Malcolm Turnbull leads a long line of losers following Saturday's election disaster

Malcolm Turnbull has always been a confident man & believed in himself…….that may not be the case following Saturday's disastrous showing.

He has no one to blame for destroying a once in a generation public goodwill but himself.

He was arguably the only Liberal leader in living memory who got elevated to the top job with a massive public support & political goodwill behind him. Labor leaders Kevin Rudd, Bob Hawke & Gough Whitlam had enjoyed similar support but no conservative leader ever had, certainly not John Howard, Malcolm Fraser  or Tony Abbott.

But Turnbull's self belief got the better of him & contributed to his humiliation on Saturday night.

…..and let's make no mistake, humiliation it was! Even in the unlikely event that the coalition manage to win 76 seats & form a thin majority government.

Malcolm Turnbull & his coconspirators executed the first term PM Tony Abbott in no less ruthless fashion than Gillard, Shorten & co had done Kevin Rudd……and yet the unprecedented public goodwill (and intense dislike for Abbott) meant this was not an issue that could be used as character assassination!

But as a Liberal insider suggested to me a few weeks before the election was called…." Everyone knew Malcolm had always wanted the top job, but we now realise he wanted to get there but hadn't thought about what to do the day after he got there!……"

And this has been crystal clear from day one last September!

Thought bubble after thought bubble came & vaporised into thin air as Malcolm Turnbull waffled from one poorly considered idea to the next without consulting his senior colleagues yet alone his party room……..and his claim of a "consultative Cabinet" simply did not eventuate.

But what mainly undid the huge public goodwill & nationwide support for Turnbull were two main issues:

- His & his Health Minister's very poor handling of Health related policies as they alienated most if not almost all stakeholders in the industry, and
- His abysmal & almost embarrassing handling of tax reform as he seemed to be immersed in his own poorly considered ideas & change of mind day after day….from GST, to state taxes, to superannuation to negative gearing to…….

…...and the end wishy-washy policy platform for the election ended up alienating his base support on superannuation & giving his opponents the opportunity to portray his Tax Policy as "handouts to big business"!

The other reason many are disappointed in Turnbull's election strategy is his "double dissolution" idea to make the Senate more workable:

Any casual political observer like me would have known that at a time when demagogues from Donald Trump in USA to Marine Le Pen in France to Nigel Farage in UK to other minor parties across Europe were gaining traction with their divisive populist propaganda, a new Senate would undoubtedly attract protest votes & elevate the likes of Pauline Hanson!

So Thank you Mr Turnbull! Thank you for your political expediency & vision that suggested working with the likes of Glen Lazarus, Ricky Muir, Bob Day & the rest of cross benches was too hard & your solution was the divisive Pauline Hanson & her supporters instead!…..another disastrous result for Turnbull & co! (although I am not questioning the democratic process & election of Pauline Hanson per se, she has got elected because there are many disengaged voters who see no other option but to turn to her as their voice of protest)

And last but not the least, Turnbull decided on an unwise & long 8 week campaign….and then as reported in the media, seemed to switch off the long road even quicker than many voters did! in doing so he overestimated his popularity & ignored Politics 101 rules of campaigning 18 hour days…and some days stopped his media commitments by noon whilst Bill Shorten kept on talking to anyone who wanted to talk to him day & night.

On that note, credit must be given to Bill Shorten & his campaign team, for a very effective, tireless & successful campaign. Not withstanding the dirty & effective "Medicare" tactics, who would have given Bill Shorten the slightest of chances last September?

And a slightly less yet noteworthy credit to the Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce. In an election which turned out to be full of "protest votes" against major parties everywhere, he was successful against a very experienced & much admired & high profile independent opponent (Tony Windsor) & triumphed when many of his colleagues failed.

This is why most voters' level of disappointment in Turnbull has been much more intense than their disappointment in Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd & Tony Abbott…….& it showed on Saturday……they had such high hopes & aspirations when Turnbull became the PM last September………and it all vaporised into thin air in such a short space of time!

The danger with procrastinating Malcolm!

Malcolm Turnbull smoothly executed coup to the top job was greeted with a combination of relief & hope by the majority of voters who were tired of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd infighting & Abbott's Captain calls style of leadership & were looking for an intelligent steady hand statesman to lead Australia.

And in Turnbull that is what they got…..at least initially. And the voters extended the honeymoon period as they gave Malcolm Turnbull the benefit of the doubt. The honeymoon still continues, albeit with some shine coming of it since before Christmas.

With five Ministers gone & one MP trying unsuccessfully to defect to his National coalition partners, the gloss is starting to come off. (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde "To lose one Minister may be regarded as misfortune, to lose 5 looks like chaos!"

But whilst reshuffles are part & parcel of governance, it is the apparent lack of a coherent policy framework & in particular economic leadership that is starting to hurt the Turnbull/Morrison team. 
This is particular because on the day Turnbull challenged Abbott, he specified "economic leadership" as the main reason for his decision to challenge. This is what he said:

'It is clear enough that the Government is not successful in providing the economic leadership that we need……It is not the fault of individual ministers. Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs."

I have said in a previous post Malcolm Turnbull's challenge is to address GST/taxation reform, the inflexibility of the IR Laws & Fair Work Legislation & Australia's infrastructure deficit.

The PM has now ruled out an increase in the GST & is still procrastinating with negative gearing, superannuation tax & company tax rates  (currently 30% compared to e.g. 17% in Singapore & average of 20% in OECD).

