Not firing at the same target

The trouble with being in government is that invariably you have to be thinking in a longer time frame than the attention span of the electorate really allows. So it is always easy to chip away at short term pain that is necessary to achieve long-term goals.

Thus the Rudd government's mining tax is a long term strategy aimed at changing the structure of mining tax in the long term. I am not convinced that the mining interests will win out. A recurring theme of more serious analysis is not that Brazil and/or Russia are just waiting to jump in and attract the clients who find Australia's tax regime too high...but that other mineral rich countries are desperately hoping that the Rudd government will be successful because far from stealing our clients they are keen to follow.

This is quite a sophisticated argument and doesn't lend itself to the 30 second grab...it requires one to hold more than one idea in the brain at any given time.

The trouble with being in opposition is that quite the reverse is true. Your task is to make immediate attack and create a sense of concern about the day to day competence of the government. Of course the criticism is that such critique is short sighted, and lacks any long-term gravitas.

So in a sense both criticisms are valid, but they are fundamentally different. They are not firing at the same target.

This is what I think the electorate is tiring of at the moment, lots of discussion that sort of sounds the same...or as though it's about the same subject. But they're actually firing in different directions

Polls, polls and damned statistics. Or The demise of Malcolm Turnbull

I still remain committed to the idea that Malcolm Turnbull will tire of the political game playing. In reality it takes too much energy to master the polls and the statistics and this constantly detracts from the important stuff. Yesterday's polls in The Australian (see full article here) show only slight improvement in his standing as preferred Prime Minister. Coming off a very low base it would be hard to get any worse.
What is perhaps more disconcerting is that Peter Costello is still seen by more Liberals as a preferable leader despite the fact that he has disqualified himself and is on the way out. Similarly laughing Joe Hockey, who also says he is not in the running. The desperate cries (or perhaps "sighs") of the Abbots and the Pynes become less and less convincing; they two are very ambitious people and I swear I will scream if I hear Pyne say yet one more time "All I want to do is to serve the electorate of Sturt"
I guess Malcolm is a big boy and will know when enough is enough. Till then it is all a bit sad.

I'm more out of touch than you are

The latest politcial game is "Who is the most out of touch?", in trying to expose Turnbull as an elitist he was pilloried in this AFL Grand Final week for not knowing which team he supports...and plucking "The Roosters" out of mid-air. Not a bad try, unfortunately the nearest thing to 'roosters' are probably the Swans, or the Eagles or the Crows.
Does it matter? It seemed to, because it showed he lacked common touch. I remember a former Archdeacon, Alan Daw, telling some of us younger clergy that it always paid to know what was happening in the local footy as it gave you an immediate intro...not bad advice, at times it has worked. Malcolm could learn from the Venerable Alan
Now the Opposition is throwing it back...The Government is out of touch
This is just as tiresome, and is I suppose to be expected.
Parliamentarians are almost always by definition going to be 'out of touch' with their electorates. As relatively high achievers, from fairly well-educated backgrounds, with a certain degree of success under their belts...they are always going to be rather alienated from the so-called 'battlers'.
Indeed I suspect most of them would have no idea what it is like to be ina house where there is simply not enough money to see the week out.
So we do the best we can.
My advice is that these ruling elites should at least find various key voices who can speak into their ears to give them a hint of what it might be like for those who are doing it tough. This is much more fruitful than the "who's most out of touch?' argument

Same, same but different

There are lots of candidates for catchy - but cliched - titles for blogs about the change in Liberal leadership.
Methinks he protests too much is one. His need to convince the legendary 'battlers' that he is not a 'silver tail' was obviously uppermost in some strategists minds. I don't think he was very convincing but time will tell.
Turn Bull into reality could be another one. Again we will wait and see.

Should we worry too much that he is rich? In one way this is a sign that this is a man who knows how to achieve, and surely we want successful people in key leadership positions.
Any way I suspect in six weeks all this will be academic, he will either be chewing it up or stuffing it up. I suspect the former, and the personal critique will then all be a bit beside the point.
Certainly will be interesting
Personally, I was in agreement with Turnbull, that it was disappointing to see that the one of the first comments the PM made was that the Republic would now be a key issue.
This is such a political ploy, aimed at agitating the Liberal Party from within, about what is essentially a minor issue.
For heaven's sake a strong opposition is a good thing(here for example). On the other hand it was good to see an encouragement from Rudd to identify key bi-partisan issues. As these troubled times go on it is clear that there are more and more issues that are just important and not just or substantially political.
I could and would name the River, education, the intervention, the War and health as just some. of these

Ich habe Angst vor den Wolf!

I love and I hate politics. So I am rather watching Peter Costello with awe. As he typifies both of these facets. 

In literary terms you would have to wonder whether he is Brutus or Cassius. He could be the genuine Christian he should be  as the result of his upbringing, who has steadfastly refused to play the political game to the bitter end. So he has been caricatured as weak, when in reality he has boldly just refused to be recklessly ruthless. Or he could be, as Tony suggested this morning, skillfully flogging the book; ensuring another 50, 000 sales.

