TONY Abbott’s bizarre 7.30 Report admission that he sometimes gilds the lily to win arguments led off a pretty dismal week for the Opposition.
But with Labor doing so badly at explaining its case, all is far from lost. Liberal MPs shuddered as their ``honest-to-a-fault’’ leader dropped into confessional mode to surrender his singular advantage over the mealy-mouthed Kevin Rudd. ``My jaw just dropped,’’ said one.
Others were similarly mystified. Instead of explaining his volte face on paid parental leave funded by a new company tax he’d previously sworn against, as a change of mind, he went the other way. The original promise on Melbourne radio had come ``in the heat of verbal battle’’ and was therefore not to be taken literally.
There were always going to be missteps on the slippery path to the 2010 poll but this was gobsmacking.
With the previously unsinkable HMAS K Rudd listing, it defies belief that the ascendant Liberal leader so creatively found a way to take on water himself.
But then picking Tony Abbott as captain would always make for an interesting voyage. The quirky leader once quipped that he was the ideological love-child of John Howard and the right-wing factional warrior, Bronwyn Bishop.
Perhaps he should have studied his papa’s methods more closely because the uber-disciplined Mr Howard never made such an unforced and unnecessary error.
For a politician, words are pretty much the only tool in the box. To admit you willfully misuse them, when people already find it a stretch believing what your saying, seems at best, counter-intuitive. It’s like a used car salesman volunteering just as you go to shake hands: ``Oh, by the way, this heap really chews the juice and is a real bitch to start on cold mornings.’‘
Of course, discussing things that are counter-intuitive automatically brings to mind the Resource Super Profits Tax. What a gift to the Opposition this is. Forget cold mornings, this sucker may never start.
For Labor though, it is difficult to imagine a less convenient pre-election policy proposal than this one. Let’s be frank, the billionaire tycoon Andrew ``Twiggy’’ Forrest, probably digs holes better than he constructs arguments. But even he is doing better than the communicationally challenged Rudd Government at present. Ditto Twiggy’s less colourful equivalents in BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
Kevin Rudd’s problems started from the moment he announced this idea because he had not done the political spade-work. Right up until he dropped it like a hot potato, hospital reform was the only game he seemed interested in playing.
Like so many big moments in this year’s policy log-jam, the RSPT came out of the blue effectively shunting previous ``core’’ policy imperatives like health into the background. Two weeks after Kevin Rudd failed to get WA Premier, Colin Barnett over the line on the supposedly ``national’’ hospitals reform package, he was back in the west on a whole new fight. Resources. What happened to health?
The RSPT struck voters as a solution in search of a problem. There was no public clamoring for a bigger slice of the pie - even if it is justified on closer inspection.
Kevin Rudd also misjudged its unveiling by presenting it as a matter of class warfare. Warning of increasing of profits leaving Australia was a dog whistle about robber-baron capitalists, and foreigners to boot, stealing our national resources.
From a Government that has proudly invited foreign investment, it jarred. Besides, evoking `class’, as we’ve seen time and again, is a dog that will no longer hunt. Plenty of ``working’’ people theses days, own shares in superannuation or investment portfolios. They actually like profits.
The argument that the taxpayers’ share of extraordinary profits has actually declined over the past decade is more convincing. But even here, while many ordinary people suspect the big end of town should to pay a bit more, the sudden leap to take 40 per cent of all profits above a 6 per cent return seems harsh.
However, the point the Government really needs to win on is the one it is getting caned on daily: this is the counter-intuitive claim that skimming $9 billion annually off the sector, will actually result in more mining. To `Joe Voter’, this seems absurd. After all, it is the polar opposite of the rationale used to justify the $5 billion tobacco tax grab: higher prices will see fewer people smoking.
Yet there is no deception being attempted here. Treasury’s modelling shows the tax’s preferential treatment of exploration including shared risk on losses, means a likely increase in mineral developments over time. The trouble is, explaining that complex reasoning to voters, let alone inoculating them against credible claims of mine-closures, job losses, regional atrophy, and a flight of capital, is an enormous task.
This is the same government that took overwhelming public support for action on climate change, and a consensus between the major parties, and yet still produced a comprehensive defeat leading to a humiliating backdown.
Everything rides on the outcome of this. With just months to go to the election, a Reuters Poll Trend released this week combined recent Newspoll, Morgan, and Neilsen polls and found the electorate is as near as damn it to evenly divided. Labor, untouchable for most of this term, holds a miserable 1.2 per cent edge - not even enough to secure a majority.
The next few polls will be very interesting. Mr Abbott’s stumbles and the Opposition’s shabby attempts to avoid scrutiny of its budget saving measures could play badly with voters looking for competence. But they may also go unnoticed in the current RSPT noise.
For Kevin Rudd however, there is no hiding. He simply cannot afford to back down after the ETS debacle. And lest he thinks he might, Treasury boss Ken Henry has hemmed him in further demanding there be no change to either its 40 per cent rate or its 6 per cent cut in.
The Government complains that the miners are over-egging the pudding, which is undoubtedly true. The gap between extraction costs and sale prices is so wide in this resource-hungry world that miners are making a killing selling our finite resources. But the miners are winning the argument and they figure they can defeat the tax outright if they get Tony Abbott over the line. As such, they appear in no mood to compromise.
Labor MPs must be wondering which bright spark came up with this idea and thought it smart to float it now.
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