Most commentators are now leaning towards predicting a benign budget with potentially the opportunity for an overhaul of Australia's complex burdensome Tax System gone due to the PM's cautious approach. 

The danger with PM's cautious approach & procrastination is that he may end up not addressing issues of national significance, such as taxation & IR reform, & instead decide to salvage his legacy by going after what he cab get by e.g. promoting Harper's Competition Report in order to appear to be a "reformist Prime Minister".

An case in point is the community pharmacy sector. Successive & continuous cuts to funding to pharmaceutical companies & pharmacists have helped to sustain Australia's world class prescription medicines subsidy scheme (PBS) and have so far saved the health budget in excess of $4 billion with forward estimates suggesting another $4 to $5 billion of savings in the next few years to come.

The sector has dealt with very tough funding cuts & is reform fatigued. Pharmacists in particular have worked cooperatively with successive Governments & generated billions of dollars of savings for both Labor & Liberal budgets & forward estimates. 

Malcolm Turnbull must show courage & go for the big guns, i.e. to reform Australia's Taxation & IR issues & to address our infrastructure problems. anything else & his time as PM will follow the disappointing path of his 3 immediate predecessors!

Inflexible dogmatic ideology the worst source of wasting political capital!

PM Tony Abbott recklessly continues to waste his fast fading political capital on battles he neither can win nor needs to win!

Why Tony Abbott who came perilously to losing his job less than 3 weeks ago, continues to recklessly waste his dwindling political capital on is beyond most observers & commentators....and now it is finally starting to even make his most loyal supporters weary too.

Attacking the likes of Gillian Triggs, and getting into a pickle over weather an inducement was offered to her to resign are evidence of dogmatic approach to relatively insignificant issues at a time when Tony Abbott desperately needs to prove his skills in all inclusive pragmatism.

At the rate Tony Abbott is wasting his little remaining political capital amongst his colleagues, all Malcolm Turnbull has to do is to allow Tony Abbott check mate himself to oblivion!

Please! Not the Rudd-Gillard Labor circus again! Oh No! Wait! It's the Liberals & Abbott this time!

Tony Abbott & his coalition team promised voters the Labor's Rudd-Gillard circus was over & behind us & "adults" were going to govern Australia!

But that was until the next circus visited town! & it seemingly has this week!

And, PM Abbott should know better! Anything is now possible in the brave new world of "first term leaders"!

In the new political world where first term Liberal Governments like Victoria & NSW change new Premiers midway through their first term (albeit for different reasons), and in Northern Territory they change leaders even more often and seemingly for the fun of it, Tony Abbott should have known better & not miscalculated his goodwill amongst voters so badly.

In a political landscape where Campbell Newman's abrasive political style blows away a 79 to 7 first term majority, politicians such as Tony Abbott should act with a lot more caution.

Voters never liked Paul Keating & John Howard, but they respected them! And Keating & Howard, were acutely aware of their standing & managed to maintain the voters' "respectability" good will for most of their tenure.
Like Gillard, Tony Abbott has never been much liked or trusted, yet his strong performance as opposition leader coupled with the Rudd-Gillard circus & carbon tax bought him a limited amount of respect amongst voters.

However, since May budget, Abbott & Hockey, whilst preaching austerity to everyone who would listen, seem to have recklessly overspent their "Public Goodwill Credit Card" well beyond their means, ie the respect they had earned amongst voters!

And the last extravagant expenditure was the Prince Philip knighthood saga! Abbott overdrew the last shreds of good will & respectability in his "Public Good Will Credit Card".'


Some fundamental shifts in the brave new world of 24/7 news/social media are clearly reshaping politics & becoming the norm:
- One term Governments will be seen more often in most western democracies
- Voters will be hard to convince to accept any radical reform/change to publicly funded health & education services
- Politicians who overestimate their level of "respectability/trust" amongst voters, will quickly lose office no mater how popular they may be at the start of their run!
- Politicians who are generally disliked & yet are given the benefit of the doubt by voters, have even less time to cement a lasting perception, and even less room for errors no matter how big or small


Tony Abbott sadly now falls in that latter category. As they say the genie is out of the bottle & Abbott's leadership will never see calm waters again & most likely his run will soon be over.

ICAC investigation of NSW Liberals, Joe Hockey & Maurice Newman help make Abbott's 1st year in office less than great!

It's now a year since Tony Abbott led the coalition back to power.

Sadly, the brightest spot in the Australian landscape since last September remains the disappearance of narcissistic Kevin Rudd & the hapless Julia Gillard & her devotion to all things Unions!

Although Clive Palmer's populist & clever manoeuvres have spiced up the political scene, the Government has failed to inspire the voters as most of its senior members & in particular Joe Hockey confuse their newly found dogmatism for perception of conviction in the eyes of the voters!

And the perception created as a result of the usual policy gaffes &  "foot in the mouth" political incidents, in particular in case of the seemingly out of depth Joe Hockey, is that the Abbott Government is in the pockets of (very) big business as much as Gillard Government's was in the pockets of the Unions.

The NSW Hunter/Newcastle weird brand of politics &the ICAC enquiry into illegal political donations to Liberal MPs in NSW is continuing to damage the Federal Government in no less way than the likes of Obeid & Trapodi damaged the Labor brand Federally previously.

