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Abbott's record suggests he could do Rudd's job
June 19, 2010
The Labor Party and ACTU attack ads on Tony Abbott are most revealing. But they tell us more about the attackers than the target. Labor ran its first TV attack ad on Abbott the very day he was elected Liberal Leader, December 1.
Using the grainy black-and-white photo that is obligatory in political attack ads, the inevitable harsh-rasping voiceover warns voters: "The Liberal Party under Mr Abbott will take Australia backwards. Backwards on climate change. And back to Work Choices."
A second ad attacks Abbott's record on hospital spending in his time as minister for health. A third critiques his economics. Another exploits his confession that he doesn't always tell the gospel truth and mocks his image as a straight shooter: "Next time he says anything, ask yourself – is he really telling the truth?"
There's a new thought for the Australian public! That a politician might sometimes be evasive or misleading – who knew?
This ad has a bitter sequel for Labor. In a poll conducted by Essential Media two weeks after the ad screened, voters found Kevin Rudd slightly less trustworthy than they found Abbott.
Labor has enjoyed heavy reinforcement for its negative campaign against Abbott. Since March the ACTU has been running TV ads to frame up Abbott as the walking reincarnation of John Howard's Work Choices policy. The evidence?
"A minister that backed those laws is now the leader, Tony Abbott, who now says 'The phrase Work Choices is dead.' He chose not to say Work Choices was dead. Just the name." The ad concludes: "Tony Abbott will bring back Work Choices. He just won't call it that."
This ad feeds a real concern. Another Essential Media poll found last month that 58 per cent of respondents thought it likely that "Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party would try to bring back industrial laws similar to Work Choices".
So these are the negative ads – four from Labor and a complementary campaign from the ACTU – and we are still months away from any actual election campaign.
And how many positive ads has Labor run? How many of its achievements has it promoted after 2ΜΜΜΜΜΜ years in power? One. Labor screened an ad in May last year with Kevin Rudd touting last year's budget. And that's it.
How is this revealing? "It's a bad sign for the total longevity of this government that they have swung so strongly into negative campaigning so early," says Rod Tiffen, professor emeritus in government at the University of Sydney.
"It suggests the long-term support for them is more brittle than they thought a year ago. In the short term the ads will be effective but in the longer term it shows clearly that their goodwill is highly perishable."
This line of attack started six months ago, in the days when Rudd Labor commanded a crushing advantage over the Coalition.
Even before Rudd decided to throw away his 20-point popularity lead by demonstrating that he was prepared to walk away from the "greatest moral and economic challenge of our time" – climate change – Labor was deeply worried.
And Labor and the ACTU were so worried that they were prepared to distort the truth to damage Abbott. As they know full well, Tony Abbott was not in favour of Work Choices.
He was one of two members of the Howard cabinet to consistently oppose the policy. Together with Howard's minister for workplace relations, Kevin Andrews, Abbott argued against the policy for three reasons. First, that it exceeded the government's mandate; second, that it was unjustifiably harsh on workers; and third, that it was politically dangerous to the government. They were right on all counts.
As Abbott said in an interview for my book, To the Bitter End: "We did have strong reservations, yeah, but the strong view of the cabinet and the PM and the treasurer was that this had to be done."
Abbott wanted Howard to retain the no-disadvantage test, which meant that no worker could be left worse off under industrial law.
Now that he's leader, Abbott has made clear that the Coalition will not revert to Work Choices, that he will preserve the no-disadvantage test as Labor has it.
The three key characteristics of the Labor ads are that they are very early, very negative and very personal – it's all about Abbott.
Now Rudd's popularity has collapsed so far that it matches Abbott's almost precisely. So we can expect an increasingly desperate Labor campaign.
One clear indicator of Labor's fast-building desperation was its decision to break its own promise and start spending taxpayers' funds on blatantly political advertising. This abuse of public money will finance Labor's positive ads – for instance, spending $38 million of our money promoting its proposed mining tax – while it preserves the party's own money to pay for the negative ads attacking Abbott.
Perverse, isn't it, that Rudd Labor is only running positive ads as a direct consequence of its own dishonesty and fraud? With Rudd Labor, even the positive is a negative.
The Liberals' ads aren't much better. Their positive ad promoting the attractions of Abbott quickly turns negative as it criticises the Rudd government's asylum-seeker policy. Its preposterous red arrows sweeping from the north on to a map of Australia evoke the yellow peril and appeal directly to racism and xenophobia.
It is nonetheless extraordinary that such a fresh young government, so full of promise and energy, should have no achievements it thinks worth advertising after 2ΜΜΜΜΜΜ years in power.
And isn't it bitterly ironic for Labor that the man it set out to destroy with its attack ads is now Rudd's poll equal, thanks largely to the Rudd government's own failures?
