Starts with why

As the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle over Tony Abbott's sexuality outburst begins to abate, with plenty of jowl-wobbling outrage on both sides, one question remains: why?

Why did he not anticipate being asked a question like this? Why did he not have a response ready? All those commentators who insisted that Abbott didn't have a problem with women voters look pretty stupid today - he sure does now.

Why is The Australian Women's Weekly such a political graveyard? Cheryl Kernot's feather boa, Mark Latham's first wife, Tony Abbott fretting over daughters he barely knows - all underestimated the Weekly and all came an absolute gutser because of it. So much for broadsheets, Sunday morning talk shows and talkback radio, not to mention the national broadcaster and the utterly otiose press gallery. Watch out for the mighty Weekly, ye media advisors and image consultants, and tremble when they come for you.

Abbott did not become a Cabinet Minister and leader of his party by answering every question that a journalist wanted to ask him. Why did he go there? He says he made those comments for his daughters' sake: but what can be said for a man who communicates with his offspring through the media? The Queen doesn't do that, John Howard didn't and George W. Bush certainly never did, and Catholic clergy don't have any to broadcast to (oh all right, but now isn't the time for timid moral retards who run off to seminaries to escape their responsibilities).

One's offspring aside, why even waste media time commenting on that issue? He's running for Prime Minister, not National Dad For All Women. Is he going to offer incentives for women who go to their marital beds as virgins (First Leg Over Grants)? No? Well there's no point in going into that issue at all now is there.

Gabriella Coslovich has a point:

The comment both fetishes a woman's virginity and reduces her value to the presence of a hymen, to the unpenetrated state of her vagina. Why is that the greatest gift a woman can give someone? What about her mind? Her actions? Dare I say it, her soul?

Why indeed? His daughters aside, does he really believe that Julia Gillard has less to offer beyond her own hymen? Does he believe that of Julie Bishop? Sophie Mirabella? Janet Albrechtsen? Senators Troeth and Boyce? Our head of state (pick one)? Any female Liberal candidate running for a seat with 5% margin of victory either way? Doctrine is one thing but a thinking person, as Abbott is alleged to be, has to test received wisdom against experience. Every Liberal woman is cheapened today, which may explain why they have been very quiet on this issue (except, commendably, Sharman Stone. He really has learned nothing from the RU-486 debate, has he. Why?

(It would be easy, and wrong, to claim that I'm besmirching the above-named Liberal women - their own leader did that. Don't bother with your comments charging to their defence as I recognise them as people of considerable achievement, which is more than can be said for Tony Abbott; only when you understand that you'll get the point of the preceding paragraph. Only when you understand that will you realise that it is Abbott who owes the apology. Now read on, and shut up.)

In purely electoral terms, the Liberal Party's problem with Abbott as leader was that he'd increase the Liberal vote in the safe Liberal seats and in safe Labor seats, but would do nothing for Liberals who want to take marginal Labor seats away from the incumbent government. Today is another incident arising from a known problem. Given the importance of women's votes in keeping the Liberal vote up, Abbott has made a category error. There is no way that Liberals can redress this error without shirtfronting their own leader. Why did he put his own party in a position of having to do this?

Abbott promised that he would take the fight up to the Labor Party. Why is it that on this issue, they are able to brush him off with ease?

And as for George Brandis, Gillard being childless does not make her "one-dimensional" any more than it does for Julie Bishop or [insert here names of female Liberal MPs who have no children but are obliged to work with George Brandis]. If only he were a clever politician.

Given that his stated reasons are piffle, disingenuous or simply don't make sense, why is this person leader of the Liberal Party? Why has his stated aim of putting the heat back on the Labor Party clearly not worked? Why did Liberals think he'd be better at leading their party than Malcolm Turnbull, Brendan Nelson, Joe Hockey or anyone else? Do the Liberals really have so little to offer Australia - and if so, why?

Diddums

Sir Walter Raleigh: Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
Queen Elizabeth I: If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.

- attributed (in the spirit of our English heritage & shared values, &c.)

Michelle Grattan has seen every Federal Liberal leadership spill in almost forty years, from Gorton-McMahon to Turnbull-Abbott. She would have seen some doozies of conflicts within that party over issues of real substance. Her latest piece, however, strains credibility.

