The Mandarin's coup

So it seems that a decade of slavish devotion to the Liberals gave right-wing pundits little insight into how the party actually works and those who predicted Turnbull’s success were wrong. The Liberals have ended up with what you get after any implosion, not very much. Nelson’s answer to Kerry O’Brien’s question as to why he switched from Labor to Liberals in the early 1990s seemed to have something to do with paying his bills. Oh well, that will have to do for now.

Of more interest to the Mandarin is his own party and he completed his anti-politics coup on the party yesterday, after flagging it at party conference in May and laying down the rules in more detail on election night. The issue is not whether ignoring the factions changes the make-up of the ministry, he has no reason to prefer one faction to the other; the point is the way it was done. By appointing the ministry himself, he has stripped the faction power brokers of one of their major leverages of influence in the party, by appointing celebrity candidates over their heads, he has removed another.

The power of factions had declined as the real influence of the unions that formed them has declined. This is the real significance of Gillard’s ‘super portfolio’. It is not actually that ‘super’ if the boast she made back in May that the unions declined quicker under the last Labor government than under Howard continues under the current one. The Australian’s Sid Marris was right that linking education to industrial relations makes the link between any union claims to productivity explicit but that is probably more relevant to Keating. Under Rudd it is more about replacing industrial relations, a dying issue, with education as the main route for aspirational working people. It is incredible to think that there was a time when that was supposed to be the unions. Rudd and Gillard will use education to bury the unions.

Wrapped around all of this is the straight-jacket of the economy and the end of the major parties’ (and their internal factions) long tradition of using government spending for political purposes. This is what Rudd means by a much greater role for Treasury and something he flagged at the party’s launch.

While the factions have been hollowed for some time what has made it possible for Rudd to burst the bubble is the change in the international situation. Whatever the role of Stephen Smith as Foreign Affairs Minster (it sounds like he will be entertaining a lot of minor Asian Ministers in Perth from what Rudd said) the real job will be with Penny Wong to manage the way that the environment has become the language of diplomats in constructing the new world order around climate change. Internally she will be doing a similar thing on federalism with Premiers over water. While these have been taken away from Garrett he will still have an important role. How did Rudd put it? Garrett will deliver on programs on water and energy efficiency, i.e. he will bring in austerity measures, already practiced by state Labor and flagged by federal Labor in ads on the web in the run up to the election. Garrett will play a key role in laying the moral foundation for the changes in the international order at home. Make no mistake, this will change the way politics is conducted.

By over-riding the factions, Rudd is now creating a core of Labor MPs who are almost wholly reliant on him for patronage, centred on an inner circle that includes Gillard, Wong and Faulkner. However, there is one problem with getting rid of the factions. It has removed the structure by which the Labor party, and the individuals in it, had conducted themselves, something that had its uses during the demoralisation of the last decade and prevented the instability that the Liberals are about to go through. The placing of ambitious new entrants like Shorten and Combet to shadow their ministers looks a little too clever and may create problems at some time in the future.

All that is left is to clear the path of any debris left over from the age of business/union political parties that is now coming to an end. This especially means the major policy failure of the last fifty years, the stolen generation. An apology is apparently forthcoming for something that happened fifty years ago and members of the current government did not support, but not for the intervention of six months ago that the members of the current government did. This may seem the height of hypocrisy but then this is not about indigenous peoples but is all about the reinvigoration of the Australian political class.

A staged implosion – final update

Thank goodness for Tony Abbott, because it was starting to get a bit surreal. When even right-wing columnists like Pearson claim that Turnbull will be a shoe-in for the Liberal leadership, it raises the question as to whether it is Pearson or the Liberals who have ascended into fantasy.

Turnbull is bright, dynamic and a good communicator and probably the most popular leader the Liberals can choose. There is just one tiny problem, the Liberal party doesn’t agree with most of what he says.

Turnbull reflects the strange state of the Liberal party after the election, which looks much better than it actually is. An election that was fought on sham debates of the past like Workchoices and union power ended up helping the Liberals to keep their heartland better than expected, but not for any reasons that will have much relevance going forward. On paper the Liberals look to be in with a chance next time, it looks like they only need a 2% swing to return to power. However, in reality the Liberals position owes more to an uninspiring campaign from Labor than objective conditions, which should become more obvious as Rudd consolidates power.

The Liberals are in a strange sort of limbo at the moment that would have produced some medium-term stability if Costello had have taken up the leadership and given the pretence of continuity. However, his departure (and possibly Downer's) and Abbot's inability to get support for his leadership are the last stages of the leadership implosion that began when Howard lost his nerve at APEC.

Now the Liberals have been forced into a leadership election that they are not prepared for and while they are still in a state of denial, which they are managing by resuming the attacks on Howard’s legacy that started even before the election. Into that leadership vacuum, ever oblivious, walks Malcolm.

However, despite the leadership collapse, it seems hard to imagine that given they were willing to follow similar policies under Costello only a few days ago, they will throw it away and adopt one that looks more like Keating’s. Sooner or later the Liberals will go tribal as they struggle to re-find their core and if Turnbull actually wins today, he will eventually find himself the leader of a party that is not following. Abbott’s warning that a challenge will come from him at some time was only saying out loud what everyone in the party, except possibly Malcolm, knows.

Howard haters exposed

I want to acknowledge now for the entire nation and publicly recognise Mr Howard's extensive contribution to public service in Australia.

K Rudd’s Victory speech 24 November

Rudd’s thanking of Howard’s extensive public service in front of a crowd celebrating the end of something that unfortunately for them, had been so extensive, was the first act of disciplining the Labor party in government. It took away one of their most important excuses over the last eleven years.

There has always been something slightly irritating about those who made such a song and dance about Howard and his, er, relaxed attitude to the truth. Blaming Howard for lying for some people became much easier than dealing with their own political weaknesses. It didn’t need a military occupation of Baghdad to work out that maybe a country, which under decade long sanctions was struggling to maintain its infrastructure, would be unlikely to develop weapons to threaten the world. Maybe that was easier than providing opposition from a party that went in the first time in 1991 on equally spurious grounds (non-existent Kuwaiti democracy and remember the babies in the incubators?). Nor did it take a Senate inquiry to work out that maybe parents that had risked their lives to travel around the world to give their kids a future would be unlikely to throw them into the ocean as a ruse to get picked up by the Navy. Again it would have been difficult to oppose from a party that brought us mandatory detention camps.

Nor is it easily imaginable that whole communities in this country would be so degraded to allow their kids to be systematically abused. The NT intervention is a classic example of this political displacement activity because while Howard’s intervention was widely condemned on the left, the report which made the accusations without bothering to provide any proof, received barely a word of criticism outside parents in the communities. The teary resignation of the Chief Minister responsible for that shoddy piece of social worker prejudice, who cares so much about the indigenous communities that she thinks the best thing to do is give up, is a fitting end to that whole disgraceful saga.

Giving up is now something that Howard is being criticised for failing to do from a new group of Howard-haters, this time from the right. Gerard Henderson provides the latest example in a piece that is extraordinarily convoluted as he tries to explain why his predictions about Howard’s retirement turned out to be wrong (like anybody cares). From a group of right-wingers that have been in denial all year over the government’s clearly imminent defeat, blaming Howard for not handing over to Costello a year ago has been a handy escape clause from having to face tougher political questions.

Of course none of this makes political sense. Even if the Liberal party had undertaken the bizarre act of replacing their most popular asset (more popular than the party) with someone much less so, what then? What exactly was the programme that Costello had that would have led to a fifth term? As the current leadership battle shows, this is a question that the Liberals cannot answer. Even if the Labor party was right and Costello was ready to take Workchoices further (doubtful given the lack of interest the first round received from employers), would that have won? Unlikely. Gillard was right on election night, Costello would have produced a worse result. Unlike Costello, at least Howard could keep up the pretence of being a conviction politician.