And then there is the issue of Industrial Relations, the unaffordable penalty rates & the already evident impact on eg high youth unemployment, a legacy of Julia Gillard's Fair Work inflexibility. Tony Abbott & his competent & likeable eEmployment Minister Eric Abetz look like they have their hands tied behind their backs and are unable to deliver reform at the pace SME are asking for. Meanwhile real unemployment and underemployment continue to rise as a result of the unworkable Fair Work Legislation's penalty rates & Australia's IR reforms of the Hawke/Keating/Howard era are fast being eroded, not to mention competitiveness & productivity.

Furthermore, on the negative side, the PM's well know association with the likes of the arrogant & out of touch Cardinal George Pell (whom the PM refers to as a Mentor) & also his chief business "privatise them all" advisor Maurice Newman & his well publicised climate sceptic comments do not bode well for Tony Abbott's already poor public image as the most disliked new PM in living memory.

Nevertheless, Tony Abbott has delivered many of his populist core election promises: Boat arrivals have dried up (albeit due to very harsh draconian response), Carbon Tax & Mining Tax have been repealed & he is negotiating with cross bench Senators & some of the Government's reforms are good & necessary.

Tony Abbott (& his Foreign Minister Julie Bishop) have also handled international political issues well in the recent months & used international events to his full advantage to demonstrate his statesmanship credentials.

All in all,Tony Abbott has overall performed better than most of his team & in particular his Treasurer & his business advisors in his first year as PM.

Arthur Sinodinos's mistake!

There is no reason to question the integrity of Senator Arthurs Sinodinos AO, the former PM Howard's Chief of Staff & former President of NSW Liberals, a man of indisputable intelligence & competence with many years of distinguished service to public life & his Party.

To drag his name in a corruption ICAC enquiry is regrettable and to place his name amongst the likes of Eddie Obeid & Joe Trapodi is the ultimate humiliation & embarrassment for such a distinguished man.

Senator Sinodinos will most probably be cleared of any wrong doing in the current ICAC enquiry. 

However, his one & only big mistake will continue to haunt him. 

During his time as the president of the Liberal Party in NSW, like the former PM John Howard, NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell, current PM Tony Abbott & many other powerful & distinguished NSW Liberals, Arthur Sinodinos took on the hard right religious Masters of the NSW Liberals to reform the Party machine in NSW & introduce democratic structural change ....and lost!

The hard right Masters in NSW Liberal Party & their (unknown) followers, do not take kindly to moderates who try to reform the Party structure in NSW. And those who do take them on, do at their own peril!

Any wonder Senator Sinodinos's name has been dragged to the low levels of an ICAC enquiry?

Abbott, Hockey and the new Government, a case of letting everyone down with frugality?

It is the political norm for all newly elected governments to make the previous mob look incompetent by magnifying mismanagement, policy failures & budget deficits.

Tony Abbott & Joe Hockey are no different as political operatives & will make sure by the time May Budget comes down, everything is blamed on Gillard, Rudd, Shorten & co.

However, as Christopher Pyne's huge stumble (and Abbott's timely intervention) with education funding clearly demonstrated, Tony Abbott must be very careful!
Whilst in opposition, he had made commitments such as parental leave scheme, which will be very costly to fund.

Tony Abbott can not break his promises because of the successful way he totally discredited Julia Gillard over her Carbon Tax broken promise.

But at the same time & most crucially, he must not fund his expensive promises by simply taking away from other funding areas such as health & education.

If he does, he will at his own peril & will no doubt pay for it at the next ballot box.

The curious case of Gonski vs Carbon Tax as broken promises!

It would be amazing to find out what gets the better of politicians at times & why their egos cloud their judgements to the point of total naivety in reading the public mood!

It is therefore hard to guess what Christopher Pyne, PM Abbott & their highly paid advisors were thinking when Christopher Pyne decided to bulldoze through the Gonski education agreement by ignoring the fact that Tony Abbott had made a clear pre election promise to honour the funding as agreed by Gillard Government with most states.

To paraphrase the famous saying..." a little bit of information is a dangerous thing!" So as a lay person, I can't & won't claim to be privy to all the behind the scene information & drama that take place in the political arena & the end game stage show that we witness in the media.

This post is also not about the merits of Gillard's Gonski agreement vs Pyne's view! rather, this post is about the peculiar question of political judgement!

However, curiously, for a political party which patiently took 3 years to carefully & masterfully destroy the Labor Government's credibility based on a) broken Carbon Tax promise & b) returning the boats slogan, it was rather baffling when last week they appeared to be breaking a politically sensitive election promise at a time when the diplomatic stoush with Indonesia was potentially affecting their border protection policy (another election promise!)

But even more puzzling was what Tony Abbott was thinking when he said ....."We are going to keep the promise that we made, not the promise that some people thought we made or the promise that some people would like us to make. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made,"......

Can't he see that a statement like that can profoundly damage the little remaining trust the voters have in our politicians & political system, and even worse, render what is still the most highly prized aspect of our western democracy ie "election campaign promises" totally obsolete? (not that election promises are worth the paper they are written on in most cases anyway)

So hats off to PM Abbott & his advisors for realising the huge political misjudgement on the cards & quickly going into damage control to mop & clean up what could have been a political suicide so early in Abbott's first term!

Kevin Rudd is gone, but has he accepted any responsibility for anything? The answer is an emphatic NO!

