The Abbott Government’s First 200 Days

After 200 days of Abbott Government, the polls were mixed, the new Senate oddly divided and the way ahead full of humps and challenges for Australia’s leaders. Labor faced a difficult period of renewal as the Greens appeared to have captured left of centre votes. Treasurer Joe Hockey had a herculean task in preparing a Budget that could begin decades of prudent financial management for a nation with great expectations. Cuts to government spending were being foreshadowed and more self-reliance was on the cards. To assess the Abbott’s Government’s first 200 days, Jennifer Hewett, National Affairs Columnist with The Australian Financial Review, Patricia Karvelas, Victorian Editor and Bureau Chief for The Australian and Gerard Henderson, columnist with The Australian spoke for The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 23 April 2014.

THE ABBOTT GOVERNMENT’S FIRST 200 DAYS

GERARD HENDERSON

Barring a double dissolution, the next Federal election is due somewhere between mid-September and mid-December 2016 – that is, between 29 and 32 months away.  In other words, Tony Abbott’s Coalition government has completed less than – or around – 20 per cent of its term.

Yet, in the past 200 days or so, many myths have emerged about Tony Abbott and the Coalition, Bill Shorten and Labor, Christine Milne and the Greens, Clive Palmer and the Palmer United Party – and more besides.  It makes sense, at this relatively early stage of the political cycle, to challenge some of the prevailing mythology.

Myth One – Tony Abbott and the Coalition are travelling poorly.

I was one of the few commentators who recognised that Abbott was a real threat to Labor – then led by Kevin Rudd – when the Member for Warringah became leader of the Liberal Party on 1 December 2009.  This was not the fashionable view at the time among political commentators – leftists and conservatives among others.

Writing in The Australian, Professor Robert Manne fantasised that his friend Clive Hamilton would win the Higgins by-election, on 5 December 2009, for the Greens and canvassed “the destruction of the Liberal Party”.  And Dr Judith Brett, writing in The Age, declared that, under Abbott, the Liberals would be “a down-market protest party of angry old men and the outer suburbs”.

Of course, it was not be.  Kevin Rudd was soon replaced by Julia Gillard.  As The Australian reported yesterday, Troy Bramston has revealed in his new book Rudd, Gillard and Beyond that Ms Gillard told Mr Rudd on 21 June 2010 – just two days before the leadership change – that Labor was destined to lose the forthcoming election to Mr Abbott.

Tony Abbott nearly led the Coalition to victory in August 2010 and achieved one of the highest two-party preferred votes in September 2013 – doing better than Bob Hawke in 1983 and Kevin Rudd in 2007.

Since the 2013 election, the Coalition achieved a swing to it in the by-election of Kevin Rudd’s former seat of Griffith. Moreover, in the special Western Australian Senate election on 5 April the swing against the Liberal Party now stands at 5 per cent – the normal swing against an incumbent government in a by-election.  What’s more, there were swings to the Coalition in the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections.

The media focus on Labor’s poor performance in Western Australia overlooks the fact that in April 2014 (as in the first count of the September 2013 Senate election in Western Australia), the Liberal Party won three Senate seats and four right-of-centre candidates were elected in total.  This was a successful outcome for the Coalition.

Myth Two – Labor, under Bill Shorten’s leadership, is unelectable

At this stage, the opinion polls mean little. Even so, Labor is ahead in some. Moreover, Bill Shorten’s approval rating, at 44 per cent in Newspoll – is reasonable for a new Opposition leader after a significant defeat. The AC Nielsen result is much the same.

Some commentators once said that Tony Abbott could not win.  It would be just as foolish to say that Bill Shorten cannot win.  In what is essentially a competition between the Coalition and Labor – where the margin of victory is usually in the range of 52 per cent to 48 per cent of the vote – the Opposition invariably has a chance of victory.

Myth Three – Senator-Elect Joe Bullock was responsible for Labor’s disastrous showing in the Western Australian Senate Election

I phoned Joe Bullock recently, just after the left-wing union United Voice – which had agreed to place Bullock ahead of the left’s Louise Pratt on the Labor Senate ticket – had called on him to consider stepping down.  I asked him whether he had considered taking up the United Voice proposal.  He said that he had – earlier in that morning – but not for very long. Or words to that effect.

