to deal with the nation's ailing health system’, said “That's the crazy part about Kevin Rudd's spin on health - he just keeps promising the same thing over and over again but he delivers absolutely nothing." ‘Absolutely nothing’ mind you. Dutton thereby completely denies the existence of the Rudd Government initiative – the most comprehensive report on health care in Australia for decades, prepared by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. The report was the culmination of ‘16 months of discussion, debate, consultation, research and deliberation by a team dedicated to the cause of strengthening and improving our health system for this and future generations of Australians.’ It contained over a hundred recommendations. The Government insists implementation of them will begin this year.
Climate change of course is a hotbed for denialism in the Coalition. Tony Abbott’s ‘absolute crap’ comment about climate change is likely close to his real beliefs, not that it’s easy to dig them out as he oscillates from ‘pass the ETS and get it off the table’, to fighting it tooth and nail in the Senate, to his declaration that he’s always been an environmentalist and wants a Green Army, to his promise to devise a scheme that will effectively mitigate Australia’s carbon emissions without a ‘Great Big New Tax’, a mantra faithfully followed by his ministers. All this is camouflage for not wishing to address climate change frontally, which would require him to confront the denialism of Barnaby Joyce, Ron Boswell, Nick Minchin, Wilson Tuckey, Dennis Jensen, Andrew Robb, Cory Bernardi, and many others in his party. Abbott and Co deny that the ETS is a tax on the polluters, not the public, most of which will be compensated for any resultant increase in costs.
They deny the need to do much about climate change, and the need to do it soon.
When a Liberal as senior as Nick Minchin was prepared to state his highly sceptical position on climate change on last year’s ABCs Four Corners program, how can Tony Abbott, wearing his own scepticism, his own brand of denialism, like an albatross around his neck, ever be taken seriously by the public when he talks about the need for carbon mitigation, and his plans for it.
Denial is just across the road from untruthfulness, the stock in trade of many politicians. Sometimes it’s hard to know which is which. Sometimes the two blur into each other. Sometimes denial leads to untruthfulness, sometimes it’s the other way around.
Whatever its genesis, I trust the examples given above will support the thesis of this piece: that denialism is the root cause of the Coalition’s demeanour, of its grumpiness, of its ill temper. Thus the extension of Bushfire Bill’s label to ‘The Grumpy Old Denialist Party’.
Until the Coalition collectively, and members individually accept the stark reality of its defeat and more importantly the reasons for it; accept the reality of its current parlous state and the reasons for that; until denial is put aside as an almost reflex response to every Government initiative; until rational thought, deliberation and balanced dialogue is substituted for it, it will continue to languish in the polls and in the eyes of the electorate. Denialism is political death.
What do you think?
- Posted by Bushfire Bill on January 22, 2010
What is it with Julie Bishop, the she feels she always has to spit her words out? There's a feeling of permanent anger, or barely concealed contempt, of 'Mrs Bitch' in everything she says.
This morning on the radio she was still rabbiting on about the Schools Stimulus. Its success in preventing a haemorrhaging of jobs in the trades during the GFC seems to have mollified her crankiness not at all. Other countries are dealing with high unemployment still, but Julie and her party seem to despise the fact that the Australian workforce has been sustained, in most part at least, as a viable economic unit.
Perhaps the Liberals are annoyed that avoiding unemployment has also avoided a sort of Bosses' Paradise, where employers can freely pick and choose who will work, and pay appropriately lower wages? I wonder what miseries WorkChoices would have brought us in that situation, had it still been around? Thankfully we will never know for sure.
Perhaps Julie and her colleagues are just annoyed that the incompetent, inept (their words) Rudd government had a success, by NOT taking the Liberals' advice to cut spending and go the low road. Bishop (on ABC's AM this morning) was still pounding the desk about how the Rudd government had not built major infrastructure - ports, highways and airports presumably - but had instead constructed jerry-built school halls and fences around playgrounds.
Put aside fact that the $16 billion spent on schools would have built about one airport, or a paltry 100km of dual-lane freeway - in one location, leaving the rest of the country to wallow in recession - or that the plans would likely not even be off the drawing board yet for such major projects (so little real work would have been generated), Julie chose to be angry that thousands of trades people and their families and the businesses that depend on their custom managed, in this country, to struggle through an economic downturn that has brought even the US to its knees economically. Why they are angry about this is hard to tell, unless it's just pique.
Julie Bishop is not the only one. When was the last time anyone heard or read an optimistic word on any subject from Joe Hockey? Even his cherished Republic is now a poor choice for a referendum. Tony Abbott is legendary for his blue language. It seems Tony can get away with expressions like 'toxic bore', or 'shit-eating grin' all day long, while Rudd's words never get a fair shake of the sauce bottle from commentators (they are either too bland or too harsh). Perhaps Abbott is given special leave by the commentators to use marginal language because that is what they expect of him. They, and perhaps the people too expect Tony Abbott and his party to be angry. Maybe that's what is seen as their role in society: anger. If so, I think the portents are bad for the conservatives.
The Liberals have become the Grumpy Old Party of Australian politics. Backed up by grumpy, whingeing shock-jocks and their grumpy, whingeing audiences - today expressing anger at our 'Tourist Prime Minister', or high taxes, tomorrow back on about how easy it is to get a job if you're prepared to work for low wages - they have brought grumpiness back into the political scene.
We all know someone who is permanently grumpy. Nothing is to their satisfaction. Everything is broken, or falls short in some way. Life is unfair to them. Minor annoyances send them up the wall. If only they ruled the world.
Of course, we avoid these people. Sure, a little anger is appropriate on occasion, but the permanently grumpy person is a turn-off. You know you're never going to get a pleasant or positive word passing their lips. There's always the chance they will turn on you if you don't tread carefully. It's all negative, all the time with the Grumpies.
So, how can Abbott, Bishop, Hockey and crew hope to impress voters whose jobs have been saved, who are expressing confidence in the economy in record percentages, by grumpily complaining that we should have all done it tougher, for much longer? Do they think that a sour demeanour in the face of economic sunlight and optimism is a 'good look'? Can the Liberals really believe they are going to capture and hold the imagination of the Australian people with chronic ire?
- Posted by Bushfire Bill on January 19, 2010
This afternoon I heard Christopher Pyne on ABC afternoon radio in Sydney, going on about how spending $16 billion on the Building The Education Revolution schools program was a waste. As usual, I became hot under the collar listening to him, because the guy has figured out how to breathe through his ears whilst keeping up the patter. At the moment (and forgive me for the delay in this first post for AA) I am suffering from chronic dizziness due (I hope) to blocked ears, and I envy Mr. Pyne greatly for being able to inhale (and presumably exhale) through his own set of orifices. Chris can talk incessantly. The other two guests got in nary a word once he started up. In short, Pyne hijacked the program (as usual).
Chris’s thesis was that the Rudd government would have better spent the billions if they had put the money into training more teachers, upgrading curriculae, and in general looking to the long term. Putting aside my confident prediction that if Rudd had spent the money on teachers Chris would have been screaming he had caved in to the ugly face of entrenched unionism by aiding them in a grubby self-perpetuation scam, or that if he had formed an advisory group (employing, maybe, 20 people) to look into improving school curriculae around the country, it would have been yet another chapter of the Culture Wars whereby the lefty, latte-sippers were seeking to inculcate our kids with all the wrong kinds of ideas (and anyway, wasn’t the GFC response all about “Jobs! Job! Jobs!”?),
I thought to myself that for someone who had steered his country through the worst financial crisis in living memory, leaving Australia as just about the best of the best as far as the OECD is concerned, Kevin Rudd hasn’t done too badly. A plethora of chippies, sparkies, brickies, security engineers, fencers, concreters, plumbers, draughts-people, drivers and all the rest of the tradies who found themselves staring into the abyss when the GFC pall came down had a lot to thank Kevin Rudd and his government’s prompt school’s-based anti-rescession action for. Schools provided ready planning access, mostly ready-to-go projects (needing only finance), and few complications to get in the way of a quick start to proceedings. Almost any other field of infrastructure stimulus could have (and would have) become entangled with red tape, naysayers and do-gooders wanting something, anything else to be done as a matter of their own priority.
Sure, we started off from a solid economic base, left to us most recently by the Howard government, and before them the Keating and Hawke governments, but the fiscal ball could still have been dropped. We could have reined in spending, tightened the belt (as they say, and as Turnbull, Hockey and Nelson suggested vehemently) and trying to ride out the storm, with the inevitable middle class workers taking the hit on behalf of Big Business. But instead, Rudd “Spent! Spent! Spent!”, borrowing a small amount (and getting smaller as things improve) to do so. We are now better placed than almost any other country to profit from the global upswing around the corner.
Then I thought of how the Liberals had told us gravely, in early 2009, about “The Rudd Recession” and all its negative charms. After that I remembered that the latest Lib theory from the geniuses who run it was that there had been no recession, and that it was all a concocted sham for Rudd to make himself look like a hero. And then – something was nagging me - I thought how irritating Julia Gillard sounds when she utters the mantra “The - Building – The - Education - Revolution”, which everyone else calls the “BER” (as she should, if she had any sense).
That’s why Rudd, and his government sometimes annoy me. Chris Pyne’s little rant on ABC Sydney 702 this afternoon highlighted why I do like the Rudd government and also why I sometimes despair of them: they don’t need to spin as much as they do... but they just can’t help themselves.
In spouting mantras like “The - Building – The - Education - Revolution”, they treat us like fools. They are repetitive in their spin, sounding almost (and I shiver when I find myself agreeing with Glenn Milne, even glancingly) “Stalinist”-like in their incessant sloganeering. It’s as if they believe everyone reads only the Daily Telegraph (or the Courier Mail, the ‘Tiser or the Herald-Sun) and that we’re all so thick we need to have the times-tables drummed into us, like so many ADD schoolkids, until we get the message. Somewhere, in the heart of government, there is a media office that tells Rudd and Gillard, “Don’t think. Just repeat... ad infinitum”. This media office sucks.
The rest of them, the other ministers, most surely receive this message too, but some of them have enough imagination to use their own words. Anthony Albanese always entertains. Craig Emerson is another. Lindsay Tanner has something cogent and informative to say on every occasion.
But Rudd and Gillard are, to me, plodders in the public relations stakes. One would not go as far as to say they are “toxic bores”, but sometimes one finds one’s self shouting at the television, “Just bloody say something out of your own damn mouth for a change, will you !?” when listening to the two most senior members of the government.
This is not to say that I am as annoyed by Rudd and Gillard’s verbal ineptitude as I am by the prattling Pyne, or the noxious Abbott, or the lamentably ham-fisted Joe Hockey (and let’s not leave out the scolding Bronny Bishop and the irritatingly cocksure Sophie Mirabella in the round up of Liberal bloviators), but I do feel a certain disappointment whenever our Prime Minister and his Deputy come on to the telly to speak, or rather, chant platitudes and litanies, no matter what the question, no matter what the subject.