It is the Howard-haters who helped with this pretence and who he appealed to in his last election campaign with the call to love him or loathe him. Through the last decade he rode a vacuum both on the left that preferred to make him a right wing demon than face their own political bankruptcy and from those in his own party, like Downer, that could not replace him even when they knew they were heading for defeat. A lot has been made about how Howard’s place in history would have been secure if he had retired early. One wonders how important that was to someone who ended the 1980s having been humiliated by practically every major political figure of that decade. Someone who worried about what history thought of him would surely have given up. Keating’s view of him was always more believable that he was a fraud but Araldited to his seat. He would probably even have broken his retirement promise if he had hung on last Saturday.

In a decade of political pygmies, Howard was not a big man. But he did at least have the appropriate appetite for what is supposed to be the top job for a politician. This has become unfashionable in a period when state premiers and party leaders seem to be succumbing to highly demanding families. But the Liberals should ask themselves this, who has done more damage to the party, Howard or a Treasurer who walked off and left the party in chaos because the top job wasn't handed to him on a plate?

That’s the Right dealt with, now for the Left

Friends, tomorrow the work begins. Australia's long-term challenges demand a new consensus across our country. I'm determined to use the office of prime minister to forge that consensus.

I want to put aside the old battles of the past: the old battles between business and unions, the old battles between growth and the environment, the old and tired battles between federal and state. The old battles between public and private.

K Rudd 24 November 2007

It will be some time before the significance of Rudd’s highly revealing victory speech becomes apparent. The basis of what he was saying hinged on his idea of a new consensus. Andrew Bolt got this 100% wrong on Insiders when he said Rudd was doing me-tooism with Hawke on this. Rudd’s consensus is utterly different from Hawke’s. Hawke was about ending the divide between business and the unions by bringing them together on economic reform. Rudd is ending the divide between business and the unions by saying it no longer exists. This is getting closer to what Workchoices was really about. It was not about business attacking the unions, business didn’t need Workchoices and hardly used AWAs. It was about the previous government filling in a gaping hole in its programme. The ending of Workchoices will have little impact on the industrial relations landscape as it had little impact on it in the first place. It will, however, formally lay to rest an IR debate that in reality died years ago.

There is a similarity with how the Labor leadership will treat IR as to how they will treat indigenous affairs, especially the promised ‘apology’. Rudd’s view on indigenous affairs does not see an apology for the stolen generation as part of building a new national identity. It would be more accurate to say that Rudd is doing it to clear the decks. On issues like the republic and the dubious project of writing a new racial constitution, Rudd shares little appetite for the national identity project shown by his Labor predecessors and much of the current party. He more sees it as a technocratic issue, rather than a political one. Again, any apology would be more to bury the issue than to make it central to the political project of a Rudd government.

On the environment, again it will seem Rudd is carrying out policy agreed by the party but the content of what he is doing will not be what the party is expecting. The Greens did better than expected in this election as Labor’s campaign stepped back from emphasising issues like climate change that would have eroded the Liberals’ heartland. However, the dynamic still looks unfavourable for the Greens. Their problem is that what have until now been mainly local issues (like the Tamar pulp mill) are in the process of becoming a single global one of climate change. The Greens’ structure, based on local organising, will look increasingly irrelevant to something that is becoming the language of diplomats. More importantly, while the Greens agenda is often in open conflict with business, the global warming agenda is much less so, as business is reasonably comfortable with its call for austerity and restraint. This is the basis for Rudd to talk about ending the conflict between business and the environment and why businessmen like Murdoch have become converts to the issue.

This links to the last, and probably most unnerving conflict that Rudd wants to end, that between public and private. What exactly does Rudd mean by this? It would be a conflict that many people would be happy with. Yet what is noticeable in the climate change agenda and the ads Labor was running before the election on the web, is how intrusive into daily lives it can get. The sort of moralising seen by rock stars around the world has gone to government level in Australia, and Garrett has an important role to play. Despite his gaffes, he is still likely to have a key role, whatever his portfolio.

Having spent most of the year ignoring the fragmentation of the coalition, the media is focussing on it just when it has become irrelevant. Of more interest now is the transformation of the Labor party that had been moving in fits and starts over the year but is now speeding up as Rudd consolidates power. The real battle is between Rudd and his party that will be disguised by him carrying out Labor’s stated goals, abolishing Workchoices, ratifying Kyoto and apologising for the stolen generation, but removing or changing their significance as he does so. For eleven years, most of the party has been ignoring the way these debates have changed by hiding behind Howard-hating. With the focus of their energies now gone, they are looking rather exposed.

A staged implosion – an update

Well that was quick. Costello’s refusal of the leadership has undermined the brief stability given by the Liberals holding up reasonably well in their blue ribbon metropolitan seats. In doing so he paid back the party that had refused to give him the leadership on a plate a year ago.

The obvious barb in Costello’s press conference was the attack on the NSW Liberal Party, blaming them for the Lindsay fiasco. He probably had a point. The issue wouldn’t have been the message that Labor is soft on Bali bombers, given that only a few months ago Howard was trying to argue McClelland’s opposition to the death penalty for the Bali bombers was just expressing party policy. As Costello said, it took up airtime and ‘sucking the oxygen’ out of the last few days. But it did that because the Liberals could not clamp down on it. Jackie Kelly should never have been allowed to get on the air and say it was a joke. The leadership’s inability to say who had been expelled was to cover up the fact that they could not expel who they wanted because the branch was out of control.

It is the lack of alternatives behind the party’s fragmentation that Costello touched on in his press conference. The clue was Costello’s references to ‘generational change’. Generational change has been a loaded euphemism for the coalition this year, firstly to console themselves on Labor’s lead, by implying Rudd was just a younger Howard. Costello also used it for his challenge to Howard. Mainly this concealed that Costello didn’t really have an alternative to Howard than his age. However, it was also a way of obliquely referring to the differences that he did have, but would struggle to overtly campaign on in the party, the republic, saying sorry for the stolen generation, liberal family values etc.

This gets to the problem of Costello’s challenge. His main points of differences with Howard are not really the core values of the Liberals. In fact, these days they are not really the core values of Rudd very much either, who is unlikely to oppose them but unlikely to make it the core of his political project. While Costello was incapable of challenging Howard this never really came out and Howard could use Costello as a pretend challenger to manage the party’s dilemma in wanting an alternative but not knowing what it is.

That strategy has now collapsed and the dilemma has now come out in what to do about Malcolm Turnbull. This former leader of the Republican movement and humiliator of Thatcher is hardly a mainstream 'conservative' (expect to hear this word more in the coming battles). He faces strong opposition in the party and certainly did from the former leadership, which is probably why yesterday Costello was talking about another generational change and looking to the next generation after him (it is certain that Howard was grooming Brough for the same reason). Costello call to the next generation is implying that for now there is no palatable alternative for the Liberals after his departure. Which is probably true, otherwise Howard would not have been able to use Costello like he did.

However, Turnbull has three main advantages that make him hard to brush off. First, he is one of the few with the confidence in an alternative agenda from which he can challenge, which is why he was the first to put his hat in the ring. Secondly, his agenda has a constituency in core metropolitan Liberal supporters, as shown by his fairly good hold-out in Wentworth. However, in the election Turnbull’s social agenda was combined with party themes of anti-union, tax cuts and fear of wall-to wall Labor governments, all of which are becoming increasingly irrelevant as Rudd consolidates power. The popularity of Turnbull’s agenda reminds the Liberals that their core support in the metropolitan seats nowadays supports much that they don't agree with. Finally, to many media commentators, Turnbull looks more in tune with the times. The trouble is the times are just not the Liberals’.

[A look at Labor after the election has been postponed until tomorrow.]

[Update: Sad news on the death of one of the most perceptive political commentators in the country, Matt Price.]

Some furniture saved

[The first of two posts looking at the respective parties after the election]

For a party that had just lost its leader and completed a rout from every government in the country for the first time ever, the Liberals were in a remarkably sanguine mood last night. This is without even taking into account the exuberance of the Member for Higgins who was so excited that he told his lot that he would even end up with a swing towards him (unlikely).

