Crikey says: Abbott policy leaks hint at change to come
Parliament’s first sitting bloc of the year is over, and the Coalition has scored an easy victory.
Another fortnight of Labor talking about itself. Another fortnight of a beaming Kevin Rudd popping up on TV. Another fortnight of the corruption claims in New South Wales and Craig Thomson. Another fortnight in which you have to admire Julia Gillard — however grudgingly — for getting out of bed in the morning.
Labor has five more sitting sessions to turn the situation around before the September 14 election (and one of those sessions is Senate only).
And one of the approaches the ALP has used effectively to attack the Coalition — Tony Abbott’s lack of policy substance — has begun to change, ever so slightly.
Two policy proposals — for development in the Top End, and more dam-building — have been leaked recently. There will be more to come. You may not agree with the policies themselves, but if you’ve railed long and hard against Abbott’s policy vacuum, give the Coalition some credit for doing something about it.
Andrew Robb and Tony Smith have spent more than a year leading an internal Coalition policy committee. Expect a focus on “cutting government waste” and building physical infrastructure that paints Abbott as an action man. Don’t expect much structural economic reform. Expect more Institute of Public Affairs-sponsored policies in the Coalition armoury — as we point out in Tips and Rumours today.
This presents a challenge and an opportunity to Labor: to shift gears from the “no policy Abbott” attack towards effective policy demolition.
But to do that, Labor would have to stop talking about itself. Based on the last fortnight, that’s a challenge indeed.
*****
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On this week’s episode, deputy editor Cathy Alexander and Bernard Keane discuss the most recent return of the unshakeable Kevin Rudd. Plus, Crikey launches a call for journalists to boycott the highly stage-managed road trips by political leaders in the federal election campaign. You can listen in here.
Categories: Crikey Says
For all the talk generated by these two propsoals being bandied about do not ever try and refer to them as policy - they are though bubbles only trying to gauge acceptance.
If they fail, they were only general ideas and nothing the coalition would ever feel compelled to tie themselves to, or the MSM continually bring up as a broken promise.
If they are accepted, then the general idea may find its way into policy, but even then only enough for the support and not actually to do anything.
Only recently Crikey proposed to set up a register of promises to try and get some semblance of accountability in the coming months. This itself look to be a failure if Crikey can’t even get the concept of what is or isn’t a Policy straight.
by frey on Feb 15, 2013 at 12:59 pm
What Frey said. I can’t believe you are dignifying these half-arsed ideas with the word “policy”. Or are we back in the per-election false equivalency “insider baseball” mode that Joan Didion rubbished so thoroughly more than 2 decades ago?
Please. Words mean something. You guys are professional writers.
by rachel612 on Feb 15, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Coalition floats trial balloons. Crikey treats them seriously.
by Cyndi on Feb 15, 2013 at 2:41 pm
This is great!
The coalition has floated two forward looking big ideas and the ALP has fallen over itself to attack them with relentless negativity with added personal insults such as “Troppo Tony”.
This is a reverse of 2007. The coalition is positioning itself as a party looking to the future while the ALP is looking oblivious to anything going on outside the Canberra beltway.
It’s all got zero detail of course but why put out serious and costed policy when big ideas like this do the job?
The frothing at the mouth by left elites just adds to the fun.
by David Hand on Feb 15, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Aspirational policies and promises. Well …what can one say, except its a start!
by Bill Hilliger on Feb 15, 2013 at 3:17 pm
David, could you try not to parrot the American right so much. The ‘beltway’ is the ring road that encircles Washington, DC, And referring to ‘left elites’ is one of the reasons why the Republicans are now such a train wreck. Spending years trying to position themselves as the party of the ‘average Joe’, meant that they also spent years trashing scientists, academics, policy experts and anyone else who had good reason to criticise their poorly formed ideas. Now they are the party of climate change denial, gun toting right-to-lifers, creationists and people who, strangely, claim that government is the problem, while desperately wanting to get into government.
by Electric Lardyland on Feb 16, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Lardy,
Thank you for your pedantry. Labelling me as aligned with the American right is a good try - a handy alternative to discussing my main point. You may need me to restate it.
The Coalition is getting out there with ideas about Australia’s future that positions them as forward looking. Such thought bubbles don’t actually need any policy substance behind them to deliver the outcome. They can be compared with other recent thought bubbles, such as the Gonski reforms, the NDIS, Shorten’s workplace reforms and of course, the MRRT.
The ALP, in laughing at such forward looking thought bubbles, seems inward looking and ready for a long stint on the opposition benches.
by David Hand on Feb 16, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Lardy,
Thank you for your pedantry. Labelling me as akin to the American Right is a good try - a handy alternative to discussing the point I was making. You probably need me to restate it.
The leaked Northern Australia and Dams thought bubbles help position the Coalition as forward looking and ready for government. They do not need and substantial policy backing to have that effect.
Criticising such thought bubbles positions the ALP as inward looking and ready for a long stint on the opposition benches.
Keep frothing, mate.
by David Hand on Feb 16, 2013 at 9:27 pm
D.H., you seem to have missed the main point of my criticism, that in parroting the American right, the Australian right, is increasingly becoming a movement of thought bubbles, without the thought.
by Electric Lardyland on Feb 17, 2013 at 10:35 am
Seems to me the discussion paper leaks are about taking on Katter’s party. Strange about making a big thing about tax concessions to encourage development in the north - it’s already in the tax code as a remote area allowance. The proposals are vintage Nationals populism.
David Hand - there’s nothing forward looking about schemes to “develop the North”. It’s straight out of the 1960s, before the white elephants of Humpty Doo and the Ord River Scheme showed it was a non-starter.
by Malcolm Street on Feb 17, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Hey, David Hand,
If you really want a visionary forward looking policy that will provide a backbone to the Australain economy for decades to come, look no further than…..the National Broadband Network - the NBN in case you hadn’t worked it out.
Except when it comes to real vision, the LNP gets cataracts.
Any dams will soak up more money than water and offer nowhere for any water in there to go (perhaps pipelines to Melbourne? Check WA to see ho well that opne played out).
by frey on Feb 18, 2013 at 7:49 am
Frey,
It’s unfortunate that you mention fast broadband for Australia as “The NBN”. Of course, everyone, including the coalition, accepts that it will be fast and it will be a great business enabler.
The coalition has a fast broadband plan as well. The main difference is that it would be built on a commercial basis and not be loaded onto the downtrodden taxpayer as the NBN will. It would be built in urban areas first, where there are a lot of potential customers rather than Armadale, which happens to be in Tony Windsor’s electorate. It was telling that he explained his decision to support Labor to form a government with the word “Broadband”. It is also telling that Conroy keeps secret the take up rate in a supposedly public infrastructure investment. I’m really looking forward to hearing it from Turnbull around October. I’ll have a good laugh.
Railways, a popular urban intellectual parallel for the NBN, were built by private enterprise. They joined places like New York and Baltimore or Manchester and Liverpool. They did not join Alice Springs to Adelaide as a pay-off for a political favour. It was a hard nosed commercial focus that drove the industrial revolution and delivered massive economic growth not a massive public debt
The Coalition is opposed to the NBN because it is monstrously expensive and it is hidden off the government’s accounts with this flimsy facade of a corporate entity. The NBN is unlikely ever to deliver a commercial return. What a joke. The taxpayer will be picking up the tab for decades to come.
The coalition is firmly in favour of fast broadband.
by David Hand on Feb 18, 2013 at 4:00 pm