November 29, 2014
Boat load of barnacles
What is a Captain to do with a ship full of barnacles? By Rocco Fazzari and Denis Carnahan with apologies to drunken sailors everywhere.
Tony Abbott chose the word "barnacles" very deliberately. He told his party-room meeting this week that "there are one or two barnacles still on the ship but by Christmas they will have been dealt with".
It was a metaphor John Howard liked to use when it was fixing time for his government.
The supporters of Labor and the Greens may dislike the Abbott government, but it is among the Coalition’s own hinterland of support that despair runs deepest.
But the people who were central to Howard's success do not see the resemblance. "Howard used to talk about knocking off barnacles when 80 per cent of things were good and the 20 per cent needed fixing. This government has 80 per cent wrong," says one.
Illustration: Rocco Fazzari
"It would be a luxury for Abbott to be able to knock off some barnacles. It supposes that he has a ship. This government has no purpose, no sense of direction. The prime minister's office is so busy managing everything they manage nothing. It's Rudd all over again."
Except that rather than the Prime Minister himself being the chokepoint through which every decision must pass, this time it's his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, according to the universal accounts emerging from inside the Abbott government. Credlin has become a proxy target for attacks which otherwise would be directed at Abbott.
Another central figure of the Howard era spontaneously offered the same comparison. "It takes you back to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, doesn't it?" he volunteered at the end of a confused and damaging week for the government.
The supporters of Labor and the Greens may dislike the Abbott government, but it is among the Coalition's own hinterland of support that despair runs deepest. A third stalwart of the Howard experience said that the talk of removing barnacles supposed that some troublesome policies could be scraped off and that the ship would then sail swiftly ahead:
"They can fix some policies, but then you still need your ministers to be good. They can reset their budget strategy, but you still need your treasurer to be good. They've got no idea."
This trio of Howard veterans does not want to be seen to be openly criticising a Coalition government, but other supporters are not so shy. In the last couple of weeks some of the Coalition's most dependable devotees have raised a clamour. Andrew Bolt: "The Abbott government must now change or die." An editorial in The Australian: "Abbott government is doomed without narrative." The Murdoch flagship singled out Credlin for being too dominant. Janet Albrechtsen: "Something has to change." She pointed to today's state election: "Victorians are seriously thinking of throwing out a first-term state government, something that hasn't happened for more than 50 years. It's a potent lesson for the federal Liberals."
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this outpouring of frustration and apprehension is its timing. The Abbott government has been in power for 14 months. It's not even halfway through its three-year term.
The single biggest reason for all the fretting is the polling. The government has been permanently behind since late last year, and the latest Newspoll set off a special panic. Abbott's partisans thought that the G20 summit was a triumph that should have been rewarded with a bounce in the polls. Instead, the Newspoll showed Labor's lead lengthening.
Another reason is that we know worse lies ahead. The task of deficit repair is failing, and that is about to be compounded.
Six months after Joe Hockey delivered the budget, the Senate is refusing to pass budget measures with a collective value of $30 billion over four years. On top of that, iron ore prices have been hit hard and experts estimate that this will cut corporate tax revenue to the Treasury by some $10 billion a year.
The effect of all this will be laid bare in the half-financial year budget update, elegantly known as MYEFO for Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, to be published next month.
Is the rising panic justified? The comparison with the Rudd and Gillard years is particularly striking. In a couple of ways it is apt. First, Abbott has replicated one of Labor's greatest failings, its chronic inability to get the Australian people to support its big reforms. Labor would blurt out dramatic new policies without in any way preparing the public. Without convincing the people of a problem, it would abruptly announce a solution.
The Rudd and Gillard governments routinely failed to explain in any sustained, persuasive way. Their opponents would fill the void, and their policies would fail. So, too, with the Abbott government.
Australia accepted that the new government needed to bring the deficit in check. But instead of just cutting spending and raising revenue, the government produced a highly ideological budget that sought to refashion Australian society.
The budget was an attempt to alter the behaviour of Australians receiving welfare, going to the doctor and studying at university. There is an argument for all three; this government did not even try to make the arguments to the people before announcing the policies. The result was an instant wall of public opposition.