Liberals were clearly expecting worse. Polls in the run up to the election were indicating a meltdown in their heartland. So the Liberals’ campaign was more aiming to save the party than the government, with tax cuts combined with scares of union power and wall-to-wall Labor governments targeting its core supporters. It was helped by a Labor campaign that was never really able to counter the scare campaigns and indeed helped in making it seem as though there was an IR issue. Liberal tactics largely appeared to have worked, at least in blue ribbon metropolitan seats across the country where swings were generally below state average.

Liberal relief of at least hanging on to its metropolitan core (although there was less success in semi-urban and rural seats) will probably have several effects in the short to medium term. Firstly, the tearing up of the Howard legacy may not be as savage in the near term and the humiliation of losing his seat will probably be seen as punishment enough. Secondly, Costello’s close association with Howard’s campaign in the final months might not be the kiss of death it could have been and his short-term leadership prospects look better.

However, like the Treasurer’s assessment of his own performance in Higgins, any relief that things are not that bad and that the Liberals now have a base to make a comeback is delusional. The coalition has just suffered the worst 2PP result and probably the third worst seat result in its history and now have no access to power above the Lord Mayoralty in Brisbane. Furthermore, they won't really know why they are in this state. Up till now they had comforted themselves on their poor performance at the state level with the myth that people don’t like voting for the same government in state and federal, which has now been exposed. Without any means to grasp the policy vacuum behind their predicament, internal debate is likely to eventually focus on personalities, either the past leader or the new one.

Finally, their ability to save their heartland was helped by a Labor party that during the campaign still had one foot in the past and so restricted on how far it could make inroads into the Liberals' heartland. However, as Rudd indicated in his victory speech, that is the first thing that is about to change.

[Labor tomorrow]

P.S. It seems the prediction of the result was not far off. Big deal.

The biggest focus group of all

Apparently it is the tradition for Australian political blogs to make a prediction on the election result. This seems like a little bit of chest-beating bravado that isn’t really much point for a site that claims no expertise in psephology unlike the esteemed gentlemen linked on the right. However, in order to retain the freedom to criticise other commentators without sounding like Gerard Henderson, it is probably best to have a go.

Predicting the result has been made difficult by the Labor campaign, which this blog believes has been very ordinary (something disagreed by other commentators but, with exquisite irony, just before their own polls, which only they understand, suggested the exact opposite). Labor is a party in transition as it finds a new role under the leadership of Rudd. There were times when the bite of one of the smartest operators on the Australian political scene was evident during the campaign (such as when he tore up Howard’s record as Treasurer during the debate and kept on asking ‘what’s the point?’ as a belated response to Howard’s retirement announcement). However, generally the campaign seemed less like Rudd’s and more like Beazley’s.

But this election is not really about Labor, it is about the crisis of Australia’s ruling party. The profound exhaustion of a Liberal party that has lost its reason for existence is the real story of this year and, whatever happens today, will only get worse - swiftly if they lose, or delayed, but in full view, if they hang on.

As said at the start of the campaign, a political realignment is coming for which neither party is fully prepared. This is shown by their excessive reliance on focus groups and also by the way they have hung on like grim death to the one thing that fundamentally defined them and divided them in the last century, industrial relations, the last fling of an issue that was resolved years ago. The sham debate on unions and Workchoices may have engrossed the parties, their supporters and the media, but anyone who has had a job in the last decade will know the reality of what has been going on in the Australian workplace since Keating’s reforms.

This reality is why the cover the IR debate has given to this government’s lack of agenda will probably not work and it will lose today. At a guess then, this blog thinks Labor will win comfortably with 87 seats, a majority of 24. This was arrived at by simply aggregating the last set of polls, based on the guidance that as the best indication of what the Australian electorate is thinking, polls are to be taken at face value and to be taken seriously (something that this blog seemed to be one of the few doing earlier this year when Labor’s high fifties support was being routinely dismissed by most commentators). This in turn is based on the sound principle that when the Australian electorate says something, it means it.

Falling into their lap

A curious trend has crept into political commentary in the last days of the election. A growing number of journalists, convinced Rudd will win, have been putting their reasons forward for the Labor victory. The interest rate rises, especially the one during the campaign was the final straw, the government’s ads were much worse than Labor’s and, an increasingly common one, the Liberals ran a terrible campaign whereas Labor’s has been smooth and professional.

Anyone who has just arrived to this election from overseas and was reading all of this would think that Labor’s support has been rising during the campaign. But in fact it hasn’t. If anything, it has drifted down over the campaign (even ignoring the latest Galaxy that says Howard could scrape back in). While The Narrowing has been widely mocked, the poll trends do look a bit narrower over the campaign.

There is no reason why it should. Given how sharp Rudd has been on several instances over the year, this blog thought, after the initial ritual had settled down, that the real reasons for the government’s imminent defeat would become even more apparent. If anything they have become more confused. The giveaway on why commentators have been criticising the Liberals’ campaign is the reasons they give for it, it has kept banging on about unions and the tax giveaway that was made too early. It shows that they have under-estimated just what this campaign was about.

The Liberals entered this campaign in a terrible state. Confidence in the party was collapsing as internal polling was showing that not only was it losing in the marginals, but more demoralising, its core support base was melting away. As a result, the leadership had imploded to the point where the government’s biggest asset, Howard, was forced to promise his retirement. The chronic state of the government was under-estimated by commentators so they could not work out the Liberals’ tactics.

The main purpose of the government campaign, before any thought of winning, was to cohere the party and its core support base (‘saving the furniture’ as one put it). That was why the tax hand-out was done at the start, and the focus had to be on issues that would really only appeal to core Liberal supporters, union power and wall-to-wall Labor governments.

Given the state of the party, it worked reasonably well. The disintegration of the Liberal party continues (and will speed up whether they win or not) but it has been a case of gently falling apart rather than disintegrating. The only real signs were Turnbull and Debnam on Kyoto and the latest, most damaging example, the shenanigans of the out-of-control NSW Liberal party.

The other thing that has helped the Liberals has been Labor’s campaign. Labor’s campaign always gets approval for its slickness which is natural enough for a party run by apparatchiks rather than disparate business interests like the Liberals. Unfortunately they don’t often get the result, and if it wasn’t for the mess the government was in, this one probably wouldn’t either.

Never in the campaign did Labor properly address the Liberals’ attack on union power or the competency of state governments, when they could have respectively honed in on the government playing the politics of the past, or just playing politics. However, there is no more obvious indictment of Labor’s campaign than that it took two months for the campaign to finally realise, after talking to a focus group apparently, that Howard’s retirement announcement was electorally damaging and to be exploited, something they could have worked out much sooner had they used their political common sense.

Keating said in June that Labor’s campaign managers wouldn’t know which side to get out of bed in the morning without asking a focus group. It was probably a focus group they were listening to that made them step up the attack on Workchoices in the last days of the campaign. Once again, instead of just listening, they should have been using their political common sense to interpret it.

A continual feature of qualitative polling through the year (other than Workchoices not coming up that much) was that the reasons people were giving for switching to Labor were not very distinct. Comments like its time for a change, the government’s stale, still like Howard but getting old, were common. It was the vagueness of these comments that made commentators, on the left and right, dismiss Labor’s lead as ‘soft’ and constantly underestimate how resilient it was. Interestingly, in August, when Sky News brought Republican pollster Frank Luntz over from the US, a country where the electorate is not held in as much contempt as it is here, he thought the persistency of these comments, despite their vagueness, significant and signalled that a shift was underway.

What voters were reacting to was a party in government suddenly exposed with a policy vacuum. Not the sort of program exhaustion that gets governments thrown out every now and then, but one of a party that had lost the very reasons for its existence. Given that this is probably unprecedented in Australian politics, it is not surprising that it would have been vaguely expressed, but also not surprising it was so definite.