It was hard to believe Kevin Rudd was making a speech to concede defeat. In yet another blaze of self admiration, after a Hollywood style entrance, Kevin Rudd stood there in front of his adoring fans last night & for 22 minutes spoke in self congratulatory terms about how he had saved labor Party!

On a night when Labor Party received its lowest primary vote in nearly 100 years, and was inflicted one of the worst election defeats in its history, there stood Kevin Rudd stating how he had steadied the ship & was handing over the Party in good fighting shape!

Admittedly as many have stated, Labor cut its own throat the day the faceless men of the party executed Kevin Rudd to install Julia Gillard & the rest is history! Self preservation & self interest meant broken promises, sabotage, policy mishaps, infighting & disastrous policy implementation in the next three years!

But even those powerful faceless men underestimated Kevin Rudd's resilience, and more crucially determination to seek vengeance no matter the costs.

As if the minority government, broken promises & other disasters mentioned above were not enough, Kevin Rudd embarked on a campaign of sabotage & destabilisation of Gillard Government until the powerbrokers in Labor Party, like hopelessly desperate parents who had run out of ideas on how to deal with an out of control child, caved into him & gave his him his "rightful job" back in June!

And, Kevin Rudd's legacy will be simple: His egocentric behaviour will mean history will look kindly at Julia Gillard's tumultuous time as PM & not too kindly at his own time as PM!

I wrote a blog in the dying days of Gillard's reign suggesting a Rudd vs Abbott election would be more about policy issues & much less about personalities in the case of Abbott vs Gillard. But like many others, I had forgotten the egocentric self absorbed narcissistic traits of Kevin Rudd too! 

Thanks to Rudd's ego, and Abbott's well disciplined & rehearsed strategy, the Rudd vs Abbott election turnout to be all about Rudd self promoting & sadly overestimating his popularity, & then desperately attacking Tony Abbott as a last resort. 

Tony Abbott, like it or not, to his credit did not panic, did not get rattled & did not change tact. He stood his ground & continued to portray a perception of steady hands whilst waiting patiently for Kevin Rudd to be exposed for his contrived PR campaign, which steadily unfolded into a farce.

And well deserved congratulations to Tony Abbott & his team. 

For withstanding all the "least popular opposition leader" jibes, for Julia Gillard's desperate attempt on class warfare & misogyny, & for steadfastly dealing with all attempts by the government figures to rattle him. He beat them all in their own & at times petty games! & His reward, the 28th PM of Australia.

I have mentioned in several posts previously that voters don't need to necessarily like their leaders! But they need to respect them for their integrity & conviction, & to trust them.

The point is clearly seen here:

For a number of reasons, Julia Gillard was neither liked nor trusted & lost respect after the broken no carbon tax saga.
Kevin Rudd was liked but ultimately was neither trusted nor respected because of his white anting & ego driven behaviour in the last three years!
Tony Abbott on the other hand, may not be well liked or trusted yet by sections of the electorate.
But the voters respect him for his convictions & have stated they are prepared to trust him for the next 3 years.

John Howard & Paul Keating were not particularly liked either. But they showed vision & conviction, and with those traits, bought themselves trust & respect.

Tony Abbott, has already proven himself as a competent Howard Government Minister, a tough opposition leader & has the full potential to grow into the job as a very good Prime Minister.

If he avoids mishaps & mistakes & translates his leadership qualities that are already evident to a competent united government. he can& will gain the voters' respectability & trust, and with that comes longevity at the lodge! 

In the course of the next term, Abbott's battles with the Senate will be crucial in shaping his leadership. & vision. As it stands, the composition of the new Senate in July 2014 looks extremely difficult to deal with, considering that even some obscure minority parties with a mere few hundred primary votes may get a seat due to complicated preferences deals. (that is something that must be reformed but is a discussion for another day)

And as a sceptic until recently, I predict Tony Abbott will demonstrate steady hands & vision & will grow into the job of PM & as he stated last Wednesday night at a pre election function in Sydney, "under promises & over delivers"!

A European style austerity & cuts in spending which has caused recessions and/or slowed down growth in eg UK is not the way forward. Moderate spending in a way that can stimulate consumer confidence is the way to go forward. Abbott has already indicated that is his intention to do exactly that.

It's finally on! The Election we had to have!

The election we had to have is finally on!

Kevin Rudd's ascendancy to the leadership of the Labor Party has once again made the polls close & the election battle meaningful. Julia Gillard's leadership was irreversibly damaged as she utterly failed to regain the trust & ears of voters.

It threatened an unhealthy landslide victory by the opposition.

However, Kevin Rudd's popularity is seemingly based on "Voter Amnesia" & how well Labor performs on election day is depends on whether voters' amnesia continues!

Yes, Tony Abbott must present both his vision & his policies in detail in the next month. Yes, like Gillard, Tony Abbott has a public perception problem. And yes, there are aspects of coalition basic policy platforms that are inferior to Labor's.

But both Gillard & Rudd Governments are tainted by a history of numerous political errors, poor policy implementation & amateurish political judgement, not to mention the messy leadership executions!

At the same time, a hung Parliament is hardly going to improve business or consumer confidence.

An Abbott victory with a modest majority will be the best probable outcome as it gives the coalition the opportunity to implement their policies in the next term to prove their competence to the voters whilst it also gives the voters the opportunity to punish the coalition in 3 years time if they don't deliver. 

