Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor Friday 5 December 2014
Tony Abbott’s promise that he was ‘putting the adults back in charge’ has been followed by chaos in the Senate, broken promises and budget blues
Tony Abbott believed his ascension to the prime ministership would revive the orderly atmospherics of the Howard years. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters
It’s been a long, long parliamentary year in Canberra, with broken promises, budget blues, and the Clive circus. Now MPs have packed their bags for the summer, here are five things we learned.
Disruption is the new normal
Tony Abbott believed his ascension to the prime ministership would revive the orderly atmospherics of the Howard years – a time when an early morning power walk in a track suit was all it took to convince the nation that the ship of state was in very safe hands. It was a worthy enough hope, but always a futile one. Abbott clearly thought he who wins the tabloids wins the Lodge: a close relationship with News Corp was always key. That relationship promised the prospect of clear communication with a big audience. Abbott did not seem to realise that the old media structures and conventions that existed in Howard’s decade were in the process of being smashed up and remade. He vastly underestimated how difficult it would be to operate when he was on the receiving end of daily disruption, rather than occupying the happier position of visiting disruption on his opponents. It’s not just the media cycle that’s changed, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott in different ways have altered the terms of daily politics. Rudd did it by speeding things up, in the process, hastening his own redundancy. Abbott did it by obliterating the centre. The model of opposition proved up by Abbott is don’t stop pounding until your opponent hits the mat. The cycle of disruption and change that Rudd unleashed in 2007 has not yet played out and won’t fully play out until Abbott’s period in office ends. Rudd and Abbott are bookends.
The fair go: not dead yet
The last 12 months have been a live social experiment in so many ways. One of the most interesting developments this political year has been confirmation that the old Australian value of “the fair go” persists even as Australians become more prosperous and aspirational. The Abbott government lost the political argument around its first budget partly because the May statement broke a bunch of election promises – but mostly because the measures were unfair. People perhaps expect politicians to lie. They are not conditioned to consent when policies quite obviously help cashed-up sectional interests and sheet home the costs of that help to vulnerable people. The budget felt unfair because it was unfair, and it came with a context. People are concerned about the direction of the economy, and about cost of living. It is obvious Australia needs a rational debate about long term fiscal sustainability. Any rational debate needs to look at both at revenue and at expenditure, rather than promulgating outright falsehoods such as nothing needs to change and taxes don’t need to rise. But the last 12 months tell us equity still matters, that egalitarianism is a form of national nostalgia, and any debate about structural reform of the budget or the economy needs to reference core Australian values. Inequality and its consequences is a huge global debate right now. Bill Shorten has started to talk about inclusive growth. It’s an interesting rhetorical construction. I’m not yet sure what it means, but it’s a space to watch.
The “new” politics
Australians perhaps thought they said goodbye to unpredictability in the parliamentary sense when they voted out Labor in 2013. Tony was “putting the adults back in charge.” Well, not so much as things turned out. Clive Palmer conjured a political organisation out of nowhere and barnstormed into Canberra as only a “dinosaur-theme-park-owning billionaire” can. The Senate voting system also threw up a crossbench of newbies entirely unschooled in business-as-usual. Right from the start, it was obvious things in the red room were going to get pretty interesting. Palmer styled himself initially as the anti-politician, which sounded very promising indeed, but the sum of his decisions proved him establishment to the core. Palmer’s pattern of shouting and jiggling before accommodating the Coalition contributed to blowing up his little boutique insurgency. Jacqui Lambie actually wanted to pit herself against the prevailing system, not just bloviate about it. Lambie’s entire political identity is constructed around the concept of “small woman takes on implacable machine” – making her something of a poor fit in a billionaires folly. Things took their logical course by year’s end. The PUP was officially up. The government has not yet worked out how to manage a chamber where the Coalition lacks a majority, humility not being a strong suit. Learning the art of crossbench coalition building will be a priority for 2015.
From liberty to authority: the curious case of national security
Tony Abbott opened his prime ministership as freedom fighter. During his period in opposition Abbott attempted iteratively to line up his own conservative inclinations with the libertarianism (and a harsh person may say, irrationalism) in vogue with some of the Coalition’s more voluble supporters. Well one of them, anyway. (Happy Christmas, Andrew.) But mid-year, for a range of reasons, the narrative changed course. Liberty would have to take a backseat to security, the prime minister told us. Federal politics entered a surround sound national security phase. The domestic threats were talked up. Legislation to counter the threats was produced. It was widely assumed that this conversation change would be politically beneficial to Abbott, as it had once been to John Howard. Defence and security is safe ground for incumbents and, particularly, conservative incumbents. But the change of topic created no measurable improvement in the Coalition’s political fortunes. The poor poll trend was not reversed. The Coalition has suffered a negative swing of more than 6% in just over a year – quite a remarkable opening for all the wrong reasons. By the end of the political year, security had fallen back off the daily agenda. The case study demands the question of whether voters are just unhappy with Abbott regardless of what he’s talking about, or whether the public is more wary about politicians invoking these issues in the post Snowden world. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know it’s an interesting question.
Everybody zing
The political year has closed out in very “meta” fashion. Various commentators have upbraided the Abbott government for failing to sell its message rather than examining whether or not the product might be the problem. (Good products generally sell themselves, they don’t need sound bites and slick talking points.) And we political journalists are too easily preoccupied by various process fixations. We are armchair generals, all of us. But I reckon there are some reflections we can make about political communication in 2014. The first is politicians talk far too much, and the 24/7 news cycle locks them into talking too much and revealing too little. With so much static around all the time, politics is always looking to cut through. Sometimes it’s faux clarity slogans. Sometimes it’s faux folksy blah blah, like Bill Shorten’s cringe worthy zingers. These constructions beg you to notice them, which is an undignified business, let’s face it. The most interesting thing said in politics in 2014 was, ‘I got it wrong, I’m sorry.’ Tony Abbott didn’t say it, even though he desperately needs to. It was actually Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir during one of the critical Senate votes – two neophytes distant enough from the evasions and intrigues of professional politics to understand this is just what normal people do in instances where they make poor judgments. They just say: “I stuffed up.” It’s the truth, and the truth remains powerful.
