It loomed like an end of year exam. Threatening. Dreary. Ominous. And completely necessary in order to proceed into the next year. As Labor MPs braced for the anniversary of the most tumultuous day in Australian politics since the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, they already knew it would be tough. But what really ate away at them was what Tony Abbott had been skilfully exploiting for months.
The switch to Julia Gillard had failed. The Government had spiralled downwards.Yes it had survived an election, but even that “win’‘, by way of backroom negotiation after the fact (hardly the Australian way) was a poison chalice.
At around 27 per cent, Labor’s primary vote is now at the lowest level for any federal government in the 39 years of Nielsen Poll and the first time one of the major parties had dipped below 30 per cent. Equally galling was that twice as many voters prefer the man Ms Gillard had displaced. If an election were held now, the ALP would have been decimated.
The numbers didn’t lie: the coup was an error and the carbon tax backflip has compounded it. Poll analyst Andrew Catsaras says the voter dislocation of Rudd’s demise meant the subsequent carbon tax reversal would never be seen in isolation.
And he says, even though Tony Abbott may not be trusted by voters either, it is because the PM is proposing change that it hurts her more.
“We have two leaders, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, who are not trusted by the electorate ... Gillard is now saying to the electorate ‘I’m going to make a change that’s in your best interests’, but because she has not yet provided any information as to how this change will work, she is effectively asking them to take her on trust _ a commodity she does not have to trade. Abbott, on the other hand, is saying to the electorate ‘I’m not going to make any change’. In those circumstances, when you are faced with two people you do not trust, the one saying they are not going to change anything is more likely to win. It’s the least risky proposition for the voter.’‘
Labor MPs are increasingly despondent and many seem to have accepted that the Government cannot win. In that despondency, there is a new willingness to admit that the errors of the Rudd period were not his alone.
Some, who are wondering what it was all for, concede they readily signed up to the Gillard push when it came. And they admit that the way the former PM ran the government was farcical just as the way he ran Caucus was routinely condescending and demeaning.
The arguments are familiar enough: Kevin Rudd’s office was a dysfunctional logjam, he treated staff and colleagues with contempt, and crucially, after scotching the CPRS and botching the RSPT, he lacked the wherewithall to achieve the government’s recovery.
But they admit also that he was what they had allowed him to become. Too many of them had been willing to let someone else lead, and not just among the backbenches.
This had not only seen Kevin Rudd extended enough rope with which to hang himself, it also saw a lot of people uncritically swing to the Gillard camp when told to, Cabinet ministers among them. It is a telling indictment of what happens when the professionalisation of politics is taken too far.
Slavish discipline to avoid bad publicity makes sense if your only object is to avoid being singled out as a recalcitrant or “not a team player”. But this is pseudo-loyalty because it actually represents a betrayal of the party’s and the government’s real interests.
If there is a silver lining to this tawdry year, it is that Julia Gillard has revived the collective decision-making processes of government. Caucus meetings no longer resemble bad tutorials where MPs could be singled out for not having done the required reading. And Cabinet actually gets to decide on things. If a revival of Labor’s fortunes is to come, it will happen slowly and it will be based on the long hard slog of delivering.
This week’s NBN announcement was the first concrete example of this - even if it was Rudd’s policy originally. In the next couple of weeks, the Government will unveil its carbon tax arrangements and its widely maligned Malaysia people-swap deal.
Neither will be popular and neither will see a revival in the polls. But both are key. The former to give the Government some much needed detail to defend. The latter because it may actually stop the boats (although few believe this) and thus defuse the issue.
And there are other things happening too.
On Thursday night, the Government secured passage of the core of its Budget with, as it happens, the quiet acquiescence of the Opposition - the same Opposition that had huffed that the family tax benefits tightening was “class warfare’‘.
The Budget appropriation bills were the latest of 151 pieces of legislation to have now cleared the lower house. It may be hard to see, but Julia Gillard believes she has a plan for recovery. Just don’t expect to see much evidence of it in the near future.
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