And as for a Rudd led Government, there's nothing to add. Gillard & Rudd have both had their time, and neither delivered enough to deserve a third term Labor Government!

It's now time for the Negative & Positive "Stuntmen" of Australian politics to talk policy & show substance rather than mere rhetoric!

Julia Gillard more than anyone else was acutely aware of her unpopularity with the voters.

Therefore, she worked hard on trying to focus attention on substantive policy issues. And she did try to introduce & address many pressing social & political reforms (some good, some bad, some disastrous) in areas such as school education, disability insurance, child sex abuse, national broadband etc.

However, her frequent political misjudgements & errors and the inept & incompetence of her administration on either selling the benefits of her policy initiatives and/or implementing them let her down badly. Talk back radio & many sections of media also did not afford her policies any oxygen. She therefore failed to get any traction on discussing substantive policy issues.

Kevin Rudd during his time as PM, and Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader, on the other hand have both been much more about political rhetoric than any substantive policy positions & the fact that Abbott is perceived as Mr Negative and/or Rudd as Mr Popular is a mere reflection of this.

And now as we approach an election date, it is time for both to stop their rhetoric & political spin & present their respective political & social vision for Australia. Whether they are capable of doing this however is yet to be seen because neither has a good demonstrable record!

Time's running out for our two master political stuntmen! positive or negative, both have built their positions on mostly rhetoric! It's now time for both to show present policy platforms & vision for Australia. Vision & not rhetoric is what voters are demanding from both Rudd & Abbott.

The other interesting point to observe is how Tony Abbott handles Kevin Rudd mark 2!. The political musical chair of political opponents unsettling each other will continue!

John Howard rattled the then PM Paul Keating when he became Opposition Leader again, & then finally got rattled himself when Kevin Rudd became the Opposition Leader!

Tony Abbott was then massively responsible for unseating the then PM Kevin Rudd. It seems now the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has somewhat been rattled with Kevin Rudd's elevation as the new PM!

Gillard, the PM we HAD to have, Rudd the PM we now HAVE to have, & Abbott the PM we WILL probably have!

Successful political careers, more than ever before in today's world of intense 24/7 media scrutiny, are a matter of whether a perception of conviction as well as trustworthiness can be projected to voters.

And Julia Gillard ultimately failed to achieve either. From the moment the dysfunctional procrastinating Rudd was toppled, the question of earning the voters' trust became a losing battle for Gillard, and the "Carbon Tax" broken promise soon afterwards was the final nail in the coffin of Gillard's credibility amongst voters.

Nevertheless, Gillard was the PM we had to have! 

Rudd's leadership style, as widely reported was totally dysfunctional & a change in leadership was no less imperative as it was when Mark Latham was replaced, albeit in a different context.

Despite proving herself to be a political fighter leading a minority government, Gillard never managed to establish herself as a politician of any tangible conviction. Her failure in this respect was mainly due to her frequent political misjudgements & errors compounded by seemingly amateurish advice. This led her to the desperate tactics of gender & class warfare both of which ultimately backfired.

Gillard & Rudd were exact opposites as PMs in many ways. Gillard was decisive, a good administrator, consultative (albeit with a track record littered with poor political judgement).To those who knew her well, and even those like myself who had had the opportunity to meet her in a few functions & spend a minute or two talking to her, she was warm & likable. And yet, she ultimately failed the test of trust & political conviction in the eyes of majority of voters.

However, whilst in years to come Gillard will probably be commended for her Disability Insurance & Gonski Education Reforms, in my view, she will also rightly be blamed for her Fair Work Legislation which is stifling Australia's IR environment by pandering to every wish of the unions, at a critical time when the mining boom is beginning to fade. She has regressed the IR reforms of Hawke/Keating/Howard era by a long way.

Rudd on the other hand, in his first time around as the PM, was widely reported to have been a procrastinator, micromanager, aggressively insulting & non consultative. And yet, he amazingly enjoys the voters' trust & his constant rhetoric & lack of policy progress in his time as PM have been somehow forgotten simply because he has earned their trust & they perceive him as a politician of conviction.

And, here is where the next battle lies for Rudd. As John Howard famously proved, in Australia, voters don't have to necessarily like a politician to vote for him/her, rather they need to trust in their ability & respect a politician's conviction.

Rudd will no doubt give Abbott a timely run for his money, and more importantly make the election much more about policy than mere personalities or gender wars.

And this is why Rudd is the PM we have to have. He is right in saying Labor under Gillard was allowing Abbott & the coalition win without being scrutinised.

The fact that Abbott is not liked & Rudd is, will not necessarily be the decisive factor in the next election as long as Abbot continues to successfully sell the perception of political competence. And conviction, and yes! Like it or not, most of his negative tactics of the past three years can be turned around to a perception of political conviction; the classic example being the simplistic yet effective "turning the boats around!".

Therefore, if Abbott is successful with his message, the voters will most probably give him the benefit of the doubt by trusting him to lead the country. And this is why Abbott will probably be the PM we will have.

Whether he can retain that trust is up to him & his policies & his government's performance.

"Who has heavier baggage which can sink Labor to the bottom quicker? Gillard Or Rudd?"

Julia Gillard is consistently delivering Labor some of its lowest primary votes of all time in the polls. That indicates a disaster of titanic proportions come the elections in September.

Kevin Rudd on the other hand, continues to destabilise Gillard & the Labor Government with his vindictive & egocentric behaviour, which is heavily contributing to Labor's polling woes & sinking Labor regardless of the disastrous polls.