But I actually suspect that what we are witnessing is not loyalty to the Liberal Party or Brendan Nelson; but Costello's opposition to Malcolm Turnbull, whose dry economics he despises, whose political opportunism he detests. He recognises, I imagine, that he has lost his chance to lead (probably) so he will now do what he can to stop a Turnbull coup. I think he will succeed at this. Maybe already has done so.

Will the party then say: well Malcolm is too unpopular and dear old Brendan is not up to it, and try to re-enlist dear Peter. I don't think so. So failing that he will settle for second-best. Ensuring Turnbull never becomes leader of the Libs, let alone PM.

The winners in all this are Brendan, who will probably survive to fight another day, and of course the Government who must think that  any Opposition squabble is good.

The Ascendant Star

The idea that Alexander will gravitate back to the front bench of the Liberal Party is a fascinating one. There is, after all, a precedent for an old leader being recycled in that party...and to great effect.
Whether the electorate will buy it remians to be seen.
I personally doubt it.
When Howard came back there was the need to re-establish confidence in the faithful.
Now there is the need to move, I suggest, to show that the party is capable of moving into the future not merely re-establishing the glory of the past.
It is an ever-abiding dilemma for organisations (churches not excluded); however glorious the halcyon days may seem it is the present and then the future that has to be realised, not merely the re-creation of the past.
Surely Downer must realise this. Or is the seduction of power so great that even one so politicially astute is blinded.

Dropping the ball

It is difficult to believe at this stage (despite what conflicting polls may tells us) that yesterday's debacle with the phony election pamphlets is not the final straw for John Howard. Making an appalling campaign into a disastrous one, how do you recover?
One savvy commentator noted that the Opposition just has to shut up and do nothing. But it must do nothing! The discipline comes from having the courage to not say "I told you so!", and the discipline to just watch the other side unravel.
Never before has this issue of discipline been so clear for me. What we have witnessed in the Coalition ranks is panic. Being slaughtered all around the troops have gone crazy. At the very time they needed to keep their nerve they have taken the ball into their own hands, and played what ever game they liked with it. Ultimately dropping it with an almighty thump, as they stand back and watch their opponents score goal after goal after goal after....

Shopping till you're dropping

It is our privilege and our joy to have Iain Evans as our local member. He works hard at his job, is well-liked. He has to be the Leader of the Opposition, and on top of that he is a nice chap (which is not something you can say about all pollies n'est-ce pas?....forgive me if I lapse into foreign tongues in the next few weeks in trying to bone up for Europe I am falling into a melee of confusion about quelle langue est laquelle...which language is which I mean.. any way back to the Honourable Iain)

He kindly sends out his monthly bulletin to those who ask, and this months is about shopping hours. I personally am a bit surprised that he is advocating a seeming deregulation apart from certain sacred days..Anzac, Easter, Christmas, Good Friday...

Shops he says should be allowed to open when they like. By and large I am in agreement with this but I think there is a lot to be said for having an agreed time when shops do not open. I am totally unconvinced that tourists will think Adelaide is a bigger backwater than Hickory Hoontown simply because they arrive on closing day (or half day closing).

The argument, for me, is not in any way religious. It is about shared time. How are we supposed to promote family and community cohesion when we can't actually get a time when most of us are free. I tire, in fact, of trying to arrange meeting times with groups of people and finding that there is simply no time when everyone is free.....there I go wanting to fill free time with meetings...
Can we not, say, have Saturday afternoon off.Or closing all day Sunday?
By and large Sunday opening is good for big shops and bad for small shops who have little flexibility because their staff is small. Which is why I am surprised that the Liberal champion of small business is so keen on this.
Maybe I don't understand this, but there are other, better things to do in your free time than shop!!
If you click the e-bulletin below it will open in more readable form

Let the games commence

Some will groan at the sparring that has begun between Messrs Howard and Rudd, like some macho show of strength.
It does seem to me that the quality of debate has lifted, and we are witnessing what happens when an Opposition works in some way appraching the way it should.
We have for too long had such weak opposition that the PM has said and done what he liked and (by and large) not had to answer for any of the more outrageous things he has said.
Part of the purpose of adversarial politics is to demand that leaders should have to justify everything. And that in so doing there is a considerable process of refinement and strengthening. While that could be perceived as tiresome for a sitting power broker ny and large (an I think we are witnessing it now) it is not just nit-picking it is for the good of all concerned.
That Messrs Howard and Co have not had satisfactory opposition for the last two or three years (at least) shows, and so he has become rather used to acting autocratically and has gone unchallenged. There was in the Parliament yesterday something of a sugegstion that he didn't like being questioned over and over again and became rather patronising and peremptory with his answers. It is not a good look, and could I suggest ultimately be his downfall as he is perecived by the electorate to be arrogant and unaccountable.
Ultimately politicians pay the price for that sort of hubris.