Tony Abbott has it all his own way, he really does. The Liberal Party's hand-wringing over getting rid of Howard in 2007 is over - Howard is back in every sense other than the physical. The mincing under Brendan Nelson and the catherine-wheel of ideas that was Malcolm Turnbull have stopped.

Malcolm Turnbull ought to be an irrelevance. If he tried to bring on a spill he wouldn't get half a dozen votes. His position now is weaker than that of Peter Costello in 2006. His latest outburst was on an issue that is not a hot issue for the coming election, and not even a Labor wedge against the Liberals: a republic. Turnbull is not firing off half-baked ideas like Abbott did as a frontbencher - Turnbull isn't even a frontbencher.

If Turnbull crossed the floor to support an ETS it would be to his credit as a man of principle, and it would further alienate him from the current Liberal Parliamentary Party (to say nothing of the extraparliamentary organisation). Storm in a teacup, people like Michelle Grattan may run giddy LIB SPLIT SHOCK stories, but that would pass (the very prospect is so irrelevant it would hardly be worth reporting).

Whatever O'Farrell's problems, the idea of Turnbull being parachuted in would be bizarre, a recipe for instability. Even if O'Farrell isn't a dream leader, the Liberals are heading to victory in NSW and should get behind the man they've got.

Indeed it would. The NSW Liberals should be tired of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Besides, NSW would get screwed under a Premier Turnbull by the incumbent Federal government, even worse than it does now.

If he ran again, it would signal unfinished business – that he thought a return to leadership possible. After all, he lost by the narrowest margins. Would the party be willing to contemplate a return to the Turnbull experiment, which nearly killed it? It seems unlikely but both John Howard and Andrew Peacock came back (to say nothing of Robert Menzies).

To say that Turnbull "nearly killed" the Liberal Party is absurd. Mark Latham led the ALP to defeat but it wasn't "nearly killed". John Howard arguably did more damage to the Liberal Party with its loss in 2007 than Latham did to his party three years earlier.

A key to Turnbull's thinking may lie in his recent piece for The Times:

Our culture has always been very open to new ideas. Australia’s dynamism, its readiness to embrace change is very republican and very similar to the culture of the US.

Bored by a timid batsman, the weary Aussie cricket fan who calls out “ ’ave a go, ya mug!” is really summing up what Australia is all about — have a go, give it your best shot and if you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and have another go.

That metaphor is fresh and economically makes its point, which is more than can be said for Grattan's stale imagery about choirs, song sheets, and hymns.

Anyway, enough about Turnbull.

All leaders need to crack heads. If Joe Hockey wanders off topic he needs to be brought into line - Howard did it to him and he's better for it. Hockey should have laughed when Sophie Mirabella was sooled onto him.

Joyce has never been brought into line - nobody has been big enough to shirtfront him, not Anderson or Vaile or what's-his-name currently. If Tony Abbott had any self-knowledge at all he should find it within himself to reach out to Joyce and get him to work as a member of a team bigger than himself. To use one of those lazy boxing analogies beloved by the dimmer lights of the Federal Parliamentary press gallery: if Abbott can't put Joyce on the canvas he'll never make it against the champ at the title fight.

If Abbott thinks he can become Prime Minister without cracking heads, he's kidding himself.

If Tony Abbott's travails are really as bad as Michelle Grattan makes out, he's really up against it. They're not, however - she's seen Liberal leaders in worse predicaments than this. There is no rump of disaffected factional opponents. Moderates are few and largely co-opted, and not much cop anyway (Abbott's standing would be enhanced if Chris Pyne went him, and when was the last moderate policy measure he put forward?). The Liberal Party is united behind the idea that the public still loves all things Howard (except Howard himself) and that the 2007 election was a clerical error. In Nick Minchin he has an enforcer who is powerful, committed and feared.

Abbott has a more united party than any leader in a generation - more so than any party Howard led. He lacks quality personnel, but as Peter Coleman said, the organisation bears some responsibility for that. Grattan's sympathy for Abbott is utterly misplaced, he needs to use what power he has effectively if he is to be entrusted with more. If the job is too tough for him, he shouldn't have run for it.