The Rudd government has done a fine job of steering this wonderful country through a potentially disastrous financial period, reacting with aplomb and decisiveness, and not taking the many baits offered to them to go along the more conventional course the Liberals put forward as the only way out. For this they are rightfully rewarded by solid, high polling figures and a virtually unbackable prospect of re-election. But I wish, in my heart of hearts, that just occasionally its most senior members would throw away the prepared script and speak plainly for themselves, instead of recanting mindless spin put in front of them by paid hacks, with even less imagination.
I’m sure readers may have other annoyances, but the incessant (and here’s the catch: the unnecessary) spin of the Rudd government is my own pet irritant.
I hope you can convince me I’m wrong, or that it doesn’t matter, but spin is what gets stuck in my craw, and I’m just about fed up with it. Not enough to change my vote, but enough to switch off completely and just let things take their (seemingly) inevitable course.
What do youse think?
- Posted by Ad astra on January 8, 2010
First, welcome to The Political Sword 2010 at the beginning of an election year that promises to be even more frenetic than the last.
During January, while Ad astra takes a break, Bushfire Bill, who has made many penetrating and witty contributions to this and other political blogs, will be a guest contributor to The Political Sword.
His contributions begin next week. Watch for them.
- Posted by Ad astra on December 20, 2009
As the Rudd Government begins its third year, it seems an appropriate time to review its first two. As a mental exercise let’s imagine the words or phrases that might best describe the progress of the Government towards its stated goals, and similarly those that characterize the performance of the Opposition.
For me, the words that reflect the Government’s progress are ‘complexity’, ‘cautious and careful planning’ and ‘effective emergency action’. Regrettably the words that come to mind for the Opposition are ‘denial’, ‘chaos’, ‘division and dysfunction’, ’lack of due diligence’ and ‘oppose everything’..
The Rudd Government
During election campaigns general principles and aspirations are promoted; detail is avoided. Kevin Rudd advanced the need to address climate change, “...the great moral challenge of our generation”, and as part of that, the restoration of the distressed Murray-Darling river system; he spoke of the need to review the ailing health care system and troubled federal-state relationships; he promoted himself as an ‘economic conservative’ committed to prudent spending and surplus budgets, but conscious of the need to overcome ‘infrastructure bottlenecks’ that had accumulated over the previous decade, aware of the requirement for a national broadband network and mindful of the need to lift productivity; he elevated to top priority education at all levels, from preschool to university, the so-called ‘education revolution’, and he promised to reform industrial relations and eliminate WorkChoices. He said he would ratify the Kyoto protocol and say ‘sorry’ to the indigenous people. There were other aspirations, but these dominated the election campaign.
Complexity
Tackling these tasks in Government has exposed the enormous complexity of almost every one of them. In each there are countless people involved; a plethora of different opinions, instincts and values; self interest and conflicts of interest; many areas of turf to be protected or enlarged; power brokers determined to advance their position or those they represent even at the expense of the national interest; and a mountain of data, some of it incomplete, inaccurate or of uncertain validity. There has not been much acknowledgement of the need for collaboration in the national interest. This is systems theory in action, in all its chaotic complexity. Few are oriented to such complexity or equipped to understand and manage it. Most prefer simple, linear, cause-effect thinking, despite the fact that it is incapable of explaining the intricacies of complex adaptive systems, or managing their inherent complexity.
Cautious careful planning
It is in recognition of this complexity that the Rudd Government has undertaken several reviews, something that has attracted trenchant criticism from the Opposition and unthinking journalists who take the simplistic view that as Rudd said he would ‘fix’ these problems he should just get on with ‘fixing’ them, as if that was as simple as fixing a broken-down car. As the reviews have unfolded, the extraordinary complexity of the issues have emerged and slowed the process of resolution. This is why there has been such cautious, careful planning in addressing, for example, such complex issues as climate change and all its sequelae for human health, families, agriculture, industry, business and employment. There was the Garnaut Report, the Green and White Papers and the CPRS legislation, developed over several years, but to date with an outcome frustrated by a hostile Senate.
Since in the health field similar levels of complexity exist, the Government has carried out an extensive review via the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. The Commission has reported and has made over one hundred recommendations that the Government is considering. Impatient Opposition health spokespeople and journalists want immediate action, but should rapid action result in unfavourable outcomes, the Government would be accused of rushing in and bungling.
The same caution has been applied to federal-state relationships where fiefdoms so often act in their own, rather than the national interest. Progress is occurring but slowly, too slowly for the critics, who want the problem fixed at once. ‘Abolish the states’, ‘place decision making close to the action’, ‘drastically cut the number of bureaucrats’ – are just a few of the simplistic solutions offered by armchair experts who themselves don’t carry the responsibility for the outcomes.
Since the election, the Henry Review, a comprehensive review of the tax and transfer system, a recommendation of the 2020 Summit, has been undertaken. Its recommendations will be more far reaching than the tax changes arising from the GST, and will be implemented over several years. There has also been a defence review and a Defence White Paper that is for implementation provided sufficient funding is available.
So not surprisingly, complexity and cautious planning have characterized much of the Rudd Government’s first two years.
In my view, the inexcusable paucity of understanding of complexity is one of the greatest impediments to good governance and the critiquing of government action. I despair that commentators will ever come to grips with the reality of complexity in so much of what government does.
Effective emergency action
It may have come as a surprise to those who criticized the Government so roundly for ‘hitting the ground reviewing’, that it acted so unfalteringly, or to use the Government’s favourite word, ‘decisively’, in managing the global financial crisis with all its forbidding momentum. The bank guarantee, the stimulus package starting with cash bonuses (which almost all journalists delighted in calling ‘the cash splash’ or ‘splurge’) and the first home owners’ grant extension; the ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure, mainly in the schools program; and finally big ticket infrastructure items – road, rail, ports and the NBN, much of which is still in planning. The Government’s fiscal policy worked in tandem with the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy to produce the outcome we saw.
The Government was criticized at every turn by the ‘experts’, the economists and the economics correspondents, who always found some fatal flaw, predicted calamity, and advised a different, and of course more rational course of action. The fact that most of them were consistently wrong in their predictions and advice never deterred them from unremitting criticism. Indeed some, such as Michael Stutchbury and Warwick McKibbin, still persist with their censure of the stimulus package despite the fact that most economists, reinforced by the IMF, have lauded it as the principal reason why Australia avoided recession. The Australian mounted a fierce campaign of denigration of the schools program notwithstanding the fact that most of the 24,000 projects in 9,500 schools were carried out without complaint. This has now fizzled.
The Government was advised by Treasury to ‘go early, go hard, and go households’. It did and the result is there for all to see – recession avoided, unemployment restrained, retail activity sustained, business and consumer confidence rising, school infrastructure in place. Even Joe Hockey had to admit its success, although he has four other and presumably more cogent reasons for the outcome. The debate has shifted to how the stimulus should be wound down, a subject that still gives columnists something to write about with misplaced authority. The ‘debt and deficit’ mantra, the ‘$315 billion Labor debt bomb’ trumpeted so loudly by Malcolm Turnbull, and carted around on his ‘debt truck’, has faded as the debit and deficit promises to be much lower than so direly predicted.
So for those who labelled the Rudd Government as indecisive, ‘all talk no action’, ‘all spin no substance’, its handling of the GFC confounded this characterization. Only those whose mouth is set to automatic still utter these tired, inappropriate mantras.
The Opposition
Denial
TPS has commented many times about the denial that afflicts the Opposition, the chief purveyor of which is the current leader, Tony Abbott, who has always maintained that ‘the Howard Government was such a good government’, and did not deserve to be removed. This belief has been reinforced recently with Abbott’s return to some of Howard’s IR precepts and border protection policies, and his appointment of previous Howard ministers to his Shadow Cabinet. He is determined to return to Howard policies – because they were good – determined to preserve the Howard legacy.
No better evidence need be advanced to support the attitude of denial.
Chaos
There is no need to look beyond the regular change of leader – Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and now Tony Abbott, with Joe Hockey waiting in the wings for Abbott to implode – to see the chaos that has afflicted the Coalition since it surprisingly elected Nelson instead of Turnbull in the first place. The conservative elements were covertly instrumental in that outcome as they were overtly in Turnbull’s downfall. Add to that the dissonance in the Coalition between the Nationals and the Liberals, particularly over climate change, and you have another layer of chaos.
Surely no one would challenge the ‘chaos’ label.
Division and dysfunction
This is the product of chaos. The Nationals and the Liberals are divided. Some Liberals are divided from other Liberals, over issues such as climate change, immigration policy and the ‘alcopops’ legislation. As a result, the Coalition is dysfunctional. The conservatives are in a power struggle with the small ‘l’ liberals and are now in the ascendancy. Turnbull is threatening to disrupt the Coalition with his verbal interventions, particularly about climate change issues, and just might consider forming a breakaway grouping.
There is no debate about the savage divisions that simmer just below the surface, always ready to erupt damagingly, and the consequent dysfunction that so cripples the Coalition.
Lack of due diligence
The Grech OzCar affair exposed Turnbull’s lack of due diligence, something not to be expected from a past barrister. But it was consistent with his impetuous character, and his ‘crash through or crash’ approach. He crashed and put paid to his leadership, finally destroyed by his support for the Rudd CPRS, an anathema to the conservatives.
Could there have been a more convincing exhibition of lack of due diligence?
Oppose everything
Tony Abbott quotes Randolph Churchill who said ‘Oppositions should oppose everything, suggest nothing and kick the government out.’ That is precisely what Abbott is saying he will do, as the last post ‘The pugilistic politician’ argues. He talks of creating alternative policies and has promised one on climate change mitigation by February, but I note already he is making noises that cast doubt on whether we will really see a policy that can be readily dissected and appraised. He intends to ‘give the Government the fright of its life’, and ‘take the fight right up to the Government’. So far every utterance is consistent with that intent, but whether anyone in the Government or for that matter anyone in the public is listening is speculative. The latest Morgan face-to-face at 59/41 suggests not too many are.
‘Oppose everything’ looks like being the Coalition pattern while Abbott remains leader.
In summary, these last two years have been ones that have shown what this Government can do, what it is made of, how it operates, and what future it is likely to have. 2010 is likely to be a year of implementation of recommendations of several of the reviews now underway or completed. Substance will replace the words, hopefully to the long term benefit of the nation. The stated intent of the Government is to be a reforming government; 2010 will provide it that opportunity in abundance.