And both will deservedly go down as having destroyed Labor & its values with their stubborn behaviour & poor leadership qualities & actions. 

No party machine could possibly accept or condone Kevin Rudd's consistently destructive behaviour. He seems to have more regard for his own personal legacy than the good of Labor legacy.

On the other hand, Julia Gillard can talk all she wants about sexism & misogyny she was subjected to during her time as the PM. 
But the fact remains that whilst history will remember her as a fighter, it will also recall her many policy failures & implementation disasters, as well as broken promises such as the Carbon Tax & for poorly managing a much divided party whilst allowing the Unions & the Greens to influence & dictate much of what she believes she should be credited for, policies that are mostly stifling & regressive to their core & will damage Australia's productivity in the years after her.
She can only hope that amongst the ruinous legacy she is leaving behind, her most two distinct initiatives, ie the Gonsski education reforms & the Disability Insurance are also remembered & credited to her.

The question is becoming more like this: "Who has heavier baggage which can sink Labor to the bottom quicker? Gillard Or Rudd?"

Meanwhile Tony Abbott & the coalition are laughing all the way to the lodge! And who can blame them?

PM Julia Gillard's attempt to get on the front foot once again derailed!

To paraphrase Ocar Wilde: "To lose one senior Minister may be regarded a misfortune, to lose two in one day looks like carelessness"!

Labor party is in a mess! It takes Gillard's own Labor colleagues, ie Craig Thompson, Nicola Roxon & Chris Evans to derail & overshadow Gillard's latest attempt to get on the front foot in the eyes of the voters!

Julia Gillard simply can not get on the front foot! As soon as she took the bold move of giving the voters an 8 month long election campaign (yawn!) in order to neutralise Kevin Rudd supporters & force Tony Abbott's hand on actual policy issues, Craig Thompson (finally) got charged & arrested.

Then to make matters worse, two of Gillard's most senior & loyal ministers (and competent I may add) announced they are stepping down from her front bench on Saturday. To make matters worse, in what can easily be interpreted as lack of confidence in Government's chances of winning the next election, both Nicola Roxon & Chris Evans announced their retirement from politics after the next Federal election in September.

And to add icing to the cake, Eddie Obeid will go on stand in the ICAC corruption investigations against him & his family & other Labor identities on Monday, as the Parliament resumes.

Julia Gillard may have shown great political skills to take her minority government full term. But in doing so she has been lucky because she has had to deal with the least popular opposition leader in living memory, if not of all time. 

But even with Tony Abbott's unpopularity as a huge bonus for her, surely Julia Gillard must know the writing is on the wall! Everything seems to be stacked against her!

Lessons for the coalition from the US Elections

Barack Obama's reelection for his second term as US President was significant in many ways, not least because it was the product of a $6 billion close contest won in a handful of swing states, but also because of many other reasons, reasons which the coalition in Australia in general & Tony Abbott in particular must examine very closely. Reasons which Abbott & co simply can not afford to ignore.

But at the same time Mitt Romney lost the election for reasons which simply do not apply to Tony Abbott.

Here are some comparisons with the state of political affairs in Australia vs US Elections:

The conservative core of the Republican Party leadership never fully supported Mitt Romney, to the point that he had to resort to frequent shifts in his position on sensitive political issues by moving to the right.
Tony Abbott does not have either of those problems: The conservative leadership core of the party supports him.
Even more crucially, with his "No Carbon tax, No Mineral Resources Supertax & Turn back the Boats" message, unlike Mitt Romney, Tony Abbott has not had to shift on his main political message in order to appease the conservative right of the Liberal Party.

Politicians in the USA, particularly the conservative nominees on the Republican side, will always have to deal with the ever so sticky topics of gun control & abortion. Tony Abbott, whilst supported by the right wing religious factions in the Liberal Party does not need to address the abortion issue, and thankfully strict gun control laws are a bipartisan & socially acceptable topic in Australia.

On the other hand, similar to Mitt Romney, Tony Abbott has also focused on the so called "blue colour male vote" in marginal seats and has risked alienating significant ethnic minority votes & the more crucially the all important female vote.
Mitt Romney did exactly that & the Hispanics & women deserted him in the crucial swing states which either candidate needed to win to win the election.
Tony Abbott must start to repair the damage caused by the apparent disconnection of female voters with him. This needs a lot more focus & constant attention than the limited traction gained after the interviews by Abbott's wife.

The constant  "austerity, debt reduction" message by the Republicans & Mitt Romney at a time of weak economic outlook, high unemployment & fragile consumer sentiment did not go well with anxious voters.

Tony Abbott's politically motivated attacks to force the Gillard Government to produce a meaningless surplus or lose all credibility can work against the coalition. Cutting government services & jobs at a time of very low consumer confidence is not clever politics & is in fact fiscally stupid, especially when inflation remains well & truly under control.
At a time when many sectors of the economy such as retail, construction, manufacturing & tourism are reeling in deep recession, for a country in the comfortably sound economic position of Australia, the push for a symbolic surplus to gain political points is only going to increase unnecessary anxiety & further slowdown in the economy.

Whilst both sides of politics in Australia are guilty of cost cutting proposals to achieve this meaningless surplus, the cost cutting measures of the QLD & NSW Governments will play into the hands of Labor strategists & will pose itself (with labor's help of course) as a major negative for Tony Abbott in the coming months.

