THE Labor Party is making a serious miscalculation if it tries to write off Tony Abbott as the Mad Monk, the Pope’s man in Canberra, a profanity-spouting bovver boy who is so socially conservative as to be unelectable.
It will also have to be careful not to attack him as the captive of lunatic elements over climate change. While there are undoubtedly plenty of nutty conspiracy theorists in the climate skeptic camp, there are also many thousands of well-adjusted but anxious Australians who simply do not believe that the Rudd Government has explained the need for such swift and dramatic action on climate change, especially when other bigger nations are doing nothing.
Tony Abbott’s victory in the Party Room is a microcosm of his potential electoral appeal at the national level. As Joe Hockey found out the hard way, you have to stand for something in politics.
It is true that the Right gave Hockey no choice but to adopt what was effectively a non-position of allowing a free vote on the ETS – in hindsight it would have been better for Hockey to refuse and to tough it out by sticking to the deal, as his vacillating position turned the spill into a contest between two conviction politicians in Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.
The fact that Abbott prevailed by just one vote in that ideologically-riven contest is neither here nor there in the longer-term scheme of politics. Other leaders have won and lost ballots by similar margins.
What matters now is whether Tony Abbott’s conservatives can share the spoils of their ascendancy with the moderates. And whether the moderates are prepared to work with the conservatives after their handling of this leadership coup, which began in earnest when Abbott led the frontbench mutiny last Thursday in a tactic which Turnbull described as nothing less than “political terrorism.”
At his press conference, Abbott used the time-honoured characterisation of his party as a broad church to define his approach to assembling an alternative government.
By way of understatement, the moderates are less than convinced as to how sincere he is in this pledge. Joined as he was at his press conference by the likes of Wilson Tuckey and Sophie Mirabella, two of the more notorious rightwing bomb-throwers of this past week, it’s not surprising that Liberal progressives were derisively hailing the arrival of “Abbott’s A-team” within minutes of the leadership coup.
But politicians are craven beasts and Abbott can probably assuage his detractors by dangling some juicy jobs in front of them. He’s already indicated for starters that he wants Joe Hockey to remain as shadow treasurer.
If he can keep a lid on the factions – and as we said on Sky News today he’ll need to be a mixture of Boutros Boutros Ghali, Kofi Annan and the Dalai Lama to pull that off – that leaves Tony Abbott, with his often flawed personality, and his occasionally rabid social views, as the focus of political attention as our alternative PM.
The first thing Labor must remember is that social conservatism, and politically incorrect beliefs, are not of themselves a black mark against your name in Australian politics.
People may remember a bloke by the name of John Howard who for almost all of his 11 years as PM was a spectacularly successful and overwhelmingly popular PM.
Abbott might have hardline social views, he might derive a lot of them from his religious convictions, but that does not automatically mean he will make them policy. As Health Minister, for example, he did not use the portfolio as a platform to roll back abortion rights. Even if he would like to, he is too much the pragmatist to embark on that course, if for no other reason than it would ignite a holy war within his party.
Aside from his opinions, there’s the little matter of the way Tony Abbott expresses his opinions. You could devote almost the entirety of a column of this length to T Abbott’s greatest hits – a recent favourite was his revolting description of Julia Gillard as having a “shit-eating grin”, something he said not once but twice, and which was indicative of what his critics regard as a somewhat iffy approach to his dealings with women.
Abbott began his career as Opposition Leader by apologising for past indiscretions, brain fades and blow-ups, but you would have to put money on them happening again as it seems to be hard-wired into his make-up.
But again, and depending on the nature of any future sprays, that of itself won’t kill him as a leader. We’ve had hotheads running the country before – voters in Australia do not judge their pollies on their manners.
Given that it was climate change and the ETS which fuelled today’s leadership blow-up, this is the issue where both Labor and the Coalition will have to tread most carefully.
Until today, Kevin Rudd has been in the lucky position of being able to tell voters who are critical or unsure of the ETS that it is so obviously in the national interest that even the Liberals have gone along with it.
That bipartisanship, fraught as it was, has now been destroyed.
It means that voters who are angry with Kevin Rudd now have a very clear alternative, a conviction politician in Abbott, who despite earlier suggesting that the Coalition should pass the ETS on expedient political grounds, is now prepared to make it the focus of his campaign against the ALP.
He will most definitely honour the promise he made at his first press conference to ensure that the Opposition is “an alternative not an echo”.
But the juggling act for Tony Abbott on climate change is not just an internal one, with many Liberals still wishing the party had stuck to the amended ETS negotiated by Ian Macfarlane under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.
The external challenge lies in weighing the anti-ETS sentiments of traditional Coalition voters in rural and regional seats, against the views of suburban and city Liberal voters who believe that climate change is real, and want the Government to act without obstructionism from the Opposition.
This is the X-factor from here on in.
The polls have been contradictory. We saw a Newspoll in The Australian last Saturday showing that up to 20 marginal Liberal seats in the suburbs and cities could fall to Labor, with a majority of voters believing the ETS is a necessary and correct response to climate change.
But the following day the Galaxy poll in The Sunday Telegraph showed that most Australians did not think we needed to rush into an ETS before Copenhagen – by default, that is before the rest of the world acts on climate change – with some 80 per cent of voters also saying that the Government has failed to adequately explain what the ETS means for them.
By its actions the Liberal Party has thrown in its lot with the sentiments contained in the Galaxy poll. It has acted on instinct, believing that it can now make Kevin Rudd own whatever negatives come from that legislation, in terms of jobs, cost of living, the viability of business and industry.
Labor is taking a huge gamble if its writes off every critic of the ETS as a mad climate change denier. There are plenty among their number – but there are plenty of others who are simply confused by the detail, or angry that our nation is taking the moral high ground while many bigger and higher-polluting actions do nothing.
But by stumping for Abbott, the Liberals have gambled that there are more Liberal voters who are hostile or potentially hostile to the ETS, or confused by it, than Liberal voters who are happy to go along with Kevin Rudd in acting now.
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