"You have to match the solution to the problem," said one of the Howard veterans. "These guys delivered solutions to problems that the public couldn't see."
Second, the Abbott government has centralised decision-making in the prime minister's office at least as much as Kevin Rudd did. "Nothing is decided in this government without going through Peta," said a minister.
She sets strategy, makes appointments, decides policy and even, according to a minister, "chose the flowers on the tables at the G20". This isn't correct. But Credlin did make decisions about detail including the size of the rooms for the various G20 events and where people would stand.
"She doesn't seem to trust Tony by himself," says a cabinet minister. "She goes to every meeting with him, she attends every function. She seems to worry about what he might do if left to his own devices." Credlin's level of control frustrates many in the government. On these aspects, the Abbott government recalls the belief of some of the native tribes of North America: That a warrior took on the attributes of enemies they killed in battle. The Abbott government seems to be assuming some of the most unimpressive features of the Labor government it defeated.
But the comparison with Rudd and Gillard breaks down on two fundamental characteristics. Labor was notoriously beset by the rivalry between Rudd and Gillard. The destabilisation unleashed by Gillard's strike at Rudd never ended. The Abbott government is a model of stability by comparison.
The other? Abbott's philosophy on his relationship with the electorate. Abbott has never been a popular figure, and he has accepted that. He does not seek to win popularity in the usual craven ways. Instead, he decided at the outset that, if he couldn't be popular, he'd be purposeful. He would seek respect by taking on reforms and pursuing them doggedly and steadily. Rudd and Gillard, by contrast, pursued popularity endlessly and would abandon unpopular policy if it got too hard.
His government has achieved all but one of its election-slogan promises. He promised to stop the boats. Tick. To get rid of the carbon tax. Tick. To get rid of the mining tax. Tick. To end the waste and pay back the debt. This, of course, is the one that is, if anything, further from delivery than ever.
And there have been other achievements. Three trade agreements with Australia's three biggest export markets, for instance. A broadly successful foreign policy that is advancing Australia's interests with all the major powers simultaneously.
As for Credlin, the criticism of her ability to make strategy overlooks an important fact. It was the same woman who drew up Abbott's strategy in opposition. The same strategy that panicked Rudd into abandoning his core promise on climate change, the same strategy that stampeded Labor into toppling Rudd, the same strategy that almost brought Labor down in 2010 and did bring Labor down in 2013. The perception in the prime minister's office is that a panicking party has forgotten who put it into power.
But none of this impresses the Howard veterans. One of the mainstays of Howard's long success says that Abbott and Credlin are making a basic error – they have a checklist of accomplishments and they mistake this for a strategy.
"The first requirement of a government is that it gives the electorate confidence. This government is undermining economic confidence. And on terrorism and national security it has made people more anxious than ever. Where's the strategy to generate confidence?"
And Abbott's underlying philosophy of steadfastly earning respect through strong and dogged leadership? "That was Paul Keating's election strategy in 1996. 'Yes Paul, you're a strong leader, but we hate you and the economy is a mess, goodbye!' Good luck with that."
It's certainly true that there is no sign of any emerging public respect. Indeed, there is evidence that the public is as depressed about the state of politics now as it was under the political behaviours that took hold from 2010 under Labor.
Abbott took the opposition leadership at the end of 2009. It was in 2010 that his hyperoppositionism panicked Labor, that Rudd broke his climate change promise, that Gillard tore him down, that the election ended in a hung parliament. "We entered a different phase in late 2010 and 2011" according to the polling evidence, says the analyst and former Fairfax pollster John Stirton.
"It's a phase of protracted unpopularity of leaders,"where the combined approval rating of both prime minister and opposition leader is negative. "It started late 2010 and we're still in it." The last time this happened was in the Keating years when he faced Alexander Downer and John Hewson.
"There is a continuity since 2010. With the exception of the briefest period in late last year when Abbott was elected promising grown-up government, the government of the day has been behind in the polls, regardless of which government it is," says Stirton. "It seems to reflect continuous disenchantment with politics and way it's played."
Australia craves a new way of politics. No amount of barnacle scraping will achieve that.
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