What has interacted with that is the way the parties have reacted to that vacuum. The end of industrial relations as a real issue in Australian society is a major problem for the two parties that were formed on the back of it. For Labor, there has been a transformation over the last decade at the state level to a more technocratic party administering public services. At the federal level that transformation is also underway guided by the Mandarin, but by fits and starts and a tendency to still indulge themselves in the old battles with the Liberals. A defining event this year was an election in the state where this new technocratic Labor is slowest to emerge, NSW, one of the first ‘modern’ pro-business/union Labor states, but yet to have the crisis to turn them into the bureaucratised Labor parties elsewhere on the continent.

The NSW election in March was intensely demoralising for both parties. The Iemma government was unpopular, but the Liberals were so chronic that they couldn’t even work out a transport policy. It is not surprising Labor wanted to exaggerate the role of Workchoices in such a hollow victory. This IR debate, that is essentially just brand identification for both parties, has been a comfort as the parties struggle for an alignment they are not yet ready for. Given the Liberals’ inability to defend Workchoices, it would seem a pretty uncontroversial reason for the voters to justify a decision they had already made once Rudd’s ascendancy signalled that the old left/right debate was over. Labor's campaign has just taken the end effect of what has happened this year as the cause.

While it is understandable that journalists wanting to catch up with reality will read things backwards, it is surprising Labor is too given that it is led by someone who has from the start distanced himself from the union-led campaign of his predecessor. But the surprise of the campaign is how much Rudd appears to have been constrained by his own party throughout it. If there was an abiding image of the campaign, it was Rudd awkwardly standing on the stage at the launch doing little waves to the people in the audience, clearly instructed not to raise his arms in victory. If he had been let loose he probably wouldn’t have even bothered acknowledging the party other than a wave to his only real friends in the audience, Therese and the kids.

The unmentionable rears its head

If I was running Al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.

JWH 11 February 2007

Howard is right that saying Labor is a friend to terrorism is not part of his campaign. The question is why not? It was in the last two elections and even nine months ago, given what he was saying about the Democrats in the US, he looked ready to try it again.

The Lindsay leaflets are a reminder of one of the big unmentionables in Australian politics, how much it is influenced by international events. Why this government now looks tired and out of ideas is not because it now is. Howard’s government never had an agenda from its beginning. Keating did it all for him, something nicely brought out in Kerry O’Brien’s avuncular, but devastating, last interview with Howard. The government looks out of ideas now because the international cover behind which an empty government has hidden for the last six years has now gone.

Energetic Liberals are having to run around on Sydney streets with fake leaflets because their party leader can no longer make Labor look soft on terrorism. As shown by the US election, the main sponsor of the international agenda of the last six years is now having to consider other strategies and the impact on Australian politics is immediate. Not only shown by the political capital Rudd made of the Howard’s Obama comments but by the inability of the government to even assert its authority on the legal system to carry out a simple request of the British government.

The Haneef affair and the furore over the Obama comments show that when international events move on, the Australian political class has little choice but to very quickly adapt. Within months its authority to impose its agenda on the very core institutions of the state, like the judiciary, fall away and the cohesion of the party starts to weaken. It is why, for example, a PM that is so desperate to try anything to get re-elected he even pretends to like his Treasurer, did not even dare to try and make an issue over a boat-load of Indonesian refugees.

The only one help Howard has is the support of others not to mention it. Labor has barely talked about Iraq since the Obama censure motion. The role that Iraq, terrorism and the US played in the 2004 election gets air-brushed out by the media and it becomes nothing more than Latham’s handshake and interest rates. And the Lindsay affair will become little more than an internal matter over who knew what in the NSW Liberal party. When Andrew Robb was outraged by the attempt by Labor’s Penny Wong on Lateline to make a link between the Lindsay leaflets and Howard’s scare campaign, he relied on the fact that she could not say what that link really was.

Poor Costello – used for the last time

At least Rudd had the decency to look uncomfortable on Rove. Sitting next to Costello on Today Tonight, Howard’s rictus grin stayed stuck on, even while he talked about how Labor would wreck the economy. Actually on the politics, neither of them was that bad, they sounded sincere when they talked up the Labor scare.

When they didn’t sound sincere was when they talked about each other. The awkwardness is a result of Costello’s past bad mouthing of Howard and Howard not getting rid of him for doing so. For a decade, Howard has been riding the vacuum of a government that slumps disastrously every few years but does not have any means of changing its leader. Costello, the sham challenger, was the way Howard could present the party with an alternative, without having to worry him actually being one. There is no better deputy for someone Araldited to his seat that someone incapable of taking it.

That meant as the defeat for the party became obvious, it led to a staged implosion rather than a challenge. So Howard had to stabilise the party by promising to retire but being careful to leave it to the party who would succeed.

Howard’s appearance with Costello on Today Tonight is only for one reason. It is to counter the damage from a Labor party that has finally discovered after two months, that Howard’s solution to the party’s problems may have been bad news electorally. Rudd’s ‘what’s the point?’ to anything Howard says now makes personal the Liberals’ policy vacuum. So Howard had to drag Costello to the camera with him to reassure the electorate that there is a future for the Liberals and in doing so had to defy political reality by asserting that Costello would be appointed unopposed.

It doesn’t really work, of course, because the need for a change is not a fresh face thing. It is policy. Costello’s very lack of a political alternative that meant he couldn’t challenge Howard for the leadership now means he can’t give the sense of a new agenda Howard so desperately needs.

By using Costello, Howard may have done a little good to hanging on to the PM’s role but has at least finished off whatever was left of Costello’s chances by making sure he was associated with the defeat. The party will now be evenly split between those who associate Costello with Howard hanging on to the bitter end and those who blame Costello for allowing him to do so.

How strange to write about the careful machinations of a decade, that in a few days, will be swept away.

The coming anti-politics coup

I'm not interested in arid debates about left, right, centre, up, down

Kevin Rudd AM 15 November

BARRIE CASSIDY: On AM during the week, Kevin Rudd got into trouble when he was asked whether the Labor Party was any longer the Labor Party of the Left, given your backgrounds and your factual affiliation, do you likewise say it's no longer a party of the Left?
JULIA GILLARD: I am a published author of speeches and articles where I say these labels have very little meaning any more. I've been saying that for years. They hang off people, the media use them, sometimes we use them to describe each other, but they are really devoid of much meaning in contemporary times.

Insiders 18 November

While this contest has been seen as one between the government and Labor, there is in reality a more important battle going on within it. The real battle is not between Labor and the non-Labor parties as we have known for most of the last century. The real change going on is between the political class, led by the coalition, and a narrow clique in the Labor party that is about ending the way Australian politics had previously been conducted.

The most tangible sign is the straight-jacket that has now been applied on the campaign with the able help of Rudd under the guise of economic management. Rudd’s sudden slam on the brakes of election-spending has been discussed purely as though it was in response to an economic problem. What we are talking about is inflation going to all of 3.25% and expected by the RBA to then fall back below 3%. Hardly an economic crisis. Yet following a mildly-worded Reserve Bank statement last Monday, Rudd has not only dealt a blow to Howard, who had left himself exposed by becoming more reliant on throwing money at the hole in his programme while at the same time claiming to be on the right side of an economic debate that didn’t exist. When Rudd stood up in front of the Labor party and told them the spending must end, what he was saying was that the time when those in Labor could pursue their agenda through state spending is now over. In return, the party got the end of Workchoices.

It is a lousy deal. For the end of a minor IR reform, the party has lost a key means by which it generated support for its agenda since Whitlam’s day. And it is not only the left side of politics that has relied on this. When the auditor-general's report criticised pork-barrelling favouring government electorates, it is not surprising that Vaile got abusive. Such targeted subsidy of the rural seats has been the bedrock of National/Country party politics since its foundation in the 1920s.

Such targeted subsidy sounds scandalous but it is a sign of how far politics has been given a bad name even since Ros Kelly’s whiteboard affair. Australian politics used to be about the pursuit of sectional interest through the Parliament. From the left it was the unions, from the right business and rural interests. From the party that first abandoned those sectional interests, something disguised through the current pantomime over Workchoices but confirmed by former ALP National President Stephen Loosley the other day, now comes a new breed like Rudd. The ABC called him a centrist politician after he made the above quote, but it is more correct to see him as a technocrat than a politician, who is using anti-politics against the left and right. He is not alone, he is joined by others like Senator Penny Wong, who led the anti-politics attack this year over Kirribilli spending and is now sorting out Rudd’s transition.