It would be better for our democracy if one could record that the Opposition, while holding the Government to account, which is its responsibility, produced a profusion of attractive alternative policies, collaborated with Government when that was in the national interest, and opposed only when it honestly believed the proposed legislation seriously needed amendment, instead of opportunistically opposing simply for the sake of opposing. Idealists may wish for this, but shouldn’t hold their breath hoping.
What do you think?
This is my last post on TPS for 2009. I will post again in early February when parliament resumes. You will be delighted to know that during January, Bushfire Bill, one of the most admired contributors to The Political Sword, The Poll Bludger and other blog sites, will make guest posts on TPS. Watch for them.
May I take this opportunity of thanking the many visitors to this site and the regular contributors who enrich this site immeasurably with their thoughtful, insightful and often humorous posts. I look forward to your company again in 2010.
In the meantime I wish you the compliments of the season and a restful end-of-year break from the tumult of federal politics; there will be plenty more next year.
- Posted by Ad astra on December 10, 2009
Tony Abbott’s recent threat to ‘give the Government the fright of its life’ is code for the new leader’s real metaphor – to give the Government the fight of its life.
Have you noticed how aggressive and combative Abbott has become since his election? He has always had a reputation as a pugilist – his boxing exploits during his Rhodes scholarship at Queen’s College, Oxford are legend. But he seems to have kept this tendency under control pretty well while in the Howard Government, except of course when Howard used him as his attack dog, and while relaxing comfortably with a less-than-arduous portfolio of Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs while in opposition. Then suddenly, and for most unexpectedly, he became Leader of the Opposition last week, and found himself thrown into the spotlight, with nothing much in the ledger but opposition to almost everything the Government was trying to do, trenchant opposition to the Government’s ETS leading to its defeat, a heap of political baggage, a mediocre team, a disgruntled ex-leader, and very poor popularity ratings in the opinion polls.
So what did he do? He reverted to what he knows best – pugilism. For some he may appear like a threatened animal trapped in the hunter’s spotlight, and that his ‘fight to the death’ approach is merely reactionary, merely a strategy for survival. That may be partly true, but it seems more likely that fighting is his natural response to any challenge.
His assertiveness came out in his Channel Nine interview with Laurie Oakes last Sunday, where, after a calm start, he bristled at being asked if he believed in creation, insisting that his religious views were private and not relevant to politics. Of course that statement is not consistent with his behaviour over the years when his religious beliefs have been on open display over several issue – abortion is just one. In that interview he went on to challenge Oakes to ask Kevin Rudd the same questions, asserting that Rudd has expressed religious views often enough, and has done doorstops in front of his church most Sundays. He was on the same theme on Lateline when he queried Tony Jones why Kevin Rudd was seldom on his program, and challenged Jones to invite him. Both interviewers seemed taken aback by Abbott’s demands and his foray into their programming.
In both interviews Abbott’s aggression lurked just under the surface until some provocation brought it out into the open. In Oakes interview, Abbott became angry when near the end Oakes accused him of spouting three or four policy ideas a day, (without reference to his colleagues but all the while claiming he would be a consultative leader). Abbott’s annoyance was obvious, and the look on his face as the interview concluded one of palpable displeasure. The Jones interview, the day he announced his Shadow Ministry, bordered on overt aggression throughout. The video is here.
Another sign of Abbott’s aggression and combative approach is his Shadow Ministry, resurrecting as it does several back-bench Howard ministers, and including the always combative Barnaby Joyce as Shadow Finance spokesman. It’s as if he is saying ‘I don’t give a fig for what you think of this lot, this is the group I want to fight the next election.’ In fact he made a point of saying that many were ‘good street fighters’. He demoted Sharman Stone from Shadow Immigration because she was not tough enough, despite looking pretty tough on the asylum seeker issue to most observers. So Abbott wants a fight on border protection. In fact he wants a fight on everything.
Abbott intends to criticise everything the Government does, to fight everything it attempts to do, to refuse to collaborate on anything, and to decline to reveal any policies until the last moment, except his climate change policy which he promised by February when parliament resumes. He probably regrets this promise now; he will be severely criticized if he misses the deadline he has set himself, but expect something less well developed than the Government’s CPRS; expect fuzzy edges to a policy full of vague promises unsupported by hard evidence, accurate costing and definite timelines. He will rely on the line: ‘we can do it cheaper, at little cost to the voters, but achieve the same mitigation targets’, which will be hard to counter as the public is so disengaged from the detail. The Government may have to fall back on the well tried campaign of scare and uncertainty, painting Abbott’s policy as unworkable, untried, costly, full of holes, economically flawed and environmentally unsound.
So to what can we look forward? If one can judge from Abbot’s demeanour and performance during the last week, from the look in his eyes, from his aggressive attitude, from his determination to fight in hand to hand combat, we are in for a ruthless, cruel, bare-knuckle fight with no holds barred. This week Abbott reminded me of the familiar scene before a prize fight when the combatants line up – hairy-chested, jaw-jutting, throwing punches in the air, loud-mouthed, asserting their prowess, and promising to knock their opponent out early in the bout. The only difference is that the other party to the fight, Kevin Rudd, is not there flexing his muscles, and even Abbott is conceding he may not win: "If we win the election I’ll be regarded as a genius, if we don’t win I’ll probably be political road-kill..." He’s even calling his team ‘Abbott’s warriors’. Like many a prize fighter he is signalling that he is throwing caution to the wind and will come out swinging in the first round.
So how should Rudd counter this? By doing what he’s now doing – ignoring him. Except for rejecting Abbott’s demand for a debate on the ETS on the grounds that the Coalition had no policy, Rudd has studiously paid little attention to him, something Opposition leaders loathe. Rudd has simply got on with the business of Prime Ministership, attending to domestic and international responsibilities while Abbott has been thrashing around seeking attention through provocation. Rudd has left it to a couple of ministers to make some remarks about Abbott’s team, one reincarnated from back-bench former ministers and radical conservatives.
But after the end-of-year break, the Rudd Government will need to marshal its forces and its publicity machine to counter the barrage of negativity that the Opposition will hurl at the public. It will need particularly to counter the scare campaign about the ETS, one that is already in motion. Although a clear majority of Australians want action on climate change, they might be conned into believing the Coalition can mitigate carbon pollution easily and without much cost – who is not attracted to a bargain! Simple, easy-to-understand material is needed, in many formats, via many media. And there needs to be blanket coverage of the entire population. Without this the Opposition will rely on the Goebbels truism – ‘tell the people a lie often enough and they will believe it’.
Until the election, which Rudd seems likely to postpone until at least August, we can expect Abbott, the pugilistic politician, to attack Government policies and actions incessantly and relentlessly, to keep Coalition policies under wraps as much as possible to avoid having to defend them, and to exhibit venom, vitriol and vituperativeness the like of which we have not seen in politics in Australia for a long while. It will be unremittingly ugly. What a prospect for 2010!
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on December 8, 2009
Dear Dennis
Just when we thought you’d got the knack of interpreting Newspoll results objectively and rationally, you disappoint us by reverting to your old form of squeezing the very last drop of positive news from the figures to boost the Coalition, omitting reference to aspects of the poll that don’t fit your pre-determined script, and extrapolating from the flimsiest of data to predict glory days ahead.
Many were impressed with your analyses of Newspolls during the dying days of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership. We saw headlines such as ‘Newspoll blow for Turnbull’, ‘Coalition attack fails to ignite’, ‘Malcolm Turnbull up but still far behind PM Kevin Rudd’, ‘Besieged leader loosing traction’, ‘Turnbull strategy out of control’, and so on. It seemed as if you had given up on Turnbull, decided that he couldn’t lead the Coalition to victory, needed removal, and Newspoll provided some of the ammunition needed to do so. So in retrospect, it seems as if your calling of the results in a negative way for Turnbull was not just sound analysis, but grist to the mill in extruding him. We didn’t realize that at the time. We said ‘Dennis has finally got it’, and you got quite a lot of laudatory comments on your blog. We started to say ‘Good old Dennis’.
Then along came Tony Abbott. I bet your were as surprised as most others, but being stuck with him now as Coalition leader, probably until the 2010 election, you felt moved to do your bit to support the Coalition cause. While Turnbull was there it seemed as if you felt your best contribution was to urge his removal so someone more promising could be installed.
Then out came Newspoll, less than a week after Abbott was elected leader, but in your mind giving sufficient time for the public to have made some judgement about his suitability. So your search for promising signs began, and, judging from your headlines, you were not disappointed: ‘Voters switching back to Coalition’ and ‘Abbott gamble pays off for Libs’. Reading these pieces, I looked for the evidence on which such stark headlines were based. Of course you quoted the two by-election results which you said showed a swing to the Liberals. Even acknowledging the distorting effects of Labor not fielding a candidate in either, that was true in Higgins where, according to Antony Green the swing to the Liberal candidate is 0.8% as of today, but in Bradfield the swing is 3.3% against the Liberal candidate. So only one seat shows a swing to the Liberal candidate, and adding the swings in the two seats gives a net swing of 2.5% against the Liberals. Now we know it’s a bit silly to add them together, but if you are going to make assertions about a ‘swing to the Liberals’, at least give us the evidence. And let’s not confuse ourselves by talking about the TPP when the field did not include one of the major parties which always feature in TPP figures.
But let’s leave the by-elections and look at the Newspoll results. What is the evidence for the header ‘Voters switching back to Coalition’? Near the end of your article you say “The Liberal vote rose four points to 34 per cent after dropping to 30 per cent during the mess over the ETS and the leadership.” Correct, but your header said voters were switching back to the Coalition. Now the truth is that the Liberal primary vote went up four points to 34% because it took one point from The Nationals, one from The Australian Greens, two from ‘Others’, but none from Labor, which remained on 43%. The Coalition primary vote went up by three points, not four, to 38%. Yet ‘four points’ seemed to be the message you wished to transmit. You did it again in ‘Abbott gamble pays off for Libs’. Yes, it’s a bit pedantic to argue such points, but if you’re quoting data to make political points why display it a way that could deceive the less analytical reader?
In the first-mentioned piece you did not reveal the Newspoll TPP of 56/44, which was little different from the previous week’s 57/43, and the same as the poll before that. You did mention it in the second piece but made no comparison with previous polls. 56/44 has consistently been the average TPP for a couple of years now, so I’m sure you’d have to agree that nothing has changed despite Nelson, Turnbull and now Abbott.
