This time last year Labor’s factional bosses were loading the bullets into the chamber so that Julia Gillard could pull the trigger on Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. No-one saw it coming - even on the night of the coup the most senior members of the government were dismissing the reports as a beat-up – and few predicted the chaos which would ensue.
Caucus was so quick to fall into line that Kevin Rudd ducked a leadership ballot after confidantes advised he would receive a humiliating handful of votes. The party believed that Julia was its saviour and two months later it failed to win a majority, with Ms Gillard having taken the government from its unassailable 2007 landslide position to a shambolic day-to-day operation, reliant on the vagaries of rural independents and inner-city Greens.
The polls now all point to a comfortable Coalition win at the next election.
Rather than using the one-year anniversary to reflect on the events of the past 12 months, it is worth trying to look forward to the coming 12 months to see how or if the government can claw its way back into the game.
The three issues which will determine its fate are the carbon tax, the relationship between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, and the relationship with the Greens.
As things currently stand it is hard to see how the government could have done a worse job of selling the carbon tax. It remains hamstrung by the question of a mandate, having promised that putting a price on carbon was off the agenda for this term, only to change position after forming government. In political terms it doesn’t matter that this reversal was necessitated by the non-result at the election and the subsequent deal with the Greens. In the eyes of many voters, probably most voters, they just see it pure and simple as an act of deceit.
Hampered as it is by this reality, the government has never the less embarked on a pretty amateurish sell-job of a tax which comes with no firm details of how it will actually work. The announcement that $12 million taxpayer dollars will be spent on an advertising campaign explaining the tax is an act of political naivety. Voters hate the fact that political parties say one thing in opposition and do another in government. Labor hounded Howard over his profligate spending on meaningless Workchoices advertising. Now, just as Rudd did with the mining tax, Gillard is doing the same on the carbon tax. The amount of money being spent is not the issue. It’s a simple question of principle. And as independent Tony Windsor said, it is foolish to commit to advertising a tax when its workings remain a mystery.
It might come as a bit of a surprise to hear that there are a few glass half-full optimists in Labor circles who believe that the carbon tax is not going to destroy Labor but save it. The upbeat assessment goes as follows – the Coalition under Tony Abbott have been so determined to scare people and businesses about the cost of living impact of the tax, that when it actually eventuates it will be nowhere near as bad as has been predicted. The Government hopes that when it explains how the compensation measures will work, aside from a few grumbles from the rich and the big end of town in the mining and manufacturing sector, swinging voters on low and middle incomes will cop it sweet and move on. Provided Julia Gillard can maintain her balancing act with the independents, Labor still has two years to bed it down. As I said – it sounds an impossibly upbeat take on things, but they have to find a reason to keep getting out of bed in the morning.
The greater unpredictable is the relationship between Rudd and Gillard. It’s been the subject of distracting reports over the past couple of days with rumours of a “slanging match” over live cattle exports to Indonesia. Those reports seem to have been overblown or even baseless. The problem the Government has is that everyone is ready to believe them anyway. And there was something exquisitely cute about Kevin Rudd, who in his capacity as people’s choice for the Labor leadership is maintaining a hectic media diary, going on of all programs Channel Ten’s The Circle on Friday to talk down any suggestions that he’s talking himself up to reclaim the top job.
If Julia Gillard can’t control Kevin Rudd she is also struggling to contain her fair-weather friends in the Greens, the party which she was forced to unite with to stay in office. Over the past month we have witnessed some politically moronic unilateral declarations from Labor’s coalition partner – Christine Milne repeating her calls for the phase out of the coal industry, the party’s absurd marriage of convenience with the Coalition over border protection, and best of all, complaints from Bob Brown about the fact that Treasurer Wayne Swan had the apparent temerity to inform the public of carbon tax treasury modelling, without first submitting the data to his jumped-up little climate change committee.
Julia Gillard is on the record as saying that the Greens do not and will never represent mainstream policies or values. It was a good speech but one which invited the unfortunate and obvious question – so why are you in partnership with them, PM? As long as that remains the case we will have a leader who is constantly looking over one shoulder and second-guessing every decision she makes, or should make, on the basis of the disparate interests she must juggle.
It is a hell of a juggling act, and there are still no absolute guarantees that it will last another 12 months anyway.
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