However, the most interesting to watch will be Gillard. Like Rudd, Gillard has also stopped attending factional meetings and yesterday on Insiders was joining her leader distancing herself from her left background (she was on Insiders because her leader preferred to go onto a show where politicians were made fun of). For this year she has played the role of attacking Workchoices, mainly for internal party purposes. Andrew Bolt on Insiders took the coalition line that this showed that she represents the party’s left in the leadership, but he, like the Labor left, may be in for a surprise after the election. Bolt was right that there would be a tussle after a Labor victory between the old Labor party and Rudd’s agenda. However, he is wrong if he thinks it will be a contest.

Ad Watch – The differences between Rudd and Howard

At first this blog hated this ad. It was annoying, a bit smart-arse and there was a slight undertone of making Rudd seem like a lightweight, which with coalition ads suggesting that Rudd couldn’t stand up to the unions, did not seem like a good idea.

There was also the question of its treatment of Howard. There has been a constant mis-handling of Howard by his opponents over the last decade. Commentators like to say that people have made the mistake of under-estimating Howard. They have not, in fact he has been over-estimated, he really is a political lightweight. What his critics have under-estimated is their own lack of alternative. It was always easier for the left to make Howard into a right-wing demon than question their own political bankruptcy. The IR debate is that tactic’s last fling, for internal reasons it is easier talking about what Howard has done with Workchoices than the fact that Labor is never going back to collective bargaining and representing the unions. The help these Howard-haters have given Howard to pretend to be a conviction politician was acknowledged by the man himself when he opened his last campaign with a call to love or loathe him, but not treat him like the fraud he is. It is why the more respectful Labor ads portraying former Howard voters, like this latest version seemed more effective.

Howard the conviction politician may have been an illusion but it had some reality against his opponents who stood for nothing. As a result, treating Howard like a joke didn’t work while he could still ride the vacuum both in his own party and on the benches opposite. But things have been starting to change. This year has seen the myths of the Howard era one by one exposed, the sham Costello challenge, the War on Terror fiasco, his grip on the Howard battlers, the power of the hip-pocket nerve and finally the very centre of Howard’s vacuum, the myth of his economic management. Labor assumes in this ad that it is time to stop being defensive and neutralising coalition attacks and start to focus on their differences to Howard (some real, some less so). Most importantly, they now seem to think it is finally time to treat Howard like a bit of a joke. They may be right after all.

Exposed

With just over a week to go, the campaign may have reached a turning point. The interest rate rise and Rudd’s under-spending at the launch has now decisively shifted the campaign into Labor’s favour.

It isn’t that people blamed Howard for the interest rate rise and it probably had little direct impact on the vote. Nor is it that people really think Rudd is more of a fiscal conservative than Howard. It’s just that both events have exposed the myth that Howard has been hiding behind for so long.

For most of this year, pundits have been saying it doesn’t matter that Iraq doesn’t work for Howard, or terrorism or illegal refugees, or climate change or even IR is not working, there is always Howard’s lead on economic management. The economy and the hip pocket were supposed to be the last, but most important defence of the government.

In reality it was looking at things upside down. The problem is that there is no economic management issue. Keating gave the game away earlier this year when he said that after his reforms there was little to do but balance the budget. It was precisely because the economic issues that had defined the Labor and non-Labor parties through the last century (unions, government spending) had been resolved was the reason for Howard’s policy vacuum. Issues such as Iraq, and terrorism were what he used to hide the hole in his program and give him the pretence of being a conviction politician.

With those now gone, Howard was left with the lead on an issue where there was no debate. The first ever interest rate rise in the middle of an election campaign highlighted the lack of control governments now had on the economy and Rudd’s ability to get the Labor party to applaud (maybe not that enthusiastically) fiscal restraint showed that there was no barrier nowadays to Labor under-spending the Liberals. Both of these exposed that nowadays, the virtue of economic management means little.

Howard’s exposure would be complete if Labor hadn’t portrayed him as the great IR reformer, but then Rudd had two campaigns to run this year, one against Howard and the other to rally a party whose historical role is over but is still in the process of reorganising itself around that fact. Despite that, there seems little reason now, with a well aimed campaign, why Rudd can’t extend Labor’s lead in the last week and turn a victory into a rout.

Leadership watch – Rudd at the launch

Messages are cheap. Rudd’s under-spending was possible because attached to it was a message of the future, hope - bringing youth and technology together in the schools and fear - renewable energy and climate change. The main external impact of the launch was to highlight that Howard had simply thrown money at the hole in his program. Rudd’s comment that Howard thinks computers are ‘exotic’ was also a cheeky well-aimed stab at Howard‘s age that he inadvertently reveals every time he rolls his eyes when mentioning laptops and You-Tube.

But the external impact is secondary, it is striking how much these launches have become internal affairs and Labor’s even more than the government’s. The speakers use of ‘friends’ in addressing the listeners, which appeared even in Rudd’s speech, suggests that outside the three minute soundbite for the evening news, they were more talking to the party than the voters. This is one reason why the launches are now being held later in the campaign. Not just for financial reasons, but because they are less about setting the campaign agenda, but more to explain to their own parties what exactly it is that they have been up to for the last month.

Rudd emphasised Workchoices to reassure the party and give them the illusion that they were winning because the country was swinging to traditional Labor values. In reality this election is not about Labor but the growing irrelevance of the Liberal party for the running of government at both state and federal level. There was implicit recognition of this by the lack of triumphalism (even less than the faux rally in September) that meant Rudd was not allowed to raise his arms, leaving him on the stage making little bobbing hand movements to the crowd and looking a bit silly.

Like the Liberals’ rally, there was reconciliation of past foes. Instead of Janette and Tanya’s hug it was Bob and Paul’s raised clasped hands. Both reconciliations indicate a period is coming to an end. For the Liberals it indicates the end of Howard’s use of Costello to manage party tensions as he loses power. For Labor, the Hawke/Keating rivalry was ultimately about where to take the party as its historical role came to an end. Keating’s higher profile this launch, compared to 2004, signals the party has become more comfortable because they are finally starting to move on from where he left them. Where to is suggested by the presentation of the Labor leadership which was solely focussed on Rudd and Gillard. While there were plenty of shots of Rudd’s family, the shadow ministry was hardly anywhere to be seen. It is not only the country that will be finding out what New Leadership means on Saturday week, so will the party.

Ad Watch – You’ve lost me/lost touch

Having been fairly critical of Labor’s campaign recently, these two ads are not that bad. The soft language (“sorry Mr Howard” “no offence”) is supposed to portray not a Howard-hater but someone who could have voted for Howard last time, which is moderately believable. However, it also acknowledges the difficulty of running a successful negative campaign ad in this election. As the government likes to remind itself, there is no one ready to swing a baseball bat, but that highlights its problem, there is nothing to swing a bat at.

The government’s program exhaustion is coming across as having no policy that relates to anything in society (‘lost touch’) and a retrospective awakening to the realisation that the government has done nothing for the last eleven years, something that both ads address. In contrast to what else we are seeing in the Labor campaign, Workchoices and Costello are treated properly here. Workchoices is just another cost of living complaint and she doesn’t like Costello without needing to give a reason why.

Most importantly, the latest ad is the first of the campaign proper that finally mentions the clearest sign of the government’s policy exhaustion, Howard’s retirement plan. Presumably it is after getting the research findings that were reported a couple of days ago, which is why Rudd is now repeating it at every opportunity. Surprisingly, Howard seems unprepared for it except to start to try and wriggle out of it. This is the one good thing about a profound policy vacuum, there is little internal challenge that would pressure him to go, if by some miracle, he survived Saturday week.