The other stat you seized upon was the PPM ratings, on which you seemed to place great store – you even started the ‘Abbott gamble pays off...’ piece with “Liberal Party support has bounced back and Tony Abbott has cut into Kevin Rudd's lead as preferred prime minister within a week of the newly elected Leader of the Opposition spectacularly reversing the Liberals' stand on climate change and rejecting Labor's ETS”. We all know the reciprocal relationship between the PM’s score and the Opposition Leader’s score on the PPM – as one goes up, the other goes down (except if the ‘Uncommitteds’ change). If in the public’s first assessment of the new leader his score was better than his predecessor’s at his lowest ebb, we ought not to be surprised, and of course that will bring the PM’s rating down commensurately. You did not point out that Rudd was still sitting on a 60% figure, only that he “..fell five points...” and that Abbott had “...a rise of nine points compared with Mr Turnbull's 14 per cent the previous weekend.” although all Abbott could muster was 23%.
But is it as good for Abbott as it might superficially look to you? No doubt you’ve now had the benefit of reading Possum Pollytics: Newspoll Tuesday – No Bounce Edition where he displays all the ratings for mid-term leadership changes and comments “Abbott gave not only the worst debut result of any Opposition leader that has taken control of the party mid-term, but was also the second lowest Uncommitted result of any new Opposition leader (including those that took control immediately after an election defeat). Only Beazley Mk 2 had a lower level of Uncommitteds, suggesting that Tony Abbott is a significantly known quantity in the electorate, meaning there isn’t much fat in the figures.” Aristotle too quotes the figures in Oz Election Forums and likewise concludes “The change to Tony Abbott has resulted in no significant change in voting intentions, and his Better Prime Minister ratings are the lowest of all new mid-term Opposition Leaders. This doesn't augur well for 2010. Tony Abbott always had the lowest poll ratings of all potential Liberal leaders and those low poll ratings, measured against his own colleagues, are now colliding with the stratospheric poll ratings of Kevin Rudd. The result is the poorest start for any new mid-term Opposition Leader.”
Clearly your enthusiasm and optimism is not shared by competent statistical analysts using the same data set. Maybe you know something they don’t, something none of us know.
You also made a play about Abbott being preferred over Turnbull, by a whopping 28% of those polled, but you didn’t point out that 62% thought he would be ‘worse or no different’ than Turnbull (21% worse, 41% the same). Surely that is the most telling statistic. But you did point out that Abbott’s strongest endorsement was from Coalition supporters – 45% over Turnbull 10% – hardly a remarkable finding at a time of leadership upheaval, but of course compatible with your views about the two men. You went on to elaborate how Abbott had outperformed Turnbull in almost every category. It would be alarming indeed if the newly elected leader was not well in front of the previous leader who was at his lowest point, and during the very week of his extrusion.
Look as I did in both articles, I could find no reference to another Newspoll result – the satisfaction/dissatisfaction rating of the PM; no mention of the fact that it rose four points during the very week that Abbott, according to your assessment, did so well. How could the PM’s popularity go up while Abbott’s was soaring so spectacularly? I wondered why you didn’t give it a mention – it was the only stat you left out.
So, Dennis, what should we conclude from your latest foray into Newspoll interpretation? You will recall with chagrin the comments that your interpretations of Newspoll in the last Howard year evoked, the angry criticism of what so many saw as your seriously biased reporting. You will remember the article you penned criticizing the impertinent bloggers who had the temerity to question your analyses; you will recall the angry editorial in The Australian demeaning bloggers, suggesting they were not journalists’ bootlaces, and should get a real job. Yet after that you seemed to be more circumspect in your analyses, and latterly you have been applauded for your frankness in calling the results correctly no matter if damaging to the Coalition and its leader. Then along comes Abbott and it feels like we’re back to the Howard days of biased interpretation, selective use of results, and omission of those that don’t fit your script.
Please don’t disappoint us again. Stick to the facts, all of them, analyse them objectively, report them without fear or favour, interpret them with statistical integrity, and once more the plaudits will flow.
There’s no need to be fearful of Uncle Rupert – he’s always been a stickler for the truth.
POSTSCRIPT
In case you can’t imagine what an unbiased analysis of the last Newspoll might look like, try this:
Coalition makes small gains in latest Newspoll
A Newspoll taken from 4 to 6 December, at the end of the week Tony Abbott was elected Leader of the Opposition, the Coalition’s primary vote rose by three percentage points to 38% at the expense of The Australian Greens (one point) and ‘Others’ (two points). Labor’s primary vote was unchanged on 43%. In two party preferred terms, Labor was 56% and the Coalition 44%. The Newspoll last week was 57/43 and the poll before that 56/44, the average figure over the last two years.
In the Better Prime Minister stakes Kevin Rudd was on 60%, down five points from the last poll, while Tony Abbott in his first poll rated 23%, nine points above Malcolm Turnbull’s last and worst poll.
No satisfaction/dissatisfaction rating was done on Mr Abbott as he had been in his new job only a few days. Mr Rudd improved his rating by four points to 58/32, with 10% undecided.
In response to the question ‘Will Abbott be a better leader than Turnbull?’ 28% said yes, 21% no, and 41% said ‘about the same’, giving a total of 62% who feel Abbott will be worse or the same as Turnbull.
The poll was on 1152 phone interviews and the margin of error was estimated to be 3%.
The Coalition has clearly made small gains in its primary vote at the expense of the Greens and ‘Others’, the TPP is virtually unchanged, and Mr Abbott has polled better than his predecessor in the Better PM stakes, narrowing the gap in the last week from 65/14 to 60/23. Kevin Rudd's personal popularity has increased marginally.
Not very exciting Dennis, not headline grabbing, but at least factual and honest, and certainly not endeavouring to score political points.
- Posted by Ad astra on December 4, 2009
Was Tony Abbott the most astonished person after last Tuesday’s ballot for Leader of the Opposition? If one can judge from his performance over the last few days, he was not only astonished but also seriously unprepared for such high office.
But if you look at what he’s said and done since his ascension to Opposition Leader, nothing should have caused surprise.
This is the man who from the time Kevin Rudd became leader of the Labor Party and started to show up well in the polls, insisted that the electorate was ‘sleepwalking’, unaware of how hollow Rudd was. This is the man who after the Coalition’s election defeat, repeated ad nauseam that the Howard Government was ‘such a good government’, and consistently implied it did not deserve to be replaced. This is the man who has done more than any other to defend the Howard legacy.
This is the man who was prominent in promoting Howard’s WorkChoices legislation, the only concession about which he is willing now to make is that ‘it went a little too far’! He says that the name ‘WorkChoices’ is dead (for obvious political reasons) but that the nation must have flexible workplace arrangements and that individuals ought to be able to make separate workplace agreements with employers – in other words have AWAs. He wants to re-introduce full exemptions from Labor’s unfair dismissal laws for small business with fewer than 20 employees.
This is the man who recently told a meeting that climate change was ’absolute crap’, so why should anyone be surprised that he desperately wanted to defeat Rudd’s CPRS legislation. He’s an acknowledged climate sceptic.
In the few days since his election this man, despite trenchantly criticizing Malcolm Turnbull for his unilateral policy declarations and his lack of consultation with colleagues, has been making his own unilateral declaration that he would bring down a policy to mitigate climate change without a tax being imposed. This despite being confused about his party’s emissions reductions targets. Already, CEO of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, has expressed concern about Abbott’s quickly-announced proposals for climate mitigation and the uncertainty it has provoked; others will follow. Only the most outrageous rent-seeking polluters will applaud.
Abbott has also wandered into the nuclear power issue, saying he would welcome a debate on the use of nuclear energy in this country, and then ventured into the vexed question of selling uranium to India, a sticky diplomatic matter, by saying that he could not see why this was not already being done. Again, without consultation with colleagues! Paul Kelly rightly accused Abbott of what Abbott so delights in accusing the Rudd Government of, ‘making policy on the run’.
Somehow he got into a debate about oil and revealed that he had not heard the term ‘peak oil’! Where has he been? Such ignorance in a political leader is not just amazing, it is dangerous.
He is now saying that he will raid the unspent stimulus package money to fund his election promises; presumably some schools promised new or upgraded buildings would not get them. He says he would scrap the NBN to save money. He would stop the Rudd Government’s home insulation program and the social housing initiative. He is talking of a federal takeover of some functions of the states, particularly the hospitals. He accuses Rudd of mismanaging federal-state relations, which presumably he will fix with a unilateral takeover.
All these ideas have fallen from his lips in the first three days, even before he has selected his shadow cabinet, before there has been a chance for policy formulation. So much for his criticism of Turnbull’s lack of consultation! He says he will be consultative, yet announces policy initiatives every few hours, all in pursuit of differentiating the Abbott Coalition from the Rudd Government.
He has already announced he will include Barnaby Joyce on his front bench, and Joyce has indicated he wants finance. Although Joyce is more suited to vaudeville than serious politics, he looks like getting an influential position as reward for the support the Nationals have given him in defeating Rudd’s CPRS. Abbott has indicated that Kevin Andrews will be elevated to the front bench – the resurrection of a failed Howard politician. Don’t be surprised if more Howardites are elevated.
This is a return to the policies and the personnel of the old, tired, discredited and defeated Howard Government, which Abbott has always insisted was unjustly removed by an ignorant electorate. The revisionism though promises to be even more extreme than during the Howard years – Howard at least had an ETS, not all that different from Rudd’s – Abbott will not; he will have a no-tax scheme! Rudd has described his approach as ‘magic pudding’; we’re awaiting the details that Abbott promises will emerge by next February. What genius will create in just eight weeks what it has taken the Government three years to complete?
Abbott has a reputation for unpredictability and is seen as a maverick. His first few days do nothing to alter that reputation. Despite the Coalition cheerleaders such as Dennis Shanahan and Peter van Onselen predicting that Abbott will ‘take the fight up to Rudd’, and ‘provide a real contest’, who but the Coalition’s rusted-on supporters and fellow travellers will take him seriously?
His Rhodes scholarship is touted as a marker of his intelligence, but his inarticulateness makes one wonder. His umming, aahing and ahahing, and his hesitancy is painful enough, but not as serious an indictment as his willingness to turn turtle on policy, as he did on the ETS, saying only a short time ago that it should be passed into law and got off the agenda, but then saying it must be defeated.
Abbott comes with much baggage, about which no further elaboration is needed. He is a supremely combative political pugilist who believes an opposition must always oppose, must not help the Government with its legislation, and must make life as difficult as possible. It seems never to have occurred to him that the Opposition too has a responsibility in the governance of the nation. ‘Holding the Government to account’ is a phrase oppositions love to mouth, and of course they should, but that does not mean obstructing at every turn, opposing everything, holding up indefinitely legislation vital to the nation, and defeating it whenever possible. For all his faults, Malcolm Turnbull did collaborate with the Government to fashion a revised ETS, which his party agreed to pass, only to have the extremists force it to Welsh on the deal. Abbott sees no fault in this.
