When Tony Abbott last month stomped around a military base in Afghanistan in bomb disposal kit he looked more like an over-cautious beekeeper than a man of daring deeds.
But Abbott cannot be underrated for political boldness and dismissal of caution. His Action Man style has for the past 12 months allowed the Gillard government little time for rest or applause.
But now Tony Abbott is foreshadowing a switch from the relentless and restless tactics to a more settled period of policy creation. Twice in the past seven days he has pointed to extra effort in the contest of policy ideas, while still harassing the Government.
“The relative weighting” of Opposition priorities changes through the three year term of office, Abbott told Sky News yesterday, and one could expect that “being a credible alternative bulks just as large as holding the Government to account” in the coming year.
“I don’t think any of us ought to predict that this government is likely to last two years,” he said. “It may, it may not. We have to be ready for whatever happens.”
The objective is perfectly reasonable, but there is no certainty that Abbott, by far one of the most interesting characters in Australian politics along with Kevin Rudd, can settle himself to the task.
Abbott rightly argues the Opposition has come up with a welter of policy ideas, but in many cases they have been ideas designed to torpedo the Government’s rival proposals.
There is a significant distance between policy generated primarily out of a political strategy and policy presented because it is the best thing to do.
So the Coalition is now committed to an expensive parental leave scheme involving a tax rise, and to increasing pensions without using money raised by carbon pricing, because that made life harder for the Government.
This is policy skirmishing, not considered policy creation, and reflects Abbott’s action man political persona. He would rather keep launching raids on the Government’s climate change and asylum seeker positions than stay still for a moment to push well-formed Coalition policies on, for example, small business.
Always the action man.
That small walk-on costume part in the bomb disposal clobber would have been satisfying for Abbott. It addressed a need in his personality, as did firing off a few rounds on a previous visit.
The Opposition Leader has a deep-seated yearning for exposure to danger that tests his manliness. He would like to be a Churchillian combination of soldier, journalist and political leader.
He’s been a journalist, is now a party leader, but hasn’t put his life on the line in a gun battle against an evil enemy.
The closest he has come to that recently was a few weeks ago when he visited a building site for another carbon pricing political raid and waved a nail gun around in a mock threat to journalists.
Perhaps he thought there was a chance no jury would convict if he impaled just a few hacks.
Abbott’s ambition to go on patrol with Special Forces in Afghanistan, embedded like a reporter, has been discouraged by military authorities, and he has felt the disappointment.
But if he is looking for mighty deeds to accomplish he might start with an Opposition economic policy that adds up, and a certain amount of boldness on the workplace relations front.
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