Leadership watch - Howard at the launch

The warm, valedictory music to announce Howard’s arrival was perhaps not a good idea. It gave a feeling of the final episodes of the West Wing with Martin Sheen hobbling on his stick to the podium. All the cast was there, all the old differences reconciled, Janette even gave Tanya a hug.

The schools initiative was targeted at the Liberals’ base to help with private school fees. In reality so was the housing initiative. Howard doesn’t really get the housing affordability crisis. It is an anti-politics issue not a straight-out financial one. It is not so much a hand-out that is wanted but empathy, and an admission by the political class that it was wrong to deny its existence. There will be less concern on the numbers being handed out by Howard or Rudd but the message behind the hand-out and Howard’s remains that the economy is strong and you are on your own. In fact because the right message is not there, all the numbers being handed out in this election are fairly meaningless. For this blogger, about the only two numbers that can be recalled from this entire election are the $34bn tax cuts and the $500,000 going to the lucky orangutans.

Howard twitched and squeaked a couple of times at the beginning of his delivery, which is not surprising given that he was being forced to do what he has avoided for the last six weeks, talk about a future that he has promised not to be part of. Rudd, at last, was spot on message that there was in fact only one response to the launch’s promises, Howard will not be around to deliver them. In fact, it has been the message of the entire campaign, something that Labor has only just managed to discover.

This was not the usual rally of a government party heading for certain defeat, which are usually kicking and screaming affairs asserting tribal values. This was flat and low-key and Howard’s values came from a Menzies speech from 1942(!). Looking back to the party’s pre-history is probably appropriate given what is coming, the most poignant sign of which was the choice of the Brisbane Lord Mayor to open the launch. On November 25th he will hold the highest office of any Liberal in the country.

Falling, not pushed, from power

It is a sign of how lacklustre Labor’s campaign has been up till now that even its most unsuccessful leader in living memory feels he can chip in. Me-too on policy is political reality, me-too on tactics is not. Objective conditions are undermining the Liberals grip on power so Howard’s tactic is to obscure those conditions and break the campaign down. Labor’s tactics should have been to clarify what those conditions are. For the sake of record it is worth recalling why the government is on the way out, because so far the Labor campaign has not done so.

1. The government has no agenda
From day one in his government, Howard’s problem has been that his program had already been carried out by the previous Labor government. Howard has spent 11 years scrabbling around trying to find something to be a conviction politician about; GST, gun laws, Iraq, terrorism and now Workchoices. They may not always have been popular but standing for unpopular policies is better than standing for nothing at all, especially against a Labor party whose agenda had also been exhausted.

By 2005-2006, as the Iraq debacle became obvious, Howard tried Workchoices, but as it was introduced even that was shown to be a non-event. Support for Labor’s opposition to it also fell away and undermined Beazley’s leadership. Rudd had been better than Beazley at exploiting the exhaustion of the government’s program by talking more about ‘fresh ideas’ than Workchoices. Unfortunately Labor’s decision to now revive their exaggeration of the impact of Howard’s IR reforms helps cover up the hole in the government’s program.

2. The Liberals in crisis
The clearest sign of the depth of the Liberal crisis is the leadership. The fact that the party was unable to replace Howard when defeat looked imminent illustrates that there is no alternative to Howard, and especially not from Costello. This stalemate of a challenge with no challenger is best summed up by Howard’s confused retirement announcement in order to stabilise the party. This was needed because of a loss of confidence in his leadership but only possible because there was no immediate challenge to it. It was highly detrimental electorally as it now made a direct link between Howard, the government’s biggest asset, and the exhaustion of its programme.

When the announcement was made, Labor ran quite a good ad about. It is an extraordinary indictment of how feeble Labor’s campaign has been since then that they have not run a single ad mentioning it again! This is a godsend to Labor’s campaign but they have not used it and instead pretended there was life after Howard with a dynamic Costello ready to take over and bring in his own program. Milne reports that Labor research has now discovered that Howard’s retirement is a liability for the Liberals. Where have they been for the last two months?

3. The international situation is changing
Iraq disappeared from the political debate when it became clear that the government could no longer use it. The loss of Howard’s most important ‘conviction’ issue is the most significant difference between now and the last two elections. Let’s leave aside why Labor should ignore it as well. Labor under Rudd has correctly identified climate change as an issue to erode into the coalition’s heartland both in the cities and in rural areas. It also pinpointed the two points to press on this issue, belief in it (Garrett’s appointment) and using it to end Australia’s isolation on the international circuit (sign Kyoto).

The Liberals mis-read this issue and tried to counterpose their approach as more pragmatic and responsible for the economy. But this is not a pragmatic issue, it is an anti-growth global agenda that is yet to have a domestic edge. Labor therefore had no need to be defensive about Garrett’s gaffes, as they confirmed the passion for the issue that is electorally required. What Rudd should have done is made clear that while Garrett is enthusiastic, the leadership will be there to keep a check. He could have also compared such passion to the government counterpart who sees each issue in terms of his Prime Ministerial ambitions (or saving his own seat). Garrett should not have been left to fend for himself as happened, confirming what seems to be a tendency for Rudd to distance himself when things get a bit awkward.

4. The growth of anti-politics
Without a political program to implement, much of what used to be regarded as normal political activity by the government loses its justification and feeds into a mood that politicians are a waste of money and space. This has been one of the most difficult developments for Howard to deal with this year as seen by his clumsy reaction to such issues as Kirribilli entertaining, aircraft expenditure etc.

There has always been an anti-politics mood in Australia (we have the only Parliament in the world where the public can walk over the top of their politicians) and it has been used before both by Howard against Keating and Latham had an effective go at it on MPs super in 2004. But Rudd has turned this attack up a notch and it is when he is at his most effective. Last week it was the best part of his response to the interest rate rise; sympathy over a housing affordability crisis that the political class won’t acknowledge and contempt for Howard’s apology/sorry word game, a disastrous mistake that shows Howard is losing his political touch.

Where Rudd has been more cautious about using this anti-politics mood is where the government has been more effective with it, keying into the dissatisfaction with state service provision. The Liberals’ local campaigns against the state governments have been virtually unchallenged by Labor even when they get given golden opportunities like the Mersey Hospital fiasco. The problem seems to be that 1) Rudd will have to talk about something that is new, his new federalism and 2) take control of the debate as he did with the hospitals and assert leadership over the states.

This sums up the problem with Labor’s campaign so far, they have responded to the government’s agenda but cannot take it over. In their advertising this is summed up by their continued use of the ‘ads within an ad’, a good tactic against negative government advertising but carried on too long. Commentators like talking about the ‘It’s Time’ factor in the electorate, a metaphysical explanation of the government’s coming defeat that explains nothing. It is worth remembering that the original ‘It’s Time’ took twenty-three years to happen, the last six of which the government was in crisis. It did not happen until there was a reformed Labor party ready to take power. Given the weakness of the government this is unlikely to be necessary this time. But the campaign shows that this is a Labor party whose transformation is still incomplete and up against a politician who is better than anyone at running on empty.

In knots over nothing

The campaign has become focused on exactly the issue that media commentators have said it needed to for the coalition to win, the economy, and it is a mess.

The ostensible problem was the interest rate rise on Wednesday. Although this was viewed as a broken promise from 2004 to keep rates at a record low, Howard’s bigger problem is why the rate rise is being seen that way. It was not because that promise was central to the campaign in 2004. It is worth recalling just what Howard campaigned on in 2004, as like so much of that election, it has been rewritten. This is how he launched the campaign back then:

This election, ladies and gentlemen, will be about trust. Who you trust to keep the economy strong, and protect family living standards? Who do you trust to keep interest rates low? Who do you trust to lead the fight on Australia's behalf against international terrorism?

This followed six months of hammering Latham on the US alliance and his proposal to pull out troops by Christmas. It was trust over national security rather than a straightforward economic debate that underpinned Howard's attack on interest rates. That third question keeps being left off nowadays but it was only in February and March of this year that Howard again tried to make Iraq an issue for the government with the tour of Iraq and his comments on Obama. However, the reaction to the latter showed that for Howard his ability to use national security had come to an end.