After just these few days, I predict a chaotic time ahead for Abbott and the Coalition, and a systematic dismembering by Rudd and his ministers of the adversarial and unsound policies Abbott promotes. Like all new leaders, he may enjoy the honeymoon period his cheerleaders anticipate, but if it does occur at all, it will be brief. It’s not as if this man is an untried politician who ‘should be given the benefit of the doubt’ and the traditional Aussie ‘fair go’ as some suggest. We all know Abbott well. We know he is unprepared for this new office, we know how much time he spends on bicycles, surfboards and swimming. If he had paid more attention to contemporary political issues he might have been better equipped.
We know he is a political thinker and has put in writing his philosophy more than most of his colleagues, but that is no substitute for depth of knowledge across the wide range of national and international issues about which his knowledge is dangerously deficient. That could be overcome by attention to detail, thoughtful reflection, wide ranging consultation, careful policy formulation and articulate exposition of policies to the public. If one can judge from the headlong, injudicious and aggressive way Abbott has thrown himself into the fray in the first few days, the prognosis for this occurring, and for resultant political success, seems extraordinarily poor. And even as he tries to make headway, he can expect no respite from Turnbull who will systematically repay him for his treachery in replacing him.
How the Coalition can again throw up what seems destined to be yet another dud defies comprehension.
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on November 30, 2009
There are countless commentators writing about the ‘Turnbull wreck’ and what might emerge from it. Almost every hour brings some new angle. At the time of writing on the evening of November 30, it seems as if the spill motion on December 1 will be opposed on principle by Joe Hockey, who said he would not challenge his leader, but will be carried; that Hockey will then feel free to stand for leadership, that Malcolm Turnbull will contest, and Tony Abbott too. Hockey’s price for standing is said be a ‘free vote’ for Liberals in the Senate on the ETS, where it is believed there are enough willing to pass the Government’s legislation. Because Tony Abbott opposes this free vote, he intends to depart from his prior intention not to oppose Joe Hockey. A writer of fiction could not have conjured up a more astonishing tale.
Instead of analysing what has happened in the last few days, as so many others have done, this piece reflects on past observations and predictions. Those who seek contemporary wisdom and entertainment should read Crikey’s Bernard Keane Hockey will lead the Liberal Party to disaster, his Could Malcolm Turnbull go rogue?, his Reflections on Turnbull and his party and Mungo MacCallum’s Why Turnbull is an uncomfortable fit, all great reading.
As far back as September 2008 The Political Sword wrote Will the real Malcolm Turnbull please stand up? that concluded "Given Turnbull’s character and self-confident style, the Coalition might be wise to allow him his head, and to accept that in so doing its leader will appear more authentic although at times he may cause his party some discomfort. Perception is more telling than policy purity. It might be astute to let the real Malcolm Turnbull stand up. The success of his leadership may depend on it. But that would mean retreat of the Howardites, and abandonment of the fervent preservation of the Howard legacy. Turnbull’s success may depend on how likely this is."
A few days later The Turnbull Report Card 10 days in concluded “...to date Turnbull deserves ticks for sharing his background with the public, for being a smart and articulate campaigner when promoting his strongly held views, and for his aggressive performance in the House, even if not always based on sound information and a well argued case, even if founded on outright populism. But where he falls short is when he is not on his favoured turf, when he’s challenged with uncomfortable facts, when he attempts to advocate causes in which he does not have his heart, and when he has to defend untenable positions. As political life abounds with such circumstance, unless he can overcome this flaw, he will have difficulty convincing the people of the merit of his approach and his capacity to manage a nation beset with many contemporary challenges and complexities. Leading a nation is so much more complex and demanding, so different from life at the bar and managing a merchant bank.”
In early December TPS wrote Why does Malcolm Turnbull make so many mistakes? It concluded “History may show that Turnbull’s biggest mistakes are underestimating Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, perpetually insisting they ‘simply don’t understand’ financial or economic matters, consistently condemning their every move, changing his tune whenever it suits him, flying in the face of competent economic intelligence, failing to exercise strong leadership, continuing to make political points at a time of unparalleled financial turmoil and steadily losing credibility as he does, indulging in obfuscation and circumlocution while avoiding answering questions asked by interviewers, and most significantly failing to notice that the people are not behind him”.
Opposition ship docks for repairs written later in December, concluded "A combination of lack of purpose, weakness of character, insufficient muscle and diminishing authority, and an ego-centric certainty of the correctness of his own position coupled with an unwillingness to listen, is lethal in a leader. How long can he last before the murmurings among his crew and the critics begin to further erode his position? Shanahan’s article aligning Captain Turnbull with Captain Nelson may be the beginning, although he hasn’t quite been able to bring himself to the point of suggesting Captain Turnbull’s commission might be near its end. Meanwhile Sub-Lieutenant Hockey shines through as the most plausible, personable, articulate and effective crew member, one who would make a good captain. With youth on his side, with a mind open to contemporary thinking about strategy and tactics, he might be the answer to the HM Opposition’s yearning for a return to naval power.”
By February 2009 TPS wrote What is Malcolm Turnbull up to? It began "An alternative title could have been ‘What is the Coalition up to?’ but it seems as if opposing the Government’s economic stimulus package is Turnbull’s initiative, possibly urged on by the young Turks in the party room who want to take the fight up to Kevin Rudd. This is understandable as it has looked as if the Coalition has too often rolled over in front of the Rudd steamroller. But why pick the economic stimulus package against which to flex his muscles? A coincidence or a carefully crafted action? He is said to have had two-thirds of the party room behind him, but that means one third were not, amongst them, as we understand it, Nick Minchin and Fran Bailey in the most marginal seat in Australia. With that level of non-support, Turnbull would need everything to go according to plan.” History proved it to be not a smart move.
Malcolm Turnbull’s intelligence, also written in February, made the point that intelligence is not a homogeneous attribute and concluded "...that while Turnbull has intelligence in some areas, he has poorly developed political intelligence, acumen, judgement, call it what you will. The real question for the Coalition is whether he has the capacity ever to develop it. Or will his universally acknowledged large ego and self-confidence render him incapable of learning from his political mistakes. There’s not much sign of that so far. If the prognosis is as poor as it looks, his party has a very fundamental problem.”
In June, Stop at nothing – Malcolm Turnbull’s fatal flaw?, extrapolating from Annabelle Crabb's Quarterly Essay, concluded "Many commentators have remarked on Turnbull’s impetuosity, his headlong incautious rush into situations that need careful thought, the absence of the ‘due diligence’ that one might expect of a legal man, his self-confidence and arrogance, and his lack of political nous. The Political Sword has long contended that Turnbull is a barrister, a banker and businessman, but not a politician. He continues to take his father’s advice: ‘keep on punching’. He told his party room that the Coalition must continue to attack and attack. That his reputation is being shredded day by day, even in the eyes of the media, many of whom have been supportive of him and the Coalition, seems not to concern him, much less moderate his action. He seems to know only one way of proceeding – keep on punching.” Events of these last few days vividly illustrate this.
Then in late June came the Godwin Grech OzCar affair, a sharp turning point downwards for Turnbull, from which he has never recovered. TPS featured Don’t blame me a satirical 'Open letter to the people of Australia' to capture the delectable details of this sorry episode.
By August TPS was writing The Turnbull endgame? that concluded “To draw this long piece to an end, should we be surprised at the position in which Turnbull now finds himself? Looking back over a year or more a pattern of behaviour has become clearly apparent. Impetuosity, poor political judgement, ruthlessness and self-confidence not matched by political ability, that goes to his character, his integrity and his political wisdom, all of which are now highly questionable. Is Turnbull’s endgame upon him? ‘Endgame’ describes the last part of a chess game, when there are very few pieces left. That looks like the right word. It seems that only lack of a plausible alternative can now save him.”
By October TPS was writing What will Turnbull do now? about Turnbull’s attempts to engineer amendments to the Government’s CPRS: “But what if he can’t get his amendments, any amendments, through the party room at all? That would be terminal for his leadership. If a leader can’t command the support of his party over a matter to which he is so personally committed, how can he lead at all? What would/could he do then?” and "Has Turnbull enough commonsense and political nous to see that all that lies ahead is more dissent, more corrosive comments from Tuckey and Co, more desire for another leader if only there was one around and even the remote chance of being extruded by his party, more media speculation about leadership, its favourite sport, more ridicule from Rudd and his ministers pointing to the rabble he’s trying to lead but can’t, something already well underway, more poor polls, and almost certain electoral defeat and loss of seats? I suspect he has. His doggedness may well be tempered by an intense desire to ease the pain and call it quits. And if he can do that in a spectacular and relatively face-saving way, he might choose that out. Turnbull has lost battles before. When he lost the battle for a Republic, he said John Howard was ‘the Prime Minister that broke the nation’s heart’. This time he could proudly proclaim that by not acting on climate change when at least two thirds of the people wanted action, he is abandoning ‘the Liberal Party that broke the nation’s heart’.”
After Turnbull written in TPS in mid October asserted “If I was forced to lay bets, although Turnbull's leadership seems fatally wounded, I would still punt on him surviving until the next election, only because the two most favoured replacements, Hockey and Abbott, are so wanting in the necessary skills, and the Liberal Party so impotent in managing the dysfunction it is experiencing. The likelihood of the party extruding Turnbull seems much less than him walking away. In that event however, I would now place Abbott as 'the most likely to succeed' Turnbull. Not a great prospect!”
Events have overtaken that prediction. Turnbull’s handling of the ETS issue in the last few days, while laudable as an exercise in articulately and convincingly defending high principle, in defending a policy in which he has his heart, has been so poorly handled politically that he is about to be extruded as Leader of the Opposition. The warning signs of impending doom have been flashing for many months. The inevitability of his exit has been there for all to see, but like a slow motion train crash, seemingly impossible to avoid. Turnbull’s characteristics have predetermined this outcome.
Reading predictions stretching back over time is salutary. Those on TPS and those of its visitors who have added comments have been vindicated almost in their entirety. Malcolm Turnbull has always insisted on doing it his way, and in business, banking and law this has resulted in him succeeding brilliantly. On December 1, 2009 he will reap the rewards of unwisely applying this rule to the field of politics.
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on November 27, 2009
Every time it seemed a suitable time to comment on the leadership of the Coalition, the story changed. Acknowledging that, like a fast moving Formula One race, there would never be a time when the prediction of the outcome would be extant for more than a brief period, I thought it wiser to point visitors to some contemporary pieces, mainly on Crikey, that spell out the ins and outs, the whys and wherefores of this complex ever-changing scene. Unlike a Formula One race though, where all the cars are going in the same direction most of the time, the Formula One Coalition Race has vehicles going in several directions, sometimes reversing, sometimes opting not to be in the race at all.
