If Kevin Rudd made a New Year’s resolution he could have done worse than vow in 2010 to only say something is his number one priority if indeed he really means it.
But to do so would throw a spanner in the works of the Labor spin machine, which remains obsessed with the 24-hour news cycle and opinion polls. A quick search reveals that Mr Rudd has nominated more than half a dozen issues as his supposed number one priority over the past two years and there are probably more. This tally does not include climate change which he of course described as “the great moral challenge of our generation”.
It would seem Mr Rudd’s top priority changes according to the issue of the day that is running in the media, or the audience he is addressing. It is an extremely cynical practice and the most absurd thing is he must think nobody notices.
On 22 December when Mr Rudd launched the Chris O’Brien Cancer Centre, a very worthy initiative, the PM was under pressure over his election pledge to move to take over the public hospital system if its performance did not dramatically improve.
To defuse the situation, he responded by declaring that health was the government’s “priority number one”, therefore giving the impression of ongoing vigilance and action. In isolation a large number of Australians would give the Government a big tick for nominating health as its top priority.
However, just 12 days earlier when announcing the new National Security College Mr Rudd claimed a safe and secure Australia “is the Government’s first priority”, yet on 5 November he told the ABC’s Jon Faine that managing the global financial crisis was “first priority”.
In the space of six weeks, Mr Rudd nominated three number one priorities. But if you look back to March, he got up in front of ACCI and declared that jobs were “our first national priority”.
Rewind to 11 February 2008 when Reserve Bank warnings about rising inflation were the story of the day the PM said his “number one priority would be the war against inflation”. In November 2008, when unemployment was on the rise, he told Parliament how he regarded “war on unemployment as the Government’s highest priority”.
And who can forget all Mr Rudd’s rhetoric and grand-standing about his supposed education revolution. Following his election in 2007 he said education was in fact “agenda item number one”.
What Mr Rudd’s ever-changing feast of top priorities demonstrates is that saying anything in a bid to remain popular is the real number one issue on this Prime Minister’s list.
This approach is simply not sustainable over the longer term and for Mr Rudd the cracks continue to appear as he gains a reputation for all talk and no action.
His discredited Grocery Watch and Fuel Watch schemes are symbolic of the Rudd style as are his wars on everything from binge drinking and homelessness to gambling. Generating cheap slogans which attract headlines, but lead to no actual outcomes are hallmarks of this Government.
Some footage surfaced on Melbourne Cup Day which perfectly illustrated Mr Rudd’s cynical attempts to take advantage of the day’s story to guarantee a run on the nightly news.
The Prime Minister is filmed waving his betting ticket around and yelling out to be certain that everybody knew he was on the Cup winner. He then swigs from his stubby of XXXX, but only when he is certain the moment is captured by the cameras.
On a different day drinking and gambling are vices to be condemned by a self-righteous Mr Rudd, but during the ‘race that stops a nation’ they become handy props when there is a picture opportunity too good to miss.
The fatal flaw with Labor’s brand of retail politics is the way it unravels at the seams when tough decisions have to be made and the time comes when the thought bubbles have to be converted into workable policy.
We have seen this in the Government’s policy-on-the run approach to broadband, its weakening of border protection, including its chaotic handling of the Oceanic Viking episode and the failure of its deeply flawed CPRS, which appeased nobody and has been exposed as the giant tax that it is.
The failure of the Copenhagen conference to produce a binding global consensus on tackling climate change also exposed the folly of the Prime Minister wanting to lock Australia in to his CPRS ahead of the rest of the world. A decision which would have increased the cost of living for all Australians and undermined our nation’s economic competitiveness for next to no reduction in global CO2 emissions.
There is no doubt that Mr Rudd’s determination to pass the CPRS in advance of the world had nothing to do with our national interest and everything to do with his own vanity.
Despite having been elected more than two years ago, many Australians remain unclear about what our chameleon of a Prime Minister really stands for and with so many supposed number one priorities and a short-term political strategy to try and please everybody, he has only himself to blame.
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