A few months ago Abbott was a token Opposition Leader destined to fight hard but fail. Today he is truly the alternative prime minister – if an election had been held a fortnight ago, Abbott would now be prime minister, according to the Nielsen poll, which had the Coalition ahead on the election-deciding measure, the two-party preferred vote, by 53 per cent to 47.
So, beyond the attack ads and the political satire of him as the Vatican-loving, Speedo-wearing, monarchist love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, what sort of government leader would Abbott be?
Probably the best way of assessing him is to consider the only time in his life when he has wielded real power, as a minister in the Howard government.
As parliamentary secretary for employment, 1996-98, he proposed and implemented the idea of a Green Corps, where thousands of unemployed people volunteer for paid jobs rehabilitating the environment. It turned out to be a prototype work-for-the-dole scheme and a successful one.
As the minister for employment services, 1998-2003, he inherited a failing experiment of the Howard government, the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment Service, and its reinvention as the Job Network. It was a radical idea no country had tried.
When Abbott took up the portfolio, firms in the network were collapsing. Abbott turned it around. It is now an international model. Other countries send officials to study the Australian success.
He also vastly expanded Howard's early work-for-the-dole scheme. At first, it was hugely controversial. Labor opposed it. Today it is Labor policy and nationally accepted, and, indeed, Labor is extending the principle of welfare reciprocity in other areas of policy.
Abbott commissioned the Cole royal commission into the thuggery and rorts in the construction industry and created the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner to deal with the problems. Again, this has been successful. So successful that Labor has kept it in place against the demands of the unions.
And as health minister, 2003-07, Abbott inherited a crisis that had specialists walking out of hospitals. Uncontrolled surges in the cost of medical indemnity insurance was forcing doctors out of practice and threatening grave consequences for the health system. Abbott worked with the states to solve the crisis and keep the system running.
This record does not qualify him as one of the greatest reformers in Australian history but it does entitle him to be considered a competent minister and an effective wielder of executive power.
Naturally, Abbott disregarding the asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton or being rude to Nicola Roxon are much more newsworthy. News is made when something goes wrong. But, as a minister, Abbott made a lot of things right. Not newsworthy, but meaningful qualifications to bring to his job application for the prime ministership.
And you won't see his achievements in any Labor Party ad.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor.
Don't worry about Workchoices Abbott opposed it when in government and has already said they won't reintroduce it if the Coalition win government.
June 19, 2010
The Labor Party and ACTU attack ads on Tony Abbott are most revealing. But they tell us more about the attackers than the target. Labor ran its first TV attack ad on Abbott the very day he was elected Liberal Leader, December 1.
Using the grainy black-and-white photo that is obligatory in political attack ads, the inevitable harsh-rasping voiceover warns voters: "The Liberal Party under Mr Abbott will take Australia backwards. Backwards on climate change. And back to Work Choices."
A second ad attacks Abbott's record on hospital spending in his time as minister for health. A third critiques his economics. Another exploits his confession that he doesn't always tell the gospel truth and mocks his image as a straight shooter: "Next time he says anything, ask yourself – is he really telling the truth?"
There's a new thought for the Australian public! That a politician might sometimes be evasive or misleading – who knew?
This ad has a bitter sequel for Labor. In a poll conducted by Essential Media two weeks after the ad screened, voters found Kevin Rudd slightly less trustworthy than they found Abbott.
Labor has enjoyed heavy reinforcement for its negative campaign against Abbott. Since March the ACTU has been running TV ads to frame up Abbott as the walking reincarnation of John Howard's Work Choices policy. The evidence?
"A minister that backed those laws is now the leader, Tony Abbott, who now says 'The phrase Work Choices is dead.' He chose not to say Work Choices was dead. Just the name." The ad concludes: "Tony Abbott will bring back Work Choices. He just won't call it that."
This ad feeds a real concern. Another Essential Media poll found last month that 58 per cent of respondents thought it likely that "Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party would try to bring back industrial laws similar to Work Choices".
So these are the negative ads – four from Labor and a complementary campaign from the ACTU – and we are still months away from any actual election campaign.
And how many positive ads has Labor run? How many of its achievements has it promoted after 2ΜΜΜΜΜΜ years in power? One. Labor screened an ad in May last year with Kevin Rudd touting last year's budget. And that's it.
How is this revealing? "It's a bad sign for the total longevity of this government that they have swung so strongly into negative campaigning so early," says Rod Tiffen, professor emeritus in government at the University of Sydney.
"It suggests the long-term support for them is more brittle than they thought a year ago. In the short term the ads will be effective but in the longer term it shows clearly that their goodwill is highly perishable."
This line of attack started six months ago, in the days when Rudd Labor commanded a crushing advantage over the Coalition.