No Opposition Leader since Kim Beazley has enjoyed so good a run with the media and so much goodwill from his party than Tony Abbott. Michelle Grattan should be foremost among those telling Abbott to toughen up rather than "fear" the coming Parliamentary session (he's going to be a mess by election time, isn't he).

Abbott has no excuses, and Michelle Grattan ought not set up any for him.

Becoming and unbecoming Australians

Recently we had two senior Liberals talk about immigration. Scott Morrison's piece was well-researched, well thought out and a view of the country's future that is both credible and positive. Tony Abbott's piece (here and here) was stupid.

Scott Morrison's gold

... despite the Coalition doubling the country's annual immigration intake when last in government (that's right, doubling it), we managed to halve community concerns about the level of immigration.

This is an opening salvo between the eyes of the lazy portrayal of Howard as a narrow-minded bigot and panderer to Hanson (more on that later). He uses stats lightly but tellingly.

Morrison's use of sources is interesting too: rather than pretending to omniscience like Abbott does, he drops brand-names like Monash and ANU in ways that enhance his position. During the 1980s leading Liberals like Jim Carlton and Ian Macphee could draw on ministerial experience in making a case, but today intellectual crutches are provided by Access Economics and the CIS.

It is not surprising that Markus found a high correlation between lower unemployment and reduced concerns about immigration. When you manage things well, people are more likely to go with you ... I would argue that rising concerns about immigration levels may be more about community disaffection with how things are being managed by our governments.

Some may regard this as self-evident: but they tend to have been the people left dumbfounded by Hanson, unable to anticipate the onslaught or make much of a defence once it was underway. Morrison deserves credit here for making these concerns seem understandable without truckling to them.

There is no doubt that Australia's population growth since World War II has been the driving force behind our expanded capacity as a nation and the prosperity that we now enjoy.

Today, 45 per cent of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was. We are an immigrant nation and there is broad public acceptance, according to Markus, for the view that bringing immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger.

A recent Australian National University study found that net migration of 180,000 a year would add a full 10 percentage points to growth in gross domestic product per capita.

And research by Access Economics shows that every permanent migrant adds $20,000 to the budget bottom line over their first four years. For one year's intake, this presently represents more than $3.6 billion.

Marvellous stuff, solid grounds for optimism. If I were Andrew Norton or Possum Comitatus I'd go looking for those documents and interrogate the stats - and maybe I will, but for now I'll just revel in the idea of a thinking Liberal.

These figures provide a salient reminder to a federal government swimming in debt and deficit ... This is not an argument for a population blank cheque.

When you've done your homework you can be forgiven a partisan dig or two.

Labor's shift away from skilled migration will impose greater costs on our nation.

Yes it will, especially when the "education revolution" is such bullshit at an early stage of its development.

Compare and contrast with his so-called leader:

Tony Abbott's dross

Mr Abbott said Australians were worried about the rise in the number of boat people, the ability of migrants to obey the law and the strain new arrivals put on the nation's resources.

Which Australians, Tony? A majority, or the fringe-dwellers you call your base? If our resources are indeed under strain then obviously you have to blame the previous government for that and other inadequacies.

''The policy of multiculturalism expressed our willingness to let them assimilate in their own way and at their own pace because of our confidence in the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life.''

Migrants would be more popular if minority leaders encouraged them to adopt more mainstream values and abide by the law, he said.

Which is exactly what they tend to do. That happened with the Italians and Greeks in the '50s, the Vietnamese in the '70s, and every other group since. It was churlish not to point this out, not to express confidence that today's migrants can and do contribute as much as they can.

''The inescapable minimum that we insist upon is obedience to the law,'' Mr Abbott said. ''It would help to bolster public support for immigration and acceptance of social diversity if more minority leaders were as ready to show to mainstream Australian values the respect they demand of their own.''

Questioning the loyalty of particular ethnic and religious groups was not new, Mr Abbott said. He blamed the former mufti of Australia Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly's attacks on women and Jews for inciting such doubts in the past.

al-Hilaly was a clown, but he's a poor example there because he did not break any laws as such. Sure, he was a boofhead - but if that was a crime Abbott would be deported to his place of birth, the UK.