Without national security, interest rates are just an economic issue, but there is no economic debate to be had (nor actually was there in 2004, certainly not one that economists noted who thought it would make no difference who got in). The reason there is nothing to discuss is that it is out of government’s hands. Howard is clearly struggling with this lack of control over something that was supposed to be central to the government’s re-election, which is why the record low rate promise is now coming back to haunt him and why he got caught up in the semantics over sorry and apology and the issue of responsibility.

Howard does have one thing going for him, however. Current Labor party tactics are making Howard to be the great IR reformer (and the Treasurer even more of an earth shaker) and Howard can use this to give the impression he can have some influence on the economy. Unfortunately despite Labor’s help, even this is going wrong.

The confusion for the government, and Labor, comes over wages. As journalists have picked up, both parties are contradicting themselves. On one hand Howard is saying his IR reforms have not been detrimental for wages, but then threatens they will go up when Labor gets rid of them. Labor, on the other hand, says Howard’s IR laws are hurting wages but then saying wages won’t go up when they are repealed.

The reality is that wages have gone up under Howard, while they stagnated under Labor. The problem for both parties is the reason. The most important factor for restraining wages under Labor’s time was, as Keating and Gillard have both recently pointed out, the role of the unions. Unfortunately that noble service for the economy the unions performed under Labor spelt their demise and that agent for restraint is no longer a force in the industrial landscape.

Howard’s IR laws have had little impact on wages for the simple reason that employers generally don’t use them or need them. Individual negotiations are a personnel hassle, and since Howard backtracked with the fairness test, a bureaucratic one as well. Besides, they can pay less under awards (by the way, observe the double act between Rudd and Gillard where Rudd will compare wages under AWAs with collective agreements, whereas Gillard reassures that Labor are not for going back to collective agreements but rather enterprise bargaining under an awards system where pay has been lower than AWAs). If Howard's reforms have had little impact, their repeal will also not make much difference to industrial relations or wages. By pretending it is Howard’s reforms rather than Labor’s that kept wages down, both parties are turning reality on its head.

The mess of the last week comes from both parties pretending that there is a debate about something over which they have no control (interest rates) or barely exists (Howard’s IR reforms). In the days of global markets and RBA independence, neither party has any policy that can make much difference to interest rates. Labor is at least being more upfront about it in the latest round of ads. However, while Labor can expose the debate over interest rates as a sham it is finding it harder to admit the IR debate is one as well. By the looks of Rudd’s latest demonising of that future Genghis Khan of the right waiting in the wings, it looks as though Labor is going to keep this tactic going right up to the 24th. Oh well, if it makes them feel good.

Maybe Keating was right after all

A criticism Keating made in his notorious Lateline interview last June was the return to Rudd’s campaign of former Labor campaigners Epstein and Gray, both of whom Keating blamed for the Beazley defeats. At the time, this blog thought it a bit unfair given the main problem in those years was that the party had lost its old role that Keating himself had helped to end. However, without knowing exactly what role these two are playing in Labor’s current campaign, he may have had a point.

The latest interest rate illustrates just what a mess the government’s campaign is in. A quarter rate rise from a low base is hardly a crisis. Yet the Liberal leadership has been all over the place handling it. Not only have they contradicted the rosy scenario they gave just three weeks ago when handing out $34bn of tax cuts, but even yesterday Howard and Costello were getting the messages mixed. Howard was apologising but saying it would be worse under Labor, while the politically astute Treasurer was saying it was a sign of how good everything was.

The Liberals’ lack of a policy program in this election means not only are they incapable of creating any momentum, but the party is starting to fragment as government members (including the PM) focus on just saving their own seat. The Australian’s chief political correspondent says that government strategy is now focussed on individual seats, but as usual he makes a virtue out of a government necessity. The Liberal campaign is having to adapt to a party that without anything to bind them, is gently falling apart.

Yet despite the weakness of the government’s campaign, Labor has until now been incapable of really taking advantage of it. Instead it is Howard, with the dissemination skills of a lawyer, who has broken down the campaign into gaffes and trivia and Labor’s message has been lost. It is especially striking how Labor has gone backwards from some of the tactics it developed before the proper campaign began. Several examples stand out:

1. What happened to ending the blame game? One of Rudd’s best moments this year was his response to Howard’s Mersey Hospital intervention in August. Howard had left himself open by picking a fight with the states over an argument with no substance. Rudd’s promise to take ultimate responsibility to ‘end the blame game’ between the states and Canberra tapped into an anti-politics mood that politicians were putting point-scoring above people’s lives and health.

Howard’s position has now become much worse as the takeover has turned into a shambles. But what did Labor do with it? There can be no worse case of playing politics with people’s lives than Howard's stunt takeover of an intensive care unit. Yet Labor has seemed more focussed in the last few weeks on matching Howard’s spending announcements. Voters are less interested in hearing numbers than about how the money will be managed. Rudd’s ‘new co-operative federalism’ turned the wall-to-wall Labor government scare into a political advantage and the Mersey Hospital provided a perfect example to ram that message home. Instead it has left the field clear for the coalition to run state-by-state ads attacking all the Labor governments across the country with barely a response from federal Labor.

2. Costello is now to be feared! Another example where Labor has gone backwards since the campaign proper started is its treatment of Costello. When Howard announced his retirement plans in September, Labor has a sensible response of not re-running the 2004 tactic of the Costello bogeyman, but instead just highlighting the confusion. Now they seem to have reverted back to the idea that a vote for Howard is a vote for Costello’s new IR reforms after he goes. There is no reason why Labor will not get this as wrong as they did in 2004. It assumes Howard will step down for Costello but if Howard won this election he could feasibly try to stay on as long as he could and renege on promises to Costello as he has in the past. The reason why he can treat Costello like that is because Costello doesn’t have an alternative agenda to challenge Howard with. Costello may like to talk tough about the unions in party circles but it as meaningful as when he bad mouths Howard behind his back. The hollowness of Costello and the way Howard can use him is even more apparent than it was in 2004, and Labor’s attempt to pretend otherwise will have little resonance.

3. The return of the conviction politician The treatment of Costello leads to the worst mistake that is now creeping into Labor’s campaign. If there is one thing Howard relies on it is his image as a conviction politician, which he referred to again in his opening campaign ‘love me or loathe me’ line. Yet the one thing he has desperately lacked since the War on Terror faded is an issue to have a conviction on. He tried with Workchoices but it was a flop that business had little interest in. Labor’s scare campaign on Workchoices not only mis-represents what is a minor IR reform that business doesn’t need but helps Howard disguise his major problem in this campaign, he doesn’t stand for anything.

Keating is spot on about Howard being a fraud. It is not so much with his relaxed attitude to the truth but the way over the last decade this politician without a program has got away with posing as one with conviction. He was so desperate to do so that he even revived an unpopular tax in his first term just to be able to stand for something. The War on Terror filled the gap but now that is gone. He also got away with it because Labor had also hollowed out, but now it is developing a program with a new agenda internationally and a reorganising of how government conducts itself at home. The focus on Workchoices shows that Labor still has one foot in the past and is re-fighting the defeats of its past. It is a far cry from the political flair the Labor leader has exhibited over this year. Has the Mandarin lost control of his own campaign?

Labor helps rate rise become a Howard plus

The polls say that interest rates are not the direct responsibility of politicians and this blog believes it. What the public is being convinced on is that union influence and wages are. They are not only being told this by the government in its attack on union influence in the Labor front bench. Labor itself is also feeding this line with its ill-advised strategy of turning Howard’s Workchoices, an IR flop that business has little interest in, into a major overhaul of the industrial landscape (with more to come).

It doesn’t take too much for the coalition to make the link between wages, inflation and interest rates and to give some resonance to the idea that that they may not have much direct control, but they are doing the best they can by keeping a lid on the unions. To those voters that care about it, the argument that the rate rise will be more helpful for the coalition than Labor is credible.