At the same time, as 2013 the election year approaches, the coalition continues to remain big on rhetoric & deafeningly silent on policy details. The leaked reports by the Treasury suggesting coalition policies will cost business $4b will only fuel suspicion further.

The House & Senate Republicans, with their versions of blocking stimulus & other expansionary policies of President Obama, and Mitt Romney in lacking detailed policy alternatives, contributed to Romney's ultimate failure last Tuesday.

Tony Abbott must watch out. It is naive to assume voters will vote for him simply because they intensely dislike the PM Julia Gillard.
Abbott & his team must demonstrate much more balance in dealing with voters, produce real visionary alternative policies & learn from the obvious mistakes of the Republican machine & Mitt Romney's camp in this year's US Elections.

Watch out Tony! Gillard Government is throwing out old problems & cleaning its act!

The upturn in fortunes that the foreign policy exposure Julia Gillard enjoyed in meeting the Queen & the US President Obama towards the end of last year has not abated yet.

Julia Gillard has finally started to demonstrate her political skills by getting rid of or finalising most of the unworkable policy promises that she made in order to save her political career after the last election.

The carbon tax legislation has been sorted out, Mineral resources tax is almost forgotten & the boat arrivals are off the front pages even though her policies in this area have utterly failed & Abbott & Morrison are trying their best to revisit the issue traction again. But most importantly, Gillard & her advisers have continued with their spring clean of poor policy initiatives & have got rid of her promise on the unworkable poker machines pre commitment nonsense to Andrew Wilkie by convincing Peter Slipper to become the Speaker!

The above matters should all start the alarm bells for Tony Abbott & his up to now effective negative strategy towards the Government. Gillard is making negative or troublesome policies scarcer for Abbott to attack. At the same time Abbott can not take much credit for many of the backflips by Gillard as his opponents are usually quick to point out that he at no time offers a workable alternative! eg in case of the poker machines Senator Xenaphon has pointed out exactly that!

Therefore, as I mentioned in my last post, 2012 may turn out to be a lot more troublesome for Tony Abbott than he could have anticipated.

In order to preserve the coalition's lead over the Government, Abbott must prove his leadership credentials to the voters, by demonstrating his policy vision in various troubled sectors of the economy, & by effectively countering the likes of the ambitious & out of control Bill Shorten, the PM in waiting! He must openly & directly tackle Bill shorten on the Fair Work Australia & commit to struggling businesses to change the more inflexible & stifling aspects of the legislation.

In short, whilst the voters may be waiting with their baseball bats to punish Gillard & Labor at the next election in 2013, they are yet to roll out their welcome mats for Tony Abbott! And he needs to give them enough reasons to do so! Being negative & short of alternative policies will not accomplish that!

2012: The year Tony Abbott must prove himself as a credible "alternative PM"

By all accounts Tony Abbott has been a very effective opposition leader since the election day in 2010. Despite all his detractors' protestation, his job as opposition leader is & will be to attempt to block any government policy his side of politics does not agree with, and to win votes in the process.

However, 2012 will be a year Abbott must firstly demonstrate his policy credentials, and then prove his leadership abilities as a credible alternative PM.

Julia Gillard has by any definition enjoyed a great run in the past few weeks. She passed her poisoned "Carbon Tax" as well as the "Mining Resources Supertax" through the Lower House. She's been seen as a decisive leader in the world stage & has improved her fragile numbers in the Lower House by one!

She has truly put an end to her rocky 2011 with a bang! Despite her earlier comments about lack of interest in foreign policy, she is finishing the year in full appreciation of what wonders "Foreign Affairs" can do to make any leader look decisive & worldly! From hosting the Queen to enjoying the "Obamarama" in standing shoulder to shoulder with the US President, to lecturing European leaders about economic management whilst hosting Asian Leaders.....

And to top it all, for the first time during her reign as the PM, she managed a superb coup without a single leak by her eternal enemies in Labor Party & surprised the opposition this week by increasing her slim & fragile majority by one vote in the Lower House. This will potentially neutralise the "Poker Machine" issue from the already shrinking war cupboard of Tony Abbott.

All of the above leave Tony Abbott in a very sticky situation for 2012. He has only the "Boat People" issue as an unresolved matter to hang on to. Whilst he can & will continue to attack the carbon & mining tax, the truth is he is now fully exposed & can no longer hide behind "problematic issues of the minority Government".

Whilst it is still probably true that no matter what Gillard & Labor do, voters will be waiting with what a prominent journalist in the media recently termed "their baseball bats at the polls in 2013", the fact is 2012 will be a make or break year for Tony Abbott too. No matter what happens to Gillard & her fragile minority alliance with the Greens & independents, and no matter how the likes of Bill Shorten & Mark Arbib & the rest of faceless poll driven & self promoting men of Labor play their cards with Julia Gillard's leadership, Tony Abbot must prove himself as a credible alternative prime minister with at leasts some credible & fully costed policy platforms in 2012 or face the potential consequences.

If on the other hand Abbott decides to continue to ignore major policy fronts such as IR & simply continues with his current war of attrition & solely relies on the apparent comfortable lead the opposition enjoys in the polls on the two party preferred basis, he may find 2012 a lot less enjoyable as the opposition leader than 2011!