Even before Rudd decided to throw away his 20-point popularity lead by demonstrating that he was prepared to walk away from the "greatest moral and economic challenge of our time" – climate change – Labor was deeply worried.
And Labor and the ACTU were so worried that they were prepared to distort the truth to damage Abbott. As they know full well, Tony Abbott was not in favour of Work Choices.
He was one of two members of the Howard cabinet to consistently oppose the policy. Together with Howard's minister for workplace relations, Kevin Andrews, Abbott argued against the policy for three reasons. First, that it exceeded the government's mandate; second, that it was unjustifiably harsh on workers; and third, that it was politically dangerous to the government. They were right on all counts.
As Abbott said in an interview for my book, To the Bitter End: "We did have strong reservations, yeah, but the strong view of the cabinet and the PM and the treasurer was that this had to be done."
Abbott wanted Howard to retain the no-disadvantage test, which meant that no worker could be left worse off under industrial law.
Now that he's leader, Abbott has made clear that the Coalition will not revert to Work Choices, that he will preserve the no-disadvantage test as Labor has it.
The three key characteristics of the Labor ads are that they are very early, very negative and very personal – it's all about Abbott.
Now Rudd's popularity has collapsed so far that it matches Abbott's almost precisely. So we can expect an increasingly desperate Labor campaign.
One clear indicator of Labor's fast-building desperation was its decision to break its own promise and start spending taxpayers' funds on blatantly political advertising. This abuse of public money will finance Labor's positive ads – for instance, spending $38 million of our money promoting its proposed mining tax – while it preserves the party's own money to pay for the negative ads attacking Abbott.
Perverse, isn't it, that Rudd Labor is only running positive ads as a direct consequence of its own dishonesty and fraud? With Rudd Labor, even the positive is a negative.
The Liberals' ads aren't much better. Their positive ad promoting the attractions of Abbott quickly turns negative as it criticises the Rudd government's asylum-seeker policy. Its preposterous red arrows sweeping from the north on to a map of Australia evoke the yellow peril and appeal directly to racism and xenophobia.
It is nonetheless extraordinary that such a fresh young government, so full of promise and energy, should have no achievements it thinks worth advertising after 2ΜΜΜΜΜΜ years in power.
And isn't it bitterly ironic for Labor that the man it set out to destroy with its attack ads is now Rudd's poll equal, thanks largely to the Rudd government's own failures?
A few months ago Abbott was a token Opposition Leader destined to fight hard but fail. Today he is truly the alternative prime minister – if an election had been held a fortnight ago, Abbott would now be prime minister, according to the Nielsen poll, which had the Coalition ahead on the election-deciding measure, the two-party preferred vote, by 53 per cent to 47.
So, beyond the attack ads and the political satire of him as the Vatican-loving, Speedo-wearing, monarchist love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, what sort of government leader would Abbott be?
Probably the best way of assessing him is to consider the only time in his life when he has wielded real power, as a minister in the Howard government.
As parliamentary secretary for employment, 1996-98, he proposed and implemented the idea of a Green Corps, where thousands of unemployed people volunteer for paid jobs rehabilitating the environment. It turned out to be a prototype work-for-the-dole scheme and a successful one.
As the minister for employment services, 1998-2003, he inherited a failing experiment of the Howard government, the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment Service, and its reinvention as the Job Network. It was a radical idea no country had tried.
When Abbott took up the portfolio, firms in the network were collapsing. Abbott turned it around. It is now an international model. Other countries send officials to study the Australian success.
He also vastly expanded Howard's early work-for-the-dole scheme. At first, it was hugely controversial. Labor opposed it. Today it is Labor policy and nationally accepted, and, indeed, Labor is extending the principle of welfare reciprocity in other areas of policy.
Abbott commissioned the Cole royal commission into the thuggery and rorts in the construction industry and created the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner to deal with the problems. Again, this has been successful. So successful that Labor has kept it in place against the demands of the unions.
And as health minister, 2003-07, Abbott inherited a crisis that had specialists walking out of hospitals. Uncontrolled surges in the cost of medical indemnity insurance was forcing doctors out of practice and threatening grave consequences for the health system. Abbott worked with the states to solve the crisis and keep the system running.
This record does not qualify him as one of the greatest reformers in Australian history but it does entitle him to be considered a competent minister and an effective wielder of executive power.
Naturally, Abbott disregarding the asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton or being rude to Nicola Roxon are much more newsworthy. News is made when something goes wrong. But, as a minister, Abbott made a lot of things right. Not newsworthy, but meaningful qualifications to bring to his job application for the prime ministership.
And you won't see his achievements in any Labor Party ad.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor.
Don't worry about Workchoices Abbott opposed it when in government and has already said they won't reintroduce it if the Coalition win government.
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