http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/now-rudds-on-the-nose--for-onc...
The Federal Opposition's surge in public opinion is good news for Liberal and
National backbenchers who have been living with the threat of wipe-out at the
next election.
But despite the Opposition's seven-point, primary vote boost, the latest poll
may not necessarily be all good for Malcolm Turnbull.
Indeed, should the Coalition's primary vote continue to rise in coming months
while Turnbull's preferred prime minister rating is static at 18 to 20percent
(compared with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at 63per cent) there is likely to be a
renewed emphasis on Liberal leadership.
Since it lost government almost two years ago, the Liberal-National Coalition
has been sinking.
Its first two years have been characterised by deep divisions between those who
believed the primary focus of an Opposition was to make the Government the story
by holding it to account and those who instinctively clamoured for the past in
the face of an enormously popular and assured Labor administration.
Now – as the latest Newspoll puts the Liberal and National parties at roughly
the same pegging in two-party preferred terms as after the last election – the
Coalition is treading water.
It's not an altogether bad place to be.
The past six months of Turnbull's leadership have proven particularly divisive.
Turnbull will always attract animosity from those Liberals who believe the
former merchant banker and businessman is not truly of them.
His top-down "managerial" style has further inflamed the animosities that
resulted in acrimonious carping and undermining of his approach to climate
change policy and his response to the Government's economic stimulus spending in
the face of global recession.
Turnbull's predecessor Brendan Nelson was held hostage to the same politically
backward approach on climate change. It ultimately finished him.
Turnbull, however, has crashed through to a point – sidelining his party-room
dinosaurs and winning approval to negotiate amendments to the Government's
carbon pollution reduction scheme legislation. Yet the biggest test for Turnbull
on climate change is still ahead.
Economic forecasts show that, courtesy of the strong Australian dollar, the
proposed carbon reduction scheme will deliver billions of dollars less in
revenue than initially expected.
This makes an emissions trading scheme tougher for the Government to sell. But
it will press ahead because climate change remains a core symbolic centrepiece
of its manifesto and it is confident that, despite the economic challenges, the
weight of public opinion is behind introducing a scheme.
The revenue shortfall creates a more pressing political headache for Turnbull,
because he had planned to use excess revenue from carbon permit sales to fund
his amendments to boost compensation to emissions-intensive industries such as
power generators and small business.
Party-room hardliners will use the forecasts as evidence to argue, before the
final vote on the legislation this month, it would be economically reckless for
the Opposition to support such an unaffordable emissions trading scheme.
Turnbull has found some temporary breathing space since the party room backed
him to negotiate on climate change. That is largely due to the crisis that has
enveloped the Government on its confused (and confusing) policy on asylum seekers.
For perhaps the first time since the last election, the focus is squarely on
Rudd and an imbroglio which has challenged his authority and even the confidence
of his back-bench.
Since a new influx of boats – many carrying some of the world's lest fortunate
people – Rudd has tried to be a little bit John Howard and little bit Malcolm
Fraser.
Howard will be remembered as the hardliner on asylum seekers. Fraser is
remembered more generously by the centre left as being more compassionate,
overseeing an orderly migration program of tens of thousands of Vietnamese to
Australia after the Vietnam War (although many languished in Asian camps for far
too long).
And so, Rudd has told us endlessly that his approach is to be both hardline and
humane. The consensus among public opinion makers and commentators is this is
impossible.
But it is not.
Because it is possible to be compassionate within the confines of a clearly
constructed, internationally promoted and succinctly enunciated policy that
brings order to the process of offering asylum.
Rudd's domestic problems with asylum seekers stem from the fact he has sent
mixed messages on the issue to both the Australian voters and to those who wish
to seek refuge here. He has done this by indicating to the asylum seekers
(having scrapped the Howard government's contentious temporary protection visas
and offshore processing in the Pacific) that Australia is easier to access than
it was under the previous government.
He is paying the price, politically in Australia, because voters hate being
taken as mugs, and internationally, because he is attempting to informally
outsource the problem to Indonesia.
Rudd has disappointed those voters who deserted Howard at the last election over
asylum seekers and a related, amorphous, mass of issues – including tough
anti-terrorism measures, inseparability from the jaded Bush administration and
the Iraq War.
As the tragic stand-off on the Oceanic Viking continues to play out in
Indonesian waters and amid terrible news of yet more asylum seekers' deaths at
sea, Labor MPs are said to be shaking their heads.
For they, too, believed their Government would be more genuinely compassionate.
The Federal Government needs to quickly and radically reassess its intake of
asylum seekers from the source countries – most notably Afghanistan and Sri
Lanka. It should open the door to greater formal migration from these countries.
But it must man the turnstiles vigilantly with a thorough offshore assessment
(based on genuine need and rigorous security tests) of would-be Australians.
It must be done quickly and with order by the Australian authorities in
co-operation with the United Nations.
Only then will the boats stop coming at such a rate.
The events of recent weeks show that even a Government led by an enormously
popular Prime Minister will be kicked in the pants when it spouts errant nonsense.
For once the story is squarely about the Rudd Government's inadequacies. Not
Brendan Nelson's ... and not Malcolm Turnbull's.
--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipvdBnU8F8
- KRudd at his finest.
"The Labour Party is corrupt beyond redemption!"
- Labour hasbeen Mark Latham in a moment of honest clarity.
"This is the recession we had to have!"
- Paul Keating explaining why he gave Australia another Labour recession.
"Silly old bugger!"
- Well known ACTU pisspot and sometime Labour prime minister Bob Hawke
responding to a pensioner who dared ask for more.
"By 1990, no child will live in poverty"
- Bob Hawke again, desperate to win another election.
"A billion trees ..."
- Borke, pissed as a newt again.
"Well may we say 'God save the Queen' because nothing will save the governor
general!"
- Egotistical shithead and pompous fuckwit E.G. Whitlam whining about his
appointee for Governor General John Kerr.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB CUNT!"
- FlangesBum on learning the truth about Labour's economic capabilities.
"I don't care what you fuckers think!"
- KRudd the KRude at his finest again.
"We'll just change it all when we get in."
- Garrett the carrott
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