Bushfire Bill has long predicted Malcolm Turnbull’s demise as Leader of the Opposition, although Guy Rundle also lays claim to being an early adopter of that notion when he says today: “Your correspondent picked it months ago, of course. While the dinosaur media was humming and haahing about Turnbull's chances, let the record show that we noted: 'Turnbull is dead’. The only mystery is why he lasted as long as he did.”
Anyway, what the media says today, and any comment I might make, may well be obsolescent by nightfall, so E&OE.
Bernard Keane in CPRS bottlenecks while Libs dither begins “So where are we at in the CPRS debacle at lunchtime? Well, you might be surprised to know no one’s too sure. Julie Bishop may have tapped Turnbull or may not. She is denying it. It's understandable, because anyone going in to tap Turnbull on the shoulder should probably wear body armour. Joe Hockey and Peter Dutton may be preparing a joint ticket, or may not. I'm hoping Dutton doesn't become deputy because, try as I might and professional as I would want to be, I just don’t understand why anyone rates him. Connie Fierravanti-Wells resigned as shadow Parliamentary Secretary, if anyone is still counting.” And so on it goes in entertaining fashion. Read the full story here.
Bernard has a second piece: Libs search for their dreamtime martyrs that starts: “Leadership tickets are a dime a dozen round this joint at the moment. Last night it was the Two Tony’s Ticket, perhaps inspired by the Wednesday prospect of Kevin and Julia going up against Kevin and Julie. This morning it's Joe Hockey and Peter Dutton, because what you need as a deputy is a bloke who doesn't think he can hold his own seat. The dream ticket of Wilson Tuckey and Bronwyn Bishop, alas, remains just that for the moment. But there's three days to go, so we live in hope.” The rest is here.
Guy Rundle, writing in his usual perceptive and amusing style in Beyond the fatal quinella, there’s mention of Hannibal Lecter and the future Mrs Edelsten has this to say: “Malcolm Turnbull should obviously resign and go do something else with his life. It's over. And it's a measure of the times that between writing this and sending it to the Crikey bunker, Turnbull may well do so. Your correspondent had always assumed that Turnbull was dead meat -- he was fatally wounded by the Grech affair. Without that disaster calling into question his judgement, nous and skills, he might have been able to survive the ETS brouhaha. But the two were a fatal quinella. The past six months resemble nothing so much as a trail of blood across the tundra, the wolf who chewed through his foot to get free of the trap, bleeding out beneath a winter sky.” Read the rest here.
The ABC's Chris Uhlmann in The Liberal Catch-22 begins: “At the heart of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 is a brilliant paradox: if you plead insanity to avoid suicidal bombing missions then you must be sane and can't be excused.” and later "There is an Australian inversion of Catch-22: if you want to lead the Liberal Party now you must be insane and shouldn't be allowed to. By that measure, Joe Hockey is the sanest person in the Opposition because he genuinely does not want to lead it now. But he may not be able to avoid it.” Read it all here.
In The Age Tony Wright in Ascetic warrior ready for battle says: “Tony Abbott, long known as the Mad Monk, transmogrified into a vision of the Grim Reaper as he swung through Malcolm Turnbull's office yesterday afternoon. Those who have met him on a rugby field or a boxing ring know there is much of the ascetic warrior in the Abbott. Malcolm Turnbull is a physically solid fellow, too, and no wilting flower. He would prove it within hours with a fighting performance of a news conference, declaring himself still the leader of the Liberal Party and vowing that his party would deliver on its emissions trading deal with the Rudd Government, whom-ever may try to deny him.” More of Tony Wright here.
The Godwin Grech affair has resurfaced with the report of the Senate inquiry. Although it did immense, and according to Guy Rundle irreparable damage to Turnbull, it has the capacity to do even more damage as Turnbull’s intimate and repeated contacts with Grech were documented fully in the report. It may be the coup de gras, if one is still needed. Michelle Grattan had this to say in Dangerous double life of Grech “If you were writing a novel he'd be a difficult character to construct. A senior Treasury official, slightly odd but competent, credible and respected, who has a separate secret persona as a political player, trying to bring down the Government for which he works. The strange affair of Godwin Grech hogged the headlines for weeks, wounding Malcolm Turnbull terribly. The story struck again at Turnbull this week, with documents in a tabled parliamentary committee report about Grech's explosive appearance before the OzCar Senate inquiry. This documentary evidence of the dangerous double life Grech led is spine-tingling. How did he manage to live such a lie? Was he often fearful, or high on the excitement of being part of the political game, a confidant of powerful Liberals? The electronic trail shows that Grech was deeply involved not just with Turnbull, but also with John Howard's former right-hand man Arthur Sinodinos, now in the banking sector, and others with political connections. For Turnbull, the material is double-edged. It helps explain how Turnbull was taken in by the fake email - why would he suspect Grech? Yet someone more cautious might have wondered about such blatantly improper behaviour by a public servant. It wasn't just that Grech leaked to the Opposition. He saw himself as a Liberal secret agent embedded with the enemy, spiriting out intelligence and advice, reassuring, exhorting, analysing.” Read all about it here.
There’s plenty more, but if I don’t post this now, it will be out of date.
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on November 22, 2009
How is it that the only papers I could find while in Phuket and Singapore, The International Herald Tribune – The Global Edition of the New York Times, The Bangkok Post, and Singapore’s The Straits Times carried articles so much superior to those in most of Australia’s MSM? Do they engage better columnists, or do they pay more attention to the quality of the pieces they publish? Or are they less concerned with sensationalism and more with the unadulterated facts and balanced opinion? It was refreshing to read them. The account of APEC in The Straits Times seemed accurate, even-handed and informative. Apart from some photos of Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein arriving at APEC there was little about Australia’s contribution.
There was good coverage of the 20th Anniversary of the coming-down of the Berlin Wall, but there was precious little news from down under. The Oceanic Viking saga did get a small mention, unlike the mega-play it got in the media here. Has there been a recent issue that has attracted so much uniformed comment and fault-finding criticism? When last was there an issue where most journalists had so little to offer, except perpetual nit-picking criticism?
The origin of the episode seems to have so receded into the background that commentators no longer mention it: Indonesia received information that a boat carrying Sri Lankan asylum seekers was in danger of sinking in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone, and as it had no vessels in the area, asked Australia if it had, and if so, would it render assistance. Customs vessel Oceanic Viking was nearby, and rescued the Sri Lankans. The deal was to take them to the nearest port, but as accommodation was short there, the ship was diverted to Bintan. It was there that local officials, in defiance of the arrangement made between the two countries, flexed their parochial muscles, refused to forcibly remove the refugees from the OV, and indicated they did not want to be a ‘dumping ground’ for refugees headed for Australia. Australia too was unwilling to use force, and so the boat people stayed put.
So what was Kevin Rudd and his ministers meant to do? Much criticism against Rudd was generated but few commentators suggested a plausible solution. The Greens and some Labor politicians said the asylum seekers should have been brought immediately to Christmas Island. But why? They were no more Australia’s responsibility than Indonesia’s. The mere fact that they wanted to go to Australia did not make them our responsibility. Moreover, what would the public, the Opposition and the media have said if Rudd had readily complied with the asylum seekers’ demands, and they were demands, and brought them to Christmas Island? Rudd would have been condemned as weak, ready to be pushed around by asylum seekers, and pathetically ‘soft’ on border protection. The Opposition and the media would paint him as an easy touch and all the talk about being ‘tough on people smugglers’ would have counted for nought. It would have been a foolish thing to do and would have wrecked Labour’s border protection policy. Greg Sheridan said just that. I for one was affronted by the asylum seekers’ insistence that they would decide where they wanted to go, bringing back as it did memories of John Howard’s “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” If a country can’t do that, what integrity does its borders, both sea and air, have?
Crikey’s Bernard Keane took a keen interest in this matter and had plenty to say. While most commentators assiduously avoided saying what ought to be done, as presumably they had no idea, and restricted their comments to criticism, which is dead easy and good journalistic fun to boot, he at least offered Rudd some options in a 9 November article Memo Rudd: an asylum solution, as follows:
“Compel the disembarkation of the asylum seekers by Customs personnel. This would have mixed political outcomes, drawing criticism from supporters of asylum seekers (the "humanes") and support from those antipathetic toward asylum seekers (the "toughs"). However, such a course of action is likely to alienate both local Indonesian authorities and the Indonesian Government itself. As the long-term cooperation of Indonesian authorities is critical to the success of Australia's broader asylum-seeker policy, this option would appear to be counter-productive given the small number of asylum seekers concerned.
“Dispatch the Oceanic Viking to Sri Lanka. As Sri Lankan citizens, the return of the asylum seekers to Sri Lanka would be an arguable course of action, and one likely to draw support from the more vicious-minded ‘toughs’ in the community and certain elements in the media. It would also attract considerable criticism on the correct grounds that it is likely to be returning genuine refugees to the authorities from whom they are seeking refuge. Moreover, they would be less likely to disembark in Sri Lanka than in Indonesia, leading us back to the issues outlined in Option 1.
“Transfer the asylum seekers to Christmas Island. On the basis that the legitimacy or otherwise of the asylum claims of the group is not affected by the location in which the assessment is made, it makes no difference whether the assessment is made on Christmas Island or elsewhere. However, the demonstration effect of the success of asylum seekers who have been rescued in Indonesian waters on others who may attempt to reach Australia in unsuitable vessels may increase the likelihood of the loss of vessels and those aboard them. It would also be portrayed as a major defeat both for the Government politically and for its border protection policies.”
Arriving at no viable solution, he ended with a suggestion: “A possible resolution may be for the permit for the Oceanic Viking to operate in Indonesian waters to be allowed to lapse by the Indonesian Government, thereby compelling its withdrawal to Christmas Island. This would permit the Government to portray the transfer to Christmas Island as a legal and diplomatic necessity.” Whatever its merit, this option had a ring of implausibility about it and in the event was not considered. So for all his laudable attempts to be helpful he came back to where he started and concluded that Rudd was deep in the proverbial with no place to go.
But an option not canvassed by Keane – patience – turned out to be the order of the day. It was exhibited by both the Indonesians and our Government, and eventually the asylum seekers left the boat reassured that they would be processed along the same timelines as apply on Christmas Island.
This was immediately branded by most of the media, hungry for an angle to hammer Rudd rather than seeking a way of resolving the impasse, as a ‘special deal’ to get them off the OV. This was jumped on by the Opposition and represented by the media as something shonky because all the other asylum seekers in Indonesia, who by the way are not Australia’s unique responsibility, were not being offered the same. Why should they be? These were unusual circumstances: Australia had inadvertently found itself with people on one of its vessels, rescued from drowning at sea in a humanitarian exercise, but now resistant to disembarkation except in Australia. Indonesia, having agreed to take them at the nearest port, vacillated, diverted the ship, and then allowed local officials to call the shots. Why is Indonesia not being criticized for not honouring its deal with Australia?
