APRIL 8,1974.
My darling Heather, I write to you at a time when I think I’ve never felt worse about politics. The idiots who now run the Liberal Party will drive me right round the bend. Their last move is to deny supply to the present government in the Senate. Now this is something that shocks me.
These words belong to former prime minister and founder of the Liberal Party, Sir RG (Bob) Menzies. History of course can provide a longer-run assessment of the bunker-busting tactics used to blast Gough Whitlam from office.
But whatever side you come down on, Malcolm Fraser was vindicated winning three subsequent elections (1975, 1977, and 1980, although not the double-D held just weeks after his 1974 missive under Billy Snedden’s leadership).
Ming’s scathing and until now private assessment emerged on Wednesday via a new book Letters to My Daughter replete with many fascinating thoughts and observations over two decades from 1955.
Like subsequent Liberal leaders, the letters suggest he was both more “liberal” and mainstream than his opponents at the time granted. Curiously this can also be said of the previously hated Malcolm Fraser, and John Hewson, of Fightback! fame.
Quite separately, as it happens, some days before the Menzies letters emerged, a press gallery colleague had opined in conversation that he had “no doubts whatsoever” that Tony Abbott would have already reprised the 1975 constitutional crisis were it open to him using the carbon tax backflip as the justification.
It is an interesting debating point. Certainly there is nothing in the Opposition’s current full-steam-ahead approach to suggest it would be more conflict or crisis-averse than was either Snedden or Fraser.
With the Government so wounded since the carbon tax landed, the risk of such a strategy to Mr Abbott at least would have been very low.
As for the risk to the national social and political fabric, well that is another matter.
Here, a quick glance across the Pacific provides a real-time lesson on the current state of so-called “conservatism’‘.
Long the custodian of the moral high ground as guardians of stabilising conventions and institutions, conservatism has taken on a rabid edge with its exponents now the ones most inclined to junk tradition in pursuit of power.
Paul Keating’s blunt reduction of Tony Abbott’s pitch as “vote for me or I’ll wreck the place’’ picked up on this point but it is particularly fitting for the approach being pursued by Tea Party hardliners in the GOP at present.
As for the Government here, it has its own version: vote for us and we’ll wreck ourselves.
That said, its strategy this week improved.
Depending on perspective, you see Julia Gillard’s clanging withdrawal from the frontline as either a craven retreat or a smart move.
Compare the past seven days to the fortnight preceding it. In that first period, Julia Gillard, who - remember - explicitly stated that she intended to wear out shoe-leather selling the carbon tax, did no less than 37 radio and television interviews, 13 press conferences, two speeches and one address-to-the-nation.
Whereas this week, she did zero TV or radio, gave no speeches, and no addresses-to-the-nation.
True, she did do four press appearances but they mostly dealt with other material including a joint appearance with Tony Blair, and others on the Malaysian people swap deal, and forestry.
There are now some very early signs of the game shifting slightly for Ms Gillard. After the bleakest single fortnight for a federal government probably since that ‘75 crisis, the last Newspoll seemed to pick up the faint flickers of a recovery.
Labor’s primary vote still has a “two’’ in front of it, and any improvement was within the margin of error, but there is better news on the carbon tax front itself with support for the measure jumping by a decent six points to 36 per cent.
How much is down to Gillard’s advocacy and how much is down to TV ads and the like is hard to tell.
Who knows, with careful husbandry it may be coaxed higher still (or not). But the Government’s best chance of that now is to leave it alone and start governing in other areas where work needs to be done.
One pointer from the week is that while Tony Abbott continued the faux election campaign, the PM’s withdrawal effectively silenced him as well. Without her matching him stunt-for-fluoro-vested-stunt and drawing abuse in shopping malls, his campaigns dropped from TV bulletins.
She’s done the direct stuff with voters and looked coal and electricity workers in the eye, both of which she would have been accused of avoiding had she not.
Now she must do as John Howard successfully did at times of adversity and withdraw. Leave the frontline fight to Greg Combet and Wayne Swan.
Remember Clinton’s maxim: It’s the economy stupid! Voters will not see you as a government if you only present as an opposition.
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@AndrewCatsaras Agreed. Kills more people than AIDS. Yet tolerated. Meanwhile: Good Insiders piece again Andrew.
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