Australia, a multi speed economy with a minority government paralised by instability

Australia weathered the global financial crisis better than her European & north American counterparts, thanks to the resources hungry economies of South East Asia & India.

Regrettably however, we have inherited a multi-speed economy with many sectors in varying degrees of recessionary difficulties, a minority government that is hostage to its independent MPs & the Greens, a PM tarnished by her inability to demonstrate any political conviction, and her failure to implement any of her main stated policies, and worst of all a Reserve Bank that is simply in denial about the recessionary state of many sectors & is has remained obsessed with controlling inflation, which by the way does not even exists in many sectors, most notably in retail which is being crushed by deflationary pressures.

As a result, the political game in Canberra has simply become a war of attrition between a much weakened PM who has to constantly watch her back, and an opposition that has mastered, albeit unproductively for the nation, the art of negativity.

Meanwhile, the government has failed to address any of the fundamental issues facing retail, construction, tourism & manufacturing sectors (to name a few) all of which comprise of many small struggling privately owned businesses.

At the same time, the Qantas confrontation has highlighted the inflexibility of Julia Gillard's "Fairwork" legislation & how it has reversed most of the IR reforms of the past two decades.

And to make matters worse, the self serving powerbroker elements in Labor party such as Bill Shorten, continue their rather superficial & patronising public support for the PM whilst they adoringly look at themselves in the mirror every morning & see the future PM smiling back at them!

It has taken more than 25 years of continuous reform to take Australia to its current dizzy heights. The current PM & her incompetent team around her are unravelling everything in the space of 2.5 years!

Without the mining boom, Australia would be in a deep recession & stuck with leaders who lack inspiration, vision and conviction!

And to make matters worse, both Gillard & Abbott seem to neither have the policies to deal with Australia's major economic issues nor the capability to be the inspiring leaders that Australia desperately needs.

Talk to any retailer, big or small, tourism operator, manufacturer, farmer, car dealer & generally any small business operator & it is crystal clear that things are going so bad that even the concept of "two speed economy" does not accurately describe the malaise in the Australian economy. Unless of course the term refers to the economy of Western Australia vs the economy of the rest of Australia! (same point also stated by the CEO of Linfox in today's AFR)

And at a crucial time in Australia's history, we have hit a massive drought of talent in the Federal politics in this country. Both Julia Gillard & Tony Abbott lack political conviction, are light on visionary policies & worse of all lack the ability to state & sell their policies to the electorate in an effective manner.

Gillard (and Rudd before her) & her Government have proven that they simply are incapable of designing & implementing good policies (as opposed to policy on the run in order to catch up in the polls). In the odd occasion that they do, they either

a) demonstrate a total lack of conviction in their own policy eg dropping the ETS or the asylum seekers issue that Gillard is wrestling with, or
b) are totally incapable of selling the idea to the voters (eg carbon tax), or
c) are incapable of managing & controlling the implementation costs associated with policies (eg BER, Insulation & the current budget blow outs in the broadband roll out)

On the other hand Abbott, whilst effective as an opposition leader in opposing everything, is perceived to be light on policy, and worse, totally hostage to the ill informed and/or biased views & opinions of radio shock jocks & marginal seat voters, ie those who will supposedly win him the next election! By choosing this risky strategy, Abbott is being perceived as very light on any substantive policy & therefore incapable of leading Australia!

As the reputable "Economist" magazine pointed out this week (in a Special feature on Australia), the current lack of substantive leadership & vision on both sides of politics in Australia threatens to harm the great reforms implemented during the Hawke/Keating/Howard years & destroy Australia's bright future!

In conclusion, whilst the Gillard Government may lose the next election due to total failure in effectivepolicy implementation, an Abbott led coalition must demonstrate viable visionary policies to deserve to win Government!

Where is the good old Aussie compassion?

Scott Morrison & Tony Abbott have really hit a low point in the last 24 hours by attacking the Federal Government for footing the bill for flying the asylum seekers to Sydney to attend the funeral of their loved ones who perished in the boat disaster at Christmas Island!

What do they think they are doing? Appeasing & winning the ignorant uneducated marginal seat votes, which by the way they failed to win enough of in the last Federal Election anyway?

And at what cost to human dignity? At the expense of their own reputation being tarnished (especially in case of Scott Morrison, who is basically a decent person but somehow seems to transform to a different person in his capacity as the shadow Immigration Minister)

And at the great expense of taking away the very last few shreds of human dignity from the grieving asylum seekers who have lost their loved ones in a tragedy?

Isn't it enough that the rest of the world is starting to view Australia as a redneck xenophobic & racist country? Do we need to strip these desperate grieving people of their last shred of dignity by denying them reunion with their loved ones?

Last but not least, Joe Hockey should be commanded for his integrity & dignity & for not selling out his principals.

As a Liberal voter I am ashamed of what the right wing religious factions in the party stand for & hope Tony Abbott gets his act together & stop being held hostage to their views.

All in all, three important questions in the immigration debate in Australia need to be addressed:

1) Are economic refugees a bad thing for a sparsely populated country like Australia after all? And does the main problem lie in successive governments' lack of sufficient investment in infrastructure which means our cities can not cope with larger populations? After all many major Western Cities have higher populations than Sydney & Melbourne.

2) If the situation in places like Iraq & Afghanistan is stable enough for us to turn refugees from such places away, isn't it time then that we bring our troops back home?

3) Are we really a compassionate tolerant multicultural nation or are we simply kidding ourselves?