It is not surprising that Australia negotiated a ‘settlement’ with the asylum seekers, which turned out to be effective. What surprises me is that such a fuss was made over what the media insisted was ‘a special deal’. Who cares? What does it matter if there was ‘a special deal’? Mind you, Rudd might have saved himself much of the media angst if he has simply said that the special circumstances required special arrangements.
Who then is upset by the negotiated arrangements? The Sri Lankans are off the boat being processed by UNHCR, the situation has been resolved without further straining relations with Indonesia, the OV is on its way to continue its normal duties, and genuine refugees will soon be settled in Australia or perhaps another suitable country. Problem solved.
But have Rudd and his Immigration and Foreign Ministers receive a pat on the back from the media for resolving this matter? No. Instead it seized on the fact that the women and children, who were to be housed in a separate building alongside the housing for the men, which they have been, found that there were bars on the windows, hardly surprising as it is part of the detention complex. Soon there were women holding their children up at the bars visibly manipulating these circumstances to advance their cause and put pressure on the Government. The media was eagerly complicit with countless photos of smiling children ‘behind bars’. What was it trying to say? That Rudd has broken his promise that women and children would be held separately? But he hadn’t. That Rudd had deliberately placed children ‘behind bars’? But he hadn’t. The separate accommodation offered happened to have barred windows, something the Australian Government could not alter. Whatever the message, the media was determined to paint Rudd in a poor light.
The media was irresponsible too in its handling of our relations with Indonesia. Rudd never used the term ‘Indonesian Solution’ – the media coined it, much to the annoyance of Indonesian authorities who resented the idea of Indonesia becoming a repository for asylum seekers in the manner of Manus Island and Nauru. So while Rudd was negotiating his way through the treacherous waters of international diplomacy with our nearest neighbours, the media was stirring resentment among them. Moreover, it painted Indonesia’s detention centres in a very poor light, something that offended the Indonesians. Do the media accept any responsibility in this regard? No. And when President Yudhoyono postponed his December visit to Australia, the media interpreted this as a rebuff over the OV affair. But only this morning on Insiders, a video clip of a statement of an Indonesian minister refuted that.
Rudd has had heavy criticism and scorn heaped upon him over this episode. Not unexpectedly, the Opposition has tried to capitalize on it, but why has the media been so caustic? Rudd was labelled as so panic stricken by what seemed to be a Newspoll that reflected badly on his asylum seeker policy and actions (which being an outlier, it didn’t) that he ‘hit the airwaves’ with blanket coverage of his policy. Perhaps he hit the airwaves because he was determined to get his policy through. Some journalists, and maybe some of the public, found the ‘tough on people smugglers’ but ‘humane towards refugees’ contradictory, which it isn’t as any high school student could attest, so Rudd put extra effort into getting it across, which is what he needed to do.
Some said he was hiding behind bureaucratese when he read a letter in Question Time from the Immigration Department describing the processing arrangements on Bintan as ‘non-exceptional’, meaning they would be processed according to the usual Christmas Island timelines. Apparently ‘non-exceptional’ is a term with which journalists are unfamiliar, and therefore the object of cynical journo humour.
Rudd has been described as weak, uncertain of his policy, and having handled this situation ineptly. Brian Toohey, in the current Weekend Australian Financial Review, accuses him of ‘self importance’, of using a quick visit to Indonesia for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidential inauguration “to insist that Yudhoyono take an unpopular decision to let Australian customs vessel unload 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers at an Indonesian port rather than Christmas Island” which later in the piece he acknowledges was the ‘initial agreement’. Toohey avows that “Rudd continued to demand that Yudhoyono should risk his own political capital by sticking to the initial agreement.” This was at the conclusion of Toohey’s article on ‘abuse of power’, about which I suppose he thought this example made a fitting end. How factually correct is Toohey? How could he know Rudd forced Yudhoyono to make a decision he did not wish to make? He doesn’t say. We’ll never know. But it did make a good climax to the piece, and that’s what really counts!
Amid all the shouting and tumult, all the condemnation and disapproval, all the denigration and censure of Rudd and his handling of this matter, there has been precious little sound advice and wise counsel offered by the critics, who frankly don’t know the answers, don’t know what to do, don’t understand international diplomacy, and seem barely able to judge public opinion. Apart from a fall in personal ratings, there has scarcely been any significant change to Labor’s ratings since this event, as demonstrated on Insiders this morning when Barrie Cassidy showed the average TPP figure of 56/44 had been steady over many, many months. The people seem more balanced in their views than most commentators, a sad reflection on much of our media, which by comparison with the overseas papers mentioned earlier, looks paltry, ill informed, mediocre, sensationalist and worst of all, adversarial. What a sad state of affairs.
None of those overseas papers were Murdoch papers, Is there a message there?
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on October 29, 2009
Amid all the shrill and often disingenuous comments thrown around by politicians and many media commentators, it was comforting to listen to the quiet voice of reason of our own Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, speaking on the 7.30 Report last night, and that of Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, on Lateline.
So many of the facts of this matter seem to have been forgotten by so many. 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers on a boat coming from Sri Lanka found themselves in a hazardous maritime situation and also had an ill child on board, not in Australian waters, not even in Indonesian waters, but in an area for which Indonesia is responsible for search and rescue. As there were no Indonesian vessels in the area of the distressed boat, Indonesian authorities asked Australia if it could assist. As there were no Australian commercial vessels in the vicinity, it agreed to send its customs vessel, Oceanic Viking, which was near, to rescue the asylum seekers and bring them to a port designated by Indonesian authorities. It was carrying out a humanitarian exercise under its obligations under maritime law to go to the assistance of those in peril on the seas. There was nothing political about the rescue at all, despite all the uninformed media comment and Coalition hyperbole.
Australia is now caught with 78 asylum seekers insisting that they will not voluntarily disembark at an Indonesian port in Bintan and go into detention there, and this dilemma has given every critic of the Government a chance to vent spleen, no matter what the facts of the situation are.
The media ought to know better than to misrepresent the situation to push its political agenda, but it’s not surprising that Coalition members have been out in droves trying to garner any political advantage no matter how deceptive their claims might be. We have had a range of views from Wilson Tuckey’s ‘send in the armed forces to remove the Sri Lankans’ to new-found sympathy for asylum seekers from a range of Coalition members who seems to be trying to establish an argument that Kevin Rudd is ‘less humane’ than John Howard; even ‘brutal’ says Malcolm Turnbull. It’s so laughable that only rusted-on supporters could swallow their inconsistent policy-free spiel. And despite being asked scores of times what they would do, they have no answer, except the specious one that, as Turnbull insists, he would not have ‘unpicked the Howard policy in the first place’. Yet when asked whether a Coalition government would reintroduce TPVs and the ‘Pacific Solution’ they run a mile rather than say they would.
We can ignore the Coalition’s contribution to the dialogue knowing we will not have missed any important debating point.
For his part Kevin Rudd has decided that he must talk to that part of the electorate that wants secure borders and an orderly immigration policy – thus the ‘tough’ line, while also talking to those who would prefer more open borders, including some of his back benchers and some union officials who are advocating the ‘humane’ line. Because of his desire to accommodate both views, he has made himself more vulnerable to attack from both sides. Whether he can fashion policy that can achieve this accommodation remains to be seen. The week in QT has been rowdy, angry and unedifying. The real asylum seeker debate has been sidelined by the cut and thrust of the Opposition and the counter-thrust of the Government.
It is not my intention to add to the confusing discourse on this matter, but rather to point visitors to two people who have injected balance and commonsense into the convoluted debate. They are Stephen Smith, and Marty Natalegawa, recently- appointed Indonesian Foreign Minister.
What Stephen Smith had to say on the 7.30 Report is recorded in a piece on ABC News 'Patience' needed on asylum solution. You can hear what he said via the video recording of his interview with Kerry O’Brien on that page. I believe you will agree that what he said was sensible, lucid and plausible.
Then on Lateline there was Marty Natalegawa talking for fifteen minutes with Leigh Sales, in what was one of the best interviews on Lateline I’ve seen for a while. Indeed he would put many of our politicians to shame. He explained every aspect of what is an enormously difficult and convoluted exercise in international diplomacy as well as domestic politics, and emphasized the importance of ‘an abundance of patience’.
You can hear him by going to the Lateline page for 28 October and selecting the Indonesian foreign minister discusses asylum seekers video near the top of the page. So far there is no transcript.
If only all others involved in discussing this matter could bring such calm and balance to the debate.
What do you think?
Please note that this is my last post for four weeks, as I’m leaving tomorrow for Thailand and Singapore to meet up with friends. It would be too difficult to continue posting while overseas, or to respond to your comments.
I look forward to rejoining you in around four weeks.
- Posted by Ad astra on October 25, 2009
What a flurry of articles on asylum seekers we’ve had over the last couple of weeks. Journalists have not taken a consistent position on this subject; there seems to be a wide variety of opinions about how the situation has occurred and what should be done about it. This piece tries to dissect out what prompts a particular journalist to take a particular line.
You will recall that the recent debate on the economics of the GFC was bedevilled by a cacophony of voices. We discovered that there was a wide variety of opinion, and that opinion often seemed to be based more on the economist’s favoured theory of economics than on a balanced appraisal of the facts. We heard from the pump-priming Keynesians, those enamoured of Friedrich Hayek’s free market capitalism, and those advocating Milton Friedman’s monetarist, anti-regulation policies. Their writings reflected those paradigms. Few gave a balanced appraisal. There were articles about this on The Political Sword in February: The problem with economists and September: What value are economists to our society. In the same way, many writings on asylum seekers seem to be constructed around the writer’s belief system about asylum seekers, rather than an account of the facts and a balanced appraisal of them.
As in just about everything, people’s views are distributed along the bell-shaped curve, with at one extreme the view that Australia does not need immigrants, or at least not a lot of them, that if they do come they should arrive in an orderly way and not try to jump the queue as ‘cashed-up illegal boat arrivals’, and that they should be exhaustively assessed in detentions camps, preferably overseas, no matter how long it takes. There are suspicions that terrorists may sneak in. These are the strong border protectionists.
At the other end of the curve there are those who believe that Australia can afford to be much more generous in accepting asylum seekers, that their identity, security and health assessments should be done quickly and humanely in congenial surroundings, and that those who are eligible should be quickly assimilated into the community. They are outraged by attitudes that cast asylum seekers in a less-than-human light. These are the open-door advocates. Some of these approach the issue from a moralistic stand point.
I expect most people sit around the middle.
