Political predictions usually come with a face-saving asterisk, or an alarming promise that you will drop your pants in Martin Place if they don’t come true.
We’ll try to avoid both here – especially the second you’ll be relieved to hear – and instead offer a dispassionate snapshot of the federal political scene as Parliament resumes today for this election year.
It’s not based on today’s Newspoll which shows that Tony Abbott - who unlike Malcolm Turnbull offers a much clearer alternative to Labor especially on climate change - has helped the Libs sneak ahead in the primary vote while still falling short of winning office. Nor is it some bid to spoil Rudd’s attempt to claim underdog status with his pep-talk to MPs yesterday where he warned that Labor could lose.
It’s based on the off the record opinions of politicians themselves, Labor and Liberal, who for the main part do not believe that Kevin Rudd has gone so badly that he will be chucked out after just one term.
It’s also based on our own reading of the major issues confronting voters today, by following discussion on newspaper websites, opinion websites, talkback radio and the letters pages, as well as the major polls which are still uniformly pointing to the re-election of the Rudd Government.
I’ve split the rationale for predicting Rudd’s return into five categories – after which you’re free to log and say why I’ll be made to look like a fool come polling day, if not by lunchtime. Obviously the election is a way off - at least two months off and probably at least six months off - so a lot can happen. But this is my take on where things are at now.
1. The education reforms are really popular.
As a slogan, “The Education Revolution” might be a bit bombastic and over-the-top. But there are strong signs that it is resonating with the Australian mainstream, both in terms of the stimulus spending on schools and the phenomenal public response to the launch of the MySchool website.
The public does not share the media’s enthusiasm for poring over the school infrastructure program, line by line, to focus on a minority of unnecessary projects while ignoring the many others which kids, parents and teachers are cheering on as long overdue.
Labor has cemented its ownership of education with this spending. And it is milking it big time. It has shamelessly decorated the nation’s schools with canvas banners spruiking this cash rollout, in a very non-subliminal form of election year advertising. But I suspect most parents don’t care - their reaction will be that it’s about time someone gave more money to schools, even if it did end up going on a Taj Mahal sized tuck shop at a school in the inner-west that actually wanted an assembly hall.
And for a government that’s (rightly) been accused of being heavy on symbolism and light on action, the launch last week of the MySchool website has given Rudd a powerful example of a big policy at work. Claims by the teachers’ unions of dodgy data or carping about the site crashing on its first day will not change the fact that parents believe they should know much more than they currently do about the relative performance of their kids’ school.
2. The economy is kicking the rest of the western world’s backside.
Labor is too pig-headed to admit that one of the reasons we have weathered the economic storm so well is that John Howard and Peter Costello were such prudent and responsible economic managers that they bequeathed a whopping surplus to their political foes. That said, attempts by the Libs to run the debt-and-deficit line can be countered by Rudd and Wayne Swan saying they had no other choice but to whack the defibrillators onto the economy. In this, they are helped by the poor performance of other western nations, none more so than the United States and the United Kingdom, which look like a basket case compared to Oz.
Even the national broadsheet, The Australian, has declared Kevin Rudd as Man of the Year for his management of the GFC – despite the paper being the most dogged critic of his often profligate and scatter-gunned stimulus spending (pink batt, anyone?).
The handy logical feature of Rudd’s argument as to what would have happened if he had “done nothing” – to use one of his favoured terms – is that there’s no way of proving him wrong.
The one thing he really has to worry about is interest rates, which could see him bring the date back from the expected August election to something earlier in the year. But even then, many voters will view rates increases as more of a correction in the backdraft of the GFC, not an indictment on his economic management.
3. Rudd might be a toxic bore but the public doesn’t seem to mind.
It’s quite clear that many people across politics, and plenty more in journalism, find Kevin Rudd priggish, one-dimensional, work-addicted, dull, the polar opposite of a wild and crazy guy. But people don’t want to be entertained or confronted by their politicians. Figures such as Jeff Kennett or Paul Keating managed to be spectacularly entertaining for a while but when their falls came they were vicious. John Howard once said the best currency a politician could have was to be regarded as “alright”. The polls suggest most people still regard Rudd as alright. And remember, in 2007 he was hailed as a mildly left-wing version of John Howard, who himself was a reasonably grey figure, but despite his greyness managed to stick around for 11 years in the top job. Toxic boredom is not a liability in politics in this country.
4. The ETS is a manageable stuff-up.
This is far and away Rudd’s biggest weakness but one which Rudd can survive if he’s smart.
Malcolm Turnbull was unlikely to win the support of voters who were unhappy with Rudd’s ETS, given that it was also his ETS. All that has now changed. Abbott has kept his public promise from the day he seized the leadership that he will be “an alternative, not an echo.” And his line that the ETS is a great big tax has Labor worried.
But the ALP can find a way of making climate change just one of the issues it is running on – and a down the order issue, behind education and economic management, and whatever other goodies it dangles before the punters in the May Budget and during the campaign. It would be taking a huge gamble if it ran a double dissolution election around the issue, or even framed its campaign around the issue in a regular election, as there is too much confusion and disquiet among the voters to convince them it is necessary after the collapse of Copenhagen.
5. Too many people remain suss about the Libs - and Abbott.
Tony Abbott has only been leader for just over two months, and is the third guy to have a go at leading the Liberals since Rudd was elected in 2007. Despite his experience in government at very senior levels, the baton-passing in the party doesn’t scream “ready to govern”. Turnbull may continue to be a distraction this year. And then there’s Tones himself. The virgin stuff last week was a case in point. While he was simply giving an honest answer to a question – an answer which probably didn’t cost him any votes, but gave those people who can’t stand him another reason to dislike him even more – it went to a persistent problem with his style. And that’s an inability to stay on message, best evidenced during the 2007 campaign by telling the dying Bernie Banton where to go.
Rudd is aware that complacency might be his biggest enemy, as shown by his rallying call to the troops yesterday. But on balance he is best placed to win in 2010. Australians are historically reluctant to turf governments after one term – even the hapless Gough got two gos at it before he buggered the economy. Whether you like it or not Kevin Rudd is likely to be given that same chance.
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