EDs: Simone Holzapfel worked as Tony Abbott’s media advisor when he was in the Howard Government ministry.
In many ways, Tony Abbott is one of a kind. In a focus group-led political world where our leaders too often speak in clichés, perfectly deliver their politically correct lines and image is everything, Tony Abbott stands apart. But will his frankness translate to political success or failure?
The thing about Abbott is that you don’t have to like him, or his views, but you have to respect him. Because, unlike many of his colleagues, you know where he stands because his views on just about everything - no matter how challenging or difficult the issue - are on the public record.
There’s a real intellectual honesty to him. He writes his own speeches, a throw back to his days as a journalist, he says, but I think more likely, a process through which he develops his thoughts, something that was no doubt fostered during his years at Oxford.
Set pieces are a regular and - for his staff - harrowing feature of life in his office, but essential as they help him formulate and assimilate his views and direction.
Tony reminds us that there was a time when all politicians wrote their own material; weren’t afraid to stray from the talking points provided by their departments and advisors; weren’t afraid to debate the big issues that face us as a nation.
His new book Battlelines, released today, is further evidence of this. In it, he advocates paid maternity leave; wants to see a complete overhaul of the tax-transfer system to ensure that more Australians get to keep more of what they earn as the transfer from welfare to employment, something he advocated behind the scenes while in Government; and the centerpiece of the book, a new federalism; perhaps better described as a new nationalism.
In addition to being a good read, what this book demonstrates is that Abbott is currently one of the most underutilized members of the Opposition. Like everyone, he has his bad days, but his views more often than not touch a chord with the Australian electorate.
He was without a doubt one of the most powerful performers within the Howard Government, and remains formidable as demonstrated by his recent performance as Leader of Opposition Business during the recent “Utegate” affair.
Perhaps more than anyone on the Opposition Front Bench, Abbott has the right to be unhappy about his “middle-order” status. Team player that he always wants to be, he helped to manage the Ute Gate affair as it turned sour. Rather than let Malcolm hang as pay back for past slights, he relished in the opportunity to be ‘useful’.
Some critics will say that this book, his third, is a thinly-disguised 200-page job application for the leadership of the Liberal Party. It’s actually Abbott’s way of driving debate within the Liberal Party and the community; a natural extension of what he has always done, in both government and opposition, writing speeches and opinion pieces for key institutes and national publications.
The will be claims that this book demonstrates even greater division in the Federal Liberal Party. This is a naïve and counterproductive view. Yes, disunity is death for a political party but, the death of ideas within our major parties is an ever greater concern. If we accept that there can be no public debate within parties about issues of policy, as a nation, we are in danger of consigning public debate to the dustbin of history.
This idea that political parties, particularly in Opposition can’t have open debate and differences on matters of national policy is the mantra of this new-age media driven spin politics that has become fashionable in Australia in the past couple of years.
What this mantra fails to consider is that the strength of our democracy relies on challenging our political leadership of all persuasion to continually engage in an ongoing dialogue and debate about the issues that shape the face of Australia today and tomorrow.
I have no doubt that in time the electorate will tire of the spin. Poll-driven terminology like ‘temporary deficit’ and political process governed more by the media cycle than good policy - we are currently experiencing - will eventually fail. The pendulum will swing and electorate will look to the ‘tell it to them straight’, grass roots, imperfect politics of Abbott and those like him.
The former Prime Minister John Howard once said that the times would suit him. Perhaps, the same will be true for Abbott? Only time will tell.
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