Certainly Bullock made some unwise comments when addressing a Christian group in Perth last November – after the initial election but before the Court of Disputed Returns ordered a new election for the Senate in Western Australia.  However, Labor had done poorly in the September 2013 election in Western Australia – even though it won two seats in the first count.  Labor just did worse in the second Senate election earlier this month, winning only one seat.

David Marr told the Insiders program on 6 April that Bullock’s trade union – the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (the SDA or “Shoppers Union”) – “operates…as a sort of arm of the Catholic Church inside the Labor Party”.

How strange, then, that Rome’s men Down Under chose to infiltrate the ALP through Senator-elect Bullock. The fact is that Joe Bullock is not now – and never has been – a Catholic.  But he does represent a tradition in the Labor Party which is just as valid as that of his left-wing running mate Louise Pratt – who, on many issues, is close to the Greens.

Labor’s on-going problem is that it has to retain the support of social conservatives like Bullock while trying to keep some of the green-left vote giving their first preference to Labor.  In Western Australia,  Labor’s specific problems turned on its continuing support for a carbon tax and the mining tax.

Myth Four – The so-called “Israel lobby” has too much influence in Australia

This is the only fresh material in Bob Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister. I wrote about Bob Carr’s changing position on Israel in my column in The Weekend Australian last Saturday and will not repeat my comment here.

Yet the Diary of a Foreign Minister indicates that the former Foreign Minister exhibits a lack of self-awareness about what, using Carr-like terminology, might best be termed the “Palestinian lobby”. Let’s go to the diaries:

20 November 2012.  We have over 180,000 people of Lebanese ancestry living in Australia. I wanted to abstain [on a United Nations motion about an Israeli military action which had led to an oil-slick along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts]… Chris Bowen, in danger of losing his seat in McMahon, endorses this.

27 November 2012. Kevin Rudd is aware that figures in the New South Wales Right – Chris Bowen, Tony Burke, John Murphy – want to have something to report to the bursting Arab and Islamic populations in their electorates.  Chris Bowen wants Labor to take into account the interests of Australians of Arabic background.  John Murphy declares that he has thousands of Arab voters in his electorate.

30 November 2012.  Part of Labor shift on Israel can be explained by the rise of Arab or Islamic members in western Sydney electorates.

On 9 September 2013, Phillip Coorey reported in the Australian Financial Review that Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, the Grand Mufti of Australia, threatened to withdraw support of the Muslim community for Labor if Bob Carr was replaced in the Senate by Paul Howes.  The then AWU national secretary indicated, shortly after, that he had decided not to seek Labor pre-selection for the Senate seat vacated by Bob Carr.

For the record, the so-called Israel lobby has little influence within any electorate and has never sought to veto the pre-selection of an able political contender with respect to either the Labor Party or the Liberal Party.

According to the Diary of a Foreign Minister, Labor needed to change its foreign policy on the Middle East in order to accommodate the interests of Muslim Australians living in western Sydney. What Bob Carr did not point out is that the same concern explains why, in September 2012, all but one of the western Sydney Labor MPs voted against same sex marriage – including some who admitted that they supported the concept.

Myth Five – Clive Palmer, as of 1 July 2014, will become the most important politician in Australia and PUP will hold the balance of power in the Senate

To get legislation through the Senate after 1 July, Tony Abbott will need support from either the Labor Party or the Greens or six of the eight cross-bench senators who do not owe allegiance to the Coalition or Labor or the Greens.  The Palmer United Party has three senators as of 1 July – Glenn Lazarus (Queensland), Dio Wang (Western Australia) and Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania) and seems likely to be supported by the Australian Motor Enthusiasts Party senator Ricky Muir (Victoria).

Clearly, PUP’s support for Coalition legislation in the Senate will not be sufficient if Labor opposes the Abbott government.  The backing of at least two of the four remaining Independents will also be required.  That is, two of Nick Xenophon (South Australia), John Madigan (DLP Victoria), David Leyonhjelm (NSW) and Bob Day (Family First, South Australia).   In other words, all the cross-bench senators will share the balance of power after 1 July.  Not the Palmer United Party alone – although it will be able to block legislation with the support of Labor and/or the Greens.

Australian national politics will be interesting enough over the next 1000 days or so – without the current mythology.