By ABC's Annabel Crabb Updated February 03, 2012 16:44:36
Political promises are having a bad season. If they were a currency, they'd be trading at several hundred to the Aussie dollar right now, and flagging fast.
If they were a dog, you'd run them out of town. So both Australia's major political leaders made a tacit agreement this week - to stop making them.
On Tuesday, the National Press Club heard an hour's worth of Tony Abbott's positive vision for the nation, during the course of which he revealed that he remains absolutely positive that Julia Gillard is a no-good, lying, incompetent buffoon who holds power only by the vote of a scoundrel.
He also indicated that he would definitely be interested in maybe making dentistry services available through Medicare. He made an unshakeable public commitment to remain fairly keen on a disability insurance scheme. And he promised that by the end of the first term of an Abbott government, further tax cuts would on no account be laughed out of town.
Bill Shorten popped up immediately to excoriate the limpness of Mr Abbott's resolve, especially on disabilities, where Labor also has authored a series of sensibly-priced motherhood statements, the major difference being that they have commissioned a scoping study, also sensibly priced.
Julia Gillard had an aspirational week, too.
In her first major address of the year, she painted a picture of the Australian economy as she would like it to be. It certainly sounded compelling; a place of quiet industry and expertise, where plumbers and farmers and mechanics would use the National Broadband Network to diagnose tumours and trade carbon credits and check our suspension and do other such wondrous stuff.
It's all about productivity, the PM says. (It's one of life's little paradoxes that -nationally - access to superfast broadband is expected to help with productivity, even though individual employees, testing this hypothesis personally, often find the reverse to be true. If you don't believe me, I can refer you to an amusing YouTube clip of a drunk lemur making exactly this point, only more cutely).
"This is why I've asked the Minister for Skills, Senator Evans, to bring forward a major proposal for a sweeping overhaul of the vocational training system in Australia."
When the proposed sweeping plan (which involves deferred fees and subsidies for VET students) is brought forward, the PM prudently reminded her audience, it would need to meet with the approval of the state and territory governments.
Now, I'm no wet blanket, but any country in which rail gauges are still a problem needs to be cautious when assuming the cooperation of states and territories in any sweeping new plan.
The cold truth is that the present political environment is an inhospitable one for promises. Uncertainty is rife. Julia Gillard's promises are historically unreliable. Tony Abbott's are currently unnecessary, as he figures he'll get there on the deficiencies of his rival rather than the detail of his dental plan. And both are stalked by the prospect of a global economic debacle that would make matchsticks of their undertakings, at any rate.
And thus, at least for the meantime, we can expect significant wiggle room in the undertakings made to us by our leaders. Readjust your expectations accordingly, all ye who enter here. Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you might, depending on global financial conditions, be prepared to commission a feasibility study into doing for your country. We aspire to fight them. Possibly on the beaches, weather permitting.
Aberrations do exist, of course. Mr Abbott remains entirely wedded to his $2 billion paid parental leave scheme, which is to be funded by an increase in company tax and is, as far as most of his colleagues are concerned, the policy with a face only a parent could love. Publicly, they grit their teeth and defend it. Privately, they wish he'd drown it in a bucket.
The other uncertainty derives from the person of the Foreign Minister.
This week has undeniably heralded an escalation in hostilities; where last week ministers were privately describing Mr Rudd as a prima donna and non-team-player, this week they did it in public. The reason for the escalation is fear, among the courtiers of the Red Queen, that some Caucus members are converting to Ruddism.
The Foreign Minister had nothing to say on the subject of conversion. But events in Syria allowed him to talk at length about Damascus, instead; was ever an aspiring leader so comprehensively blessed by way of ready-made political allegory?
At the time of writing, the Foreign Minister had just departed for the Munich Security Conference, where he will appear on a panel with Henry Kissinger, thus evading the Prime Minister's butcher-paper-and-crayons event in Canberra.
He, too, is not promising anything.
Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.
Pie crust politics: promises made, promises broken - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
