Crunch time for one-trick TonyTony Abbott’s missteps this week...

Crunch time for one-trick Tony

Tony Abbott’s missteps this week have had his colleagues questioning their faith in their leader


Tony Walker


In politics, like war itself, changes of fortune on the battlefield can on occasion be measured incrementally, or they can be subject to what might be described as a momentum shift, such as when one side outmanoeuvres the enemy by whatever means.
This prompts the question: Are we observing a realignment of political fortunes to the point where conventional wisdom about the certainty of a Coalition victory, whenever an election is held, has given way to a sliver of uncertainty?
Is this a momentum shift?
Or, put another way, has Tony Abbott become a vulnerable Opposition Leader whose missteps get magnified to the point where his unpopularity, according to the polls, becomes a liability for his side of politics and an unlosable election becomes losable after all?
We are a long way from reaching that conclusion, but Abbott’s colleagues will have been asking themselves this week whether reservations they held about his leadership in the first place are turning out to be justified.
Coalition self-confidence will also have been shaken by a precipitous drop in public esteem for Premier Ted Baillieu’s Coalition government in Victoria, according to the latest opinion polls.
You might have anticipated that political momentum would still be running strongly against Labor federally in a week when it produced unconvincing numbers in its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, was obliged to defend its record over a surprise jump in the cost of living, and witnessed police raiding the house of one of its own, but Abbott’s clumsiness proved a distraction yet?again.
He was obliged to apologise for remarks about plans in the MYEFO to slash the baby bonus, remarks which might have been interpreted as a slur against the Prime Minister’s childlessness.
Abbott’s worst several weeks as Opposition Leader show. He looks rattled in contrast to a Prime Minister who has got her tail up, even if she’s inclined to fall flat on her face on occasions.
“Funny that,” said one of his closest lieutenants when I asked what reasonable explanation might be advanced for Abbott’s tendency to misspeak in such a way that he reinforces negative stereotypes.
I don’t believe Anthony John Abbott is a misogynist or sexist; rather he is an old-fashioned social conservative whose religiosity imposes its own burdens, especially when you factor into all of this a history of university rabble-rousing.
Bob Hawke’s behaviour up to and including his presidency of the Australian Council of Trade Unions renders Abbott a Rechabite by comparison, but Hawke never pretended to be anything other than what he was and is: a larrikin, albeit a shrewd one.
What these past weeks remind Abbott’s colleagues of, however, are the circumstances under which he was elected, by one vote after a widely disliked Malcolm Turnbull made a hash of his leadership defence and leadership of the party?itself.
Abbott was to all intents and purposes an accidental leader in the first place whose performance has exceeded slender expectations – until now.
Needless to say, his opponents are making the most of what is widely perceived as a moment of vulnerability, with some repeating what is becoming a staple Labor criticism: Abbott is a “one-trick Tony” with a “glass jaw”.
This is propaganda, of course, but what is true is that he has displayed unusual clumsiness recently.
Like old generals, Abbott and his advisers appear to be fighting the last war, or even last century’s wars, according to a John Howard doctrine of a sort of dour trench warfare of repetition and more repetition.
This is OK as long as the political tide is with you, but if it changes then tactics need to shift, which is where concern lies in his own ranks. Is he capable of shifting gears to a more positive, less negative approach when he will be faced with the mother of all selling campaigns – to persuade people about his ability to maintain fiscal rectitude given various commitments entered into, including the rollback of the carbon and mining taxes?
It’s not clear he’s up to the task.
The stakes are considerable. If Abbott continues to falter, leadership talk will surface, Labor will be emboldened and will be tempted to make comparisons between this period and March 1993, when Paul Keating prevailed over John Hewson in an election in which persistence and relatively good government paid off in the?end.
That’s Julia Gillard’s challenge. “She’s got to try to rebuild the advantage of incumbency,” as a Labor veteran put it.
So to the question as to whether we will look back on this period as a moment when the country experienced a momentum shift politically. I agree with Fairfax pollster John Stirton when he says the next two Nielsen polls and Newspolls will establish whether Labor’s revival is sustainable or whether Gillard falls back into a trough, given that about half of those polled would like to be rid of her. Labor’s primary vote in the Nielsen poll stands at 34 per cent, up from 26 per cent six months ago. It needs to get to 38 per cent at least, which is about where it was in 2010.
Abbott will not be drawing much comfort from any of this, and nor should he, but he might help himself by fighting the next war rather than the last.
Tony Walker is the AFR’s international editor and a former political editor.
The Australian Financial Review
http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/crunch_time_for_one_trick_tony_zto8JKlOvIScPVfao48IPI