On January 18,
2005, Mark Latham announced his resignation both from the leadership of the
Labor Party and the Parliament. He cited family pressures and attacked the
media. Including that day, the two major parties have gone through 10 leaders
in 10 years – unprecedented leadership churn and carnage. And there hasn't even
been a recession.
With an unforgiving
regularity, we saw the arrival and/or departure of, in chronological order:
Latham, Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd, John Howard, Brendon Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull,
Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, Rudd (again) and Bill Shorten. Since 2007, the
prime minister has been removed from office four times, yet only twice by the
voters.
Five times in the
past decade either the prime minister or the opposition leader was removed by a
party coup before even facing the next election: Beazley, Nelson, Turnbull,
Rudd and Gillard. All had poor poll numbers except Rudd. He had other problems.
Now the public,
according to the polls, wants a fifth prime minister removed in
seven-and-a-half years, and an 11th major leadership change in 11 years.
If the past is prelude, Prime
Minister Abbott is going to be engulfed by the churn. His polling numbers are
as bad as any leader's since polling started. He was expressly asked not to
appear during both the Victorian and Queensland elections, while the Leader of
the Opposition was ubiquitous.
His conduct before the
Queensland election was obtuse in the extreme. Exit polling in Queensland found
Abbott was a factor in the disintegration of support for Premier Campbell
Newman and his government. It was confirmed to me by a Liberal strategist that
this election was not simply a parochial result. It was a violent electoral
swing, with Abbott's unpopularity in the mix.
Gone are the days when a party
would stick by its leader as Labor stuck by Arthur Calwell from 1960 to 1967,
until he had lost three elections (1961, 1963 and 1966) and turned 70.
What does all this churn signify?
There has not been a recession for 25 years, let alone a depression, nor a war
requiring national effort, nor a great scandal larger the usual bastardry of
politics.
There is one obvious answer after
the Queensland result, one that Coalition politicians should consider: the
public has had a gutsful of selling public assets, and then paying higher
prices for using formerly public assets. The public has spoken again and again
on this issue. They have been ignored again and again.
On a deeper level, the carnage is
a sign of our intense immersion in social media, giving society a collective
attention deficit disorder. Everything is faster now.
Nine of the 10 major party
leaders in the past decade have been intelligent politicians. Most appear to be
decent people. Only one was a proven disaster – the monomaniacal Kevin
Rudd. When Rudd was came to power in 2007 he inherited a strong economy, no Commonwealth
debt, a healthy budget surplus, a secure banking system and secure borders.
It will take at least a decade to
repair the damage he left behind. He also contributed to the churn far more
than any other. Rudd's own conduct was a key element in seven leadership
changes in seven years: Beazley (2006), Howard (2007), Nelson (2008), Turnbull
(2009), himself (2010), Gillard (2013) and himself again (2013).
Through all this, hidden behind
the money that poured into the economy from the Chinese economic revolution,
Australia has become one of the most high-cost countries in the world, with a
structural budget deficit, a projected half a trillion dollars in Commonwealth
debt, high youth unemployment and unsustainable welfare spending.
Any government that tries to deal
with this should beware.
Ask Campbell Newman. He inherited
a parlous budget position left by a poor government. He moved quickly, and
often ruthlessly, to reel it in. He restored Queensland to fiscal health. And
he was sacked by the voters at the first opportunity.
Ask Joe Hockey. After a single
budget, he is no longer the heir apparent to the Liberal leadership. Since I
wrote last Thursday that the party was considering turning back to Turnbull,
his name has never been mentioned in the febrile leadership speculation of
recent days. The best he can hope for is that his second budget alienates
neither the public nor a Senate majority, and yet confronts the budget
emergency he has declared. Given the erratic nature of the Palmer United Party,
and the scorched-earth tactics of Labor, Hockey is our modern Sisyphus.
Ask Tony Abbott. His government
has confronted the blow-out in debt and deficit. It completed historic
free-trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea. It stopped the
people-smuggling trade. It restored relations with Indonesia damaged by Labor's
spying and suspension of live cattle exports. It has had no Ruddian grandiose
disasters. It does not have a Senate majority. It has been in office just 16
months, with just one budget.
And the people are leaning into
the amphitheatre and giving Abbott the thumb's down. Death.
We are seeing a culling of
leaders in an incessant and carnivorous news cycle that is chewing up people
who took a path to public office that is much harder and more dangerous than
carping from the sidelines. Newman, a former Army major, went into battle with
big policies and acted on them. He didn't seek to be parachuted into a safe
seat. He died in electoral battle honourably and he departed honourably.
"This is the end of my
political career", he said on election night. In his TV appearances on
Sunday he even seemed relieved. I don't blame him.
Paul_Sheehan_
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