SYDNEY LETTER:Australia's election lead-up should have been a walk in the park for the Labor Party
TONY ABBOTT, the leader of the Australian opposition, yesterday denounced the incumbent Labor Party as being “all talk and no action”.
“Our task is nothing less than to save Australia from the worst government in its history,” Abbott told a wildly cheering crowd as he officially launched his party’s election campaign.
With the most recent polls putting his Liberal/National coalition either on a par or slightly ahead of Labor, Abbott may well become prime minister on August 21st.
Given the country is enjoying the world’s best economic conditions, Abbott’s ascendancy is astonishing. Australia was the only developed country to avoid recession in the global financial crisis and now has falling unemployment, falling inflation, and interest rates lower than Labor inherited when they swept the previous coalition government from power in 2007.
Australia also has the lowest national debt in the industrialised world, and its vast resources industry is booming.
This should have been an unlosable election for Labor. That it’s not will surely provoke some deep soul-searching regardless of the final result. In the Aussie vernacular, Labor has had “a shocker of a campaign”.
Julia Gillard became prime minister just six weeks ago after challenging Kevin Rudd for leadership of the Labor Party. She did this because Rudd’s personal popularity had slumped. But Labor is now in a worse position than it was under Rudd. It could be about to lose a second prime minister in two months.
Since the election campaign started, there have been damaging leaks that allege both Rudd and Gillard sometimes sent staff members (senior in Rudd’s case, relatively junior in Gillard’s) to replace them at national security meetings.
There have also been leaks about what did or did not happen on the night Gillard toppled Rudd. Some have pointed the finger at Rudd as being the source of at least some of the leaks, a charge he denies.
Labor is so worried by the leaks they asked Rudd, who is running for re-election in his Brisbane seat, to campaign for the party just a week after having his gall bladder removed.
Rudd and Gillard held a private meeting on Saturday, with only one TV cameraman and one photographer briefly allowed in to record the event. A heat-seeking missile would have difficulty trying to find any warmth in the body language and lack of eye contact displayed in the resulting picture.
Almost unbelievably, this frosty meeting was topped by another former Labor leader, Mark Latham, publicly ambushing Gillard to ask why Labor had allegedly protested over his role as a producer on a TV news show. The head of Channel Nine, David Gyngell, subsequently apologised for Latham’s “lack of respect”.
Latham lost the 2004 federal election and not only left the Labor Party afterwards but advised young people not to join any political party.
Abbott has also had encounters with former party leaders, with mixed results.
Firstly, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who resigned from the Liberals last year, turned on him, saying Abbott was not ready for government. Then John Howard, the Liberal leader who lost power and his own seat three years ago, turned on Gillard, saying she has been a “total failure” as prime minister.
Having initially refused Abbott’s request for three televised debates, and only agreeing to one, Gillard last week said she now wanted a second debate. This time Abbott refused. Labor said he was a coward, and he said Labor was desperate because the polls were turning.
The past week has also been dominated by the question of just who is the real Julia Gillard. She admitted her election campaign so far was too stage-managed and promised changes. “I want to throw away [the] rule book, be out and about, meeting people, talking to people, making myself available.
“Up to this point I’ve gone with the standard campaign model, very risk-averse. My style is to . . . be out there taking a few risks,” she said.
The changes Gillard made, such as directly attacking Abbott over his lack of economic credentials, have led to an improvement in Labor’s polling, but that might turn out to be too little, too late.
With the major parties dominating the headlines, it is harder than ever for the sideshow parties to get a look in. One story that did cut through, though, was when Family First, a right-wing Christian party, tried to arrange a preference swap deal with the Sex Party, which is the political wing of the porn industry.
The Sex Party, ungallantly, immediately told the press about Family First’s request and then preferenced them last.
Labor has 12 days in which to avoid being the first Australian government in almost 80 years not to win a second term. It will spend every waking hour, and advertising dollar, reminding people just who saved them from recession.