Flailing around on interest rates

Two thirds of those surveyed in the latest Galaxy poll think interest rates are caused by the economy either here or overseas. Only 12% think it is Howard’s fault and 14% the Reserve Bank’s. That only a quarter of voters think this week’s potential interest rate rise is anybody’s fault, and less than half of that a politician’s, is the background that will determine the rate rise’s direct political impact i.e. not much. However, it is a background that the media is largely ignoring as it continues to get excited about the coming Reserve Bank decision.

Part of the reason is that the media is playing catch up to the resilience of Labor’s lead after a year of denial because of the strong economy. Yet it also shows just how much has changed since 2004. It is not that the economic debate has changed that much since then. The interest rate debate was not an economic one in 2004, it was about trust in Labor mainly on its position on Iraq and the War on Terror. Now Howard is struggling to find an issue that makes him a conviction politician which is why has been flip-flopping around on the economy, denying he has control over interest rates while promising he has enough to keep them lower than Labor and now suddenly talking up economic threats where none exists.

For its part, it is a sign of Labor’s flabby campaign at the moment that their message keeps wandering around. Because the issue in 2004 was not about interest rate policy but national security, there is not much point making a big deal about Howard breaking his promise to keep rates low. Again, because people don’t think there is really any economic debate these days, there is little point blaming Howard’s economic policy. Those 12% who think governments can make a difference to the economy are probably small business owners in the marginals that everyone thinks are swinging but are probably Howard’s biggest supporters and will look to him for security if rates rise again. There is only one response for Labor, be better than the Liberals at feeling the pain. This was something Rudd was getting good at this year, before the campaign started and the Labor strategy started to become more focussed on winning the last election rather than this one.

Ad Watch - Garrett

There are two, slightly conflicting, messages in the Liberal’s response to Garrett’s gaffe that is repeated with what they say against union influence on the front bench. On the one hand it is the incompetence of Garrett/union bureaucrats that is the problem, on the other hand they are clever enough to impose their secret agenda on Rudd. This ad at least focuses on Garrett’s ineptitude, which is the best approach, and even makes him look a bit shifty. However, again the message is mixed with McDonald popping up at the end. Both may be seen as radical, but in totally different ways. A new version with audio of Charles Woolley talking about him, which the PM mentioned on Sunday, will help sharpen it up.

It is likely Garrett obviously thinks he is toning down what he can say before the election to be more radical afterwards but that’s OK because he will have little influence and like all the celebrity candidates will be reliant on Rudd who is about as radical as he sounds. These celebrity candidates may lack political experience but it is the precisely the way that they can latch into an anti-politics mood that makes them useful. This is a tricky game and Labor has taken its time getting to grips with it but even with Nicole Cornes they look to be starting to do so. She can be useful as being a ‘non-party person’, as she puts it, in a traditional blue ribbon seat like Boothby. Garrett gives moral conviction, which is essential for a moral issue like climate change.

It is that very moralism that underpins the message of ads with Garrett and Swan giving tips on how to shop for groceries and fill the car with petrol. Labor does not seem to be running these ads in the mainstream media but confining them to more moralistic segments of the younger You-Tube audience. That rock stars and politicians may not have any more expertise on these matters than the public is not the point. They are both claiming the high ground by being more ‘aware’ on how to act sustainably. That resources are limited (ignoring humanity’s unlimited capacity to utilise them) is the secret agenda of the climate change debate, and actually, the Liberals don’t have too much problem with it. Whoever wins, a call for everyone to tighten their belts is likely to be the domestic side of the global warming agenda and both sides are comfortable with a message that says life, on an earth with limited resources, was not meant to be easy.

Yes, this is not an ordinary election

Leaving aside Mr Shanahan's strange way of seeing margin of error only applying in the government's favour not Labor's, it is definitely true that the swing in the marginals is not as pronounced as that happening in the government's safe seats. Newspoll trend surveys have been showing the same thing even in Beazley's day. The 5-10% swings by state that Newspoll reports in the marginals is not out of line with what the those trend surveys has been showing. By July-September, the swing in the marginals was only (!) around 8% compared to 11-12% in the safer government seats (and 7% in safe Labor seats).

But that is the whole point. This election is not about the fight in the marginals in the old way, it is about the coalition losing its grip on what were its core constituency and seats. There has always been a tendency to overstate Howard's hold on the marginals over the last decade, as expressed through the myth of the 'Howard battlers'. Howard almost lost the marginals in his first term. His success had more to do with the weakness of a Labor party that had lost its historic role and hence its grip on its core supporters and upwardly mobile sections of it.

Now it is the coalition's turn. If Howard has a chance fighting his way back to government through the marginals then someone should tell him, because not only are the themes of Howard's campaign directed at core coalition supporters (despite their limited effect with other voters) but so is his touring schedule. What, for example has he been doing in Victoria for four days in a row this week where the closest seat to fall is 5%, visiting such seats as McEwen (6.4%), Deakin (5.0%) and La Trobe (5.8%) none of which Labor needs to win to take power? And why haven't the Liberal party sources that are sure Bennelong is safe, according to Mr Shanahan, told their party leader to stop wasting his time going back there as he did all last weekend?

Whatever Mr Shanahan's issues with understanding polling data, the way his interpretation has been unthinkingly picked up nationwide is not necessarily because the media likes a good news story for the coalition. In fact they were rather getting into the swing of enjoying the government's troubles as in the enthusiasm they reported Abbott's bad day. Rather it is just a repeat of the same mistake they have been making all year, seeing everything through the prism of the past. By definition, elections are always fought in the marginals, it is just that the definition of marginals is about to change.

Mandarin gets dragged back to the swamp

Gaffes only have an impact if they expose a reality that everyone knows is there. Garrett's comment that everything will change once Labor gets in is unlikely to make the electorate think Labor has a secret agenda. There are those who think Rudd's me-tooism is a tactic rather than the political reality both parties are now operating under, but they are mainly confined to some media commentators and more deluded traditional Labor party supporters.

The only reality Garrett's comment exposes is that he is a political amateur. This does touch on the only effective attack the government has made which is implicit in their charge that the Labor front bench is full of ex-union officials. It is not that Labor threatens union control. Everyone knows that Hockey was describing reality when he said the unions are finished (which is why they are looking for jobs in parliament) it just raises the question, now that Labor no longer represents the unions who actually are these people?

The trouble with the campaign so far is that while the coalition's initial attempt to boost the morale of core supporters has floundered, Labor has yet to take the campaign over and answer that question. Although some may think this election is not significant and that Rudd is just a younger Howard, they are wrong. This election does mark a significant realignment in Australian politics reflecting changes in the international order and a more depoliticised role for government, both which underpin Labor's lead. Labor's problem is that Howard has done what he does well, fractured the campaign into technicalities and trivia as he did earlier this year. It may not do Howard much good, but at least it means Labor's message gets lost.

A good example was Garrett's previous gaffe on Kyoto. Rudd's unimpressive performance on The 7.30 Report this week was because he got bogged down in the technicalities of Garrett's blunder without being able to break through and get at the government's vulnerability. There are only two things Labor needs to convince the electorate on global warming 1) they believe it and 2) they want to reconnect into the global agenda on it. If anything, Garrett's gaffe confirmed the first and as for the global agenda, everyone knows it will be in the hands of the Foreign Affairs Minister (god help him/her working under the Mandarin) and not Garrett.

Everyone also knows that the reason why Howard didn't sign Kyoto wasn't because it wasn't doing enough about climate change by leaving out India and China. He didn't sign it because 1) it was Bush's strategy not to and 2) the party of business is uncomfortable with its anti-growth message. While Rudd fussed about playing political games trying to pretend Garrett hadn't stuffed up (he had) he could have broken away and do little more than reaffirm his act of faith (and Howard's lack of it) that the global warming debate requires. The campaign getting stuck in this swamp won't give Howard the momentum he needs to claw back Labor's lead, but it could make Labor more vulnerable should external events upset the campaign.