If we look at the most recent articles, there are only a few that take the extreme ‘protectionist’ line. Media opinion seems to have shifted towards the other end of the spectrum. Whether it accurately reflects public opinion is unclear – there are few data on this. However, Asylum boat had holes drilled in hull in The Age of 22 October by Nick Butterly, Andrew Probyn and Lindsay Murdock reminds us of the tactics that some boat people have used and apparently still do, to gain access to Australia. And when Wilson Tuckey said that there could be terrorists hidden among genuine refugees on the arriving boats, some columnists, far from castigating him, agreed that he might be right. Malcolm Turnbull eventually repudiated such slighting of refugees; Julie Bishop was not prepared to go that far, nor were some other Liberals. Their comments were widely reported – the Tuckey view was expressed by the media without having to endorse it. So the ‘protectionist’ journalists did get some air play.
Many articles lean towards, but don’t actually fully endorse the open-door approach. The editorial in the current Weekend Australian, More straight talk, we're Australians says “...eight years after September 11, Tampa, and an election won by John Howard amid hysteria on asylum-seekers, Australia is in a calmer and more compassionate frame of mind. There is more awareness of the plight of people caught in desperate conflicts overseas and an understanding that while boat arrivals are emotive, most asylum-seekers come by air. Time has defused much of the passion of the past and politicians should nurture and build on these sentiments.” These are heartening sentiments; whether they reflect community opinion is another matter. Because the editorial writer holds this view, an intelligent discussion with the Australian people, who ‘can walk and chew gum’ at the same time, is seen as now overdue. One can only hope this view is accurate. George Megalogenis supports the editorial with an analysis of recent polling that shows “the polls were unmoved this week, notwithstanding the headlines and heated exchanges over the Sri Lankan asylum-seekers” in a piece Political capital has left debate. In similar vein, The Piping Shrike questions the need for Rudd’s strong rhetoric in A losing game for Labor – an update, a sequel to A losing game for Labor.
Some articles take a descriptive approach. Stephen Fitzpatrick and Matthew Franklin in The Australian of 23 October in PM Kevin Rudd's $50m Indonesian solution emphasises the possible cost, without comment. No comparison with existing costs or the cost of the ‘Pacific Solution’ is given. Labor all at sea on asylum promises in the SMH by Lindsay Murdoch, Mark Davis and Phillip Coorey while reporting the latest, highlights the continuation of the voyage of the Oceanic Viking in which the asylum seekers are “condemned to another three days at sea”. The use of ‘condemned’ suggest the authors disapprove of these arrangements. There are now articles pointing to the adverse conditions that are said to exist in Indonesian detention centres. In The Age articles by Michelle Grattan A leaky boat to Indonesia seems Rudd's preferred solution and Chaos as Jakarta diverts asylum boat indicate she is unimpressed with what is going on. No alternative approach is suggested.
The moralistic approach though is the hardest to brook. Tony Abbott, well known for his moralizing and pontificating, in Rudd’s desperate on boatpeople issue says “The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. Now, he calls the people who help asylum seekers to get to Australia ‘vermin’ and the ‘vilest form of life’. Even by the standards of politics, the Prime Minister is a shameless hypocrite who wants people to believe that he has a border protection policy that is both hard-line and humane.” What more is there to say about that moralistic judgement; it’s what we’ve come to expect from Abbott.
But we expect more from the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann. Rising from talk-back producer for 774 Melbourne’s Jon Faine to political analyst for the 7.30 Report in place of Michael Brissenden, he now has his own ABC blog, and this weekend, I think for the first time, has become a MSM columnist. As I understand it, Uhlmann was at one time studying in a seminary, which may explain his overtly moralist blog piece, Rudd squanders chance to practise what he preaches which was reproduced almost word for word in The Weekend Australian in St Kevin's halo may choke him. It doesn’t take much to imagine what the tone of his pieces were. He too evokes the image of the Good Samaritan. He says: “...Rudd has made a parade of his beliefs and is given to cloaking political arguments in moral garments. So the Prime Minister was faced with a choice. The narrow gate was to make a complex argument, to explain what he was doing, and to try to change the tone of Australia's debate about asylum-seekers. The wide path was to play the hard man and tub thump. His life was not at risk. The state he had to speak boldly to was run by him. All he was risking was an approval rating of 71 per cent. And Rudd chose the wide path.” Moral judgement delivered!
His blog attracted 34 comments, most applauding the quality of his article. I found it overbearing. I left the following comment, which I reproduce here as it reflects my feeling about this pontifical piece: “You judge Kevin Rudd to be morally inconsistent, you accuse him of parading his beliefs and cloaking many political arguments in moral garments, and you condemn him for making moral judgements. Yet you yourself make moral judgments about him. Chris, it’s a risky business running a moral argument against someone whom you accuse of running a moral argument.
“You laud the Opposition for having a moral compass ‘that at least has the virtue of pointing, roughly, in one direction’ even I suppose if that happens to be in the wrong direction. Are you saying that it’s more important to be morally consistent, than it is to make the ‘right’ moral judgement?
“You seem to be carrying many respondents along with you. But none of them, or you yourself, has explained what is inconsistent, morally or otherwise, in being tough on people smugglers yet humane to those seeking asylum. It’s not all that difficult a concept. In my view Rudd is on the right track. As a political commentator, it might be wise to stick to politics and leave the moralizing to others.” I need say no more.
There has been much talk about Rudd’s ‘contradictory’ dual messages of ‘tough on border protection and people smugglers’ yet ‘treating asylum seekers humanely’, and he’s accused of ‘speaking out of both sides of his mouth’. That’s exactly what he’s doing, and the message that seems contradictory is not contradictory at all. How many times have you encountered in family life, in business, and in social relations the necessity for being simultaneously tough and humane? Given that the better journalists are possessed of reasonable intellect, why is this duality so difficult to comprehend and explain to readers?
In his piece in The Weekend Australian, Rudd plays it tough to win high ground Paul Kelly tries: “Despite its political discomfort, exaggerated moralism and diplomatic scramble, the Rudd government emerges with more credit over the boatpeople surge than do its opponents on the Right and Left.” Later he had this to say: “As former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade chief Michael Costello said in my book The March of Patriots: ‘My view is that we should take as many migrants and refugees as possible. But we have a duty to ensure we don't just reward those who get here by boat and we have an obligation to ensure that any refugees we accept meet the standards we require as a country. There can be no open door to Australia.’ This is an established Labor position.” Rudd seems to be following it.
Then Kelly addresses what he sees as another ‘contradiction’: “Rudd's tactics this week were founded on a contradiction: he seeks to calm yet escalate the issue. As a responsible PM, Rudd kept appealing for calm, sought to defuse the arrivals, aware that he had to reassure Jakarta, told the public that under Howard 15,000 boatpeople arrived compared with only 1700 under his own period and declared that ‘this has been a problem in the past, it's a problem today’. Yet against the opposition he was an attack dog playing the man.” Rudd’s capacity to take seemingly paradoxical positions simultaneously still mystifies many journalists.
Guy Rundle on The Stump at Crikey gives Kelly a going over in two pieces Shipping spiel ship ship shipping spiel and Kelly goyle on the Outside on Insiders in which, while not disputing that Rudd is speaking to two audiences, disputes who they are.
Back to asylum seekers, Rudd seeks to placate those concerned about border protection and the ‘threat’ posed by those seeking asylum on the one hand, yet at the same time attempts to reassure the open-door advocates that asylum seekers will be treated humanely. It is reminiscent of his dual message during the GFC – warning of the possible devastating effects that threatened the nation, yet at the same time trying to build public confidence that the Government’s measures would avert a financial tragedy. Much of the media commented quizzically on this apparent contradiction, when it should have been using its intellect and communication skills to explain it.
There have been many other articles, and there are many other aspects of this complex matter that cannot be addressed here – the so-called ‘Indonesia solution’ is one. They will have to wait for another time.
So where are we now? Has Rudd got the balance right so far? Is it, or is it not congruent to talk tough at the same time as talking humanely? Is he catering well enough to the wider electorate with its diversity of views? Is he showing so-called ‘leadership’, that incidentally some would define as doing what they think is right? Is he on track for a rational, humane and generally acceptable resolution of the seemingly intractable problem of asylum seekers reaching our shores?
How well has the media understood and explained this complex problem? How well has it handled the so-called ‘contradictory’ messages intrinsic to this issue? Have journalists been slave to their ideological position in analysing and reporting it? Is journalistic moralizing sound practice? All loaded questions.
Who has done a soundly professional journalistic job? Anyone?
What do you think?
- Posted by Ad astra on October 21, 2009
Last Sunday’s episode of The Insiders included an extraordinary segment titled “Border protection to test Rudd's popularity - The panel discuss how the controversy surrounding Australia's asylum seeker policies is going to effect Kevin Rudd's popularity.” Too bad about the English!
For breathtaking arrogance, it takes the cake. I’ve been waiting for the transcript, but as it seems as if it’s not coming, I’ve listened to the replay and have extracted some quotes. I invite you to listen to the rest. It runs for about 10 minutes. More...
- Posted by Ad astra on October 19, 2009
Have you noticed how sensitive the media is becoming to criticism from politicians? The rules of its game are that the media is entitled to criticise politicians ad nauseam, whether or not it has its facts right, whether or not its interpretation of them is accurate, whether or not the subject matter is of any real importance, but should the politicians retaliate and accuse the media of bias, the media is entitled to huff and puff, to wag its finger at them, and to darkly remind them that criticizing the media is not just inadvisable, but could be dangerous and lead to a backlash. This attitude is a sign of the incredible self-importance for which much of our media is gaining a reputation. More...
- Posted by Ad astra on October 16, 2009
It was not the surprise reappearance of a smiling Philip Ruddock on TV that was unnerving; it was not his assertion that 10,000 more asylum seekers were ‘in the pipeline’, it was not even his inability to explain how he derived that figure; it was the stark imagery of a past era flooding into memory.
There are many images: the truculent jaw-thrusting insistence by John Howard that ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’; the standing ovation given Philip Ruddock at a Liberal Party annual conference for his outstanding efforts to limit and repel boat people; the boat encounters and the sad consequences that sometimes followed, the SIEV X tragedy; the dog-whistling that Howard and Ruddock used to demean asylum-seekers, using pejorative terms such as 'illegals', queue jumpers, cashed-up boat arrivals; the Tampa saga; the Pacific Solution; the shameful ‘kids overboard’ episode and Howard’s “we don’t want people of that type coming into this country”; the razor wire of detention camps, detention camps in the desert at Woomera and Baxter; long periods of detention leading to self harm; children held in the camps or separated from parents, and episodes of wrongful detention – all awful images of fear mongering and heartless, opportunistic politicking. More...