"In fact, it's probably essential if the public is to be convinced that Australia's immigration policy is run by the government rather than by people-smugglers," he said.

What a despicable slur that is. Abbott has no excuse for not knowing what a tiny proportion of prospective migrants come by sea, that they are usually the wretched of the earth and have a higher chance of deserving admission than many who arrive by plane.

Here, though, the snivelling gutlessness of his pitch to the bigots becomes apparent:

"The last thing that any Australian should want is to make recent immigrants feel unwelcome in their new country," the Opposition Leader said.

Mr Abbott said people should be especially concerned that ethnic Indians could have become the victims of racially motivated crime: "It would be an affront to our self-perception as a society where people are judged on their merits rather than on their skin colour."

Firstly, very few Indian students arrive here by boat. Secondly, if racism is shown to be an issue Abbott won't do anything constructive about it - he'll just act all shocked, shocked that anyone would dare call him, of all people, a racist (and then, once the media kerfuffle dies down, the racism continues and gets worse).

Mr Abbott said immigration had been a success almost unparalleled in history, but it regularly featured as an issue of concern.

And if you were a leader you would act to alleviate that concern.

The worst thing about trying to rabble-rouse with sneaky, passive wording like this - like so many turds floating in the swimming pool of national discourse - is that the rabble shows no sign at all of rousing for Abbott, much less in the kind of numbers necessary to offset the abandoned moderates.

The election of the Rudd Government removed a sense that there was something untoward about the treatment of refugees and that applications might be treated on merit. That dread feeling of slighting defenceless people for political gain is back, and we are all the poorer for it. Make this dirty man go away, and may we bury the New Guard once and for all.

Still an issue

The Defence pay bungle, affecting the SAS and the RAAF, and no doubt other agencies. Big issue early last year, Rudd lost a Cabinet Minister over it.

Has this problem been fixed? Is it likely to occur again? It would be worth putting these questions to Senator Faulkner as, for all their conceit as investigators and a "fourth estate", the journosphere has simply dropped this issue and simply rehash press releases as "media content".

If ADF personnel are being mucked around on pay this is a significant poitical issue and a fundamental failure of government. It doesn't matter if the press gallery has "moved on", this is precisely the sort of issue that is worth revisiting in a "slow news week".

With a bully crew and a captain too

If NSW and Australia had better governments they would take full advantage of this predicament in which the Poms have found put themselves.

Australia's big four banks have reasserted their dominance of the market, and they constitute something like a fifth of the Australian Stock Exchange. They do not appear to be becoming complacent (except, perhaps, in residential mortgages) but this is only a matter of time. The Federal Government appears unperturbed by this development, and a wise government would set a regulatory framework whereby Australian banks were strong but not complacent, and as solid and as innovative as any banks anywhere.

Peter Sands, group chief executive of Standard Chartered, one the UK's big five banks, said that conditions were now worse in London and that new financial business was more likely to locate elsewhere.

"I'm afraid to say that London has been damaged both by the failures of management of regulation that led to the crisis and some of the responses to the crisis," Mr Sands told The Sunday Telegraph.

What should happen is that state and federal leaders should step up and tell British banks to shift more of their operations to Sydney. Nick Greiner and Jeff Kennett would have done that (well, Kennett would have suggested they move to Melbourne but this idea is of course preposterous). Costello might have made an idle comment on the topic but left it at that. Mike Baird might do it for NSW, but by next year it would be too late.

It would have been bold and daring: UK retailers recognise that Australia is a market they need to be in, UK miners and mining investors know that Australia is where it's at (except for those hardy souls who think they'd be better off in São Paulo, Lagos, Baku or Sandton). Follow your clients and start expanding your Sydney offices, save on rents in Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street. The quality of bankers available to the Australian market would improve and it would keep the Australian institutions on their toes. It would accelerate a trend of shifting capital to the Asia-Pacific region without openly and directly ceding regulatory sovereignty to China.

Of course, it would never happen. Kristina Keneally would have no credibility at all and Wayne Swan appears fully occupied. Rudd would run into problems with British Labour, which provided support for the ALP in the '07 election: a campaign like this would be a further loss of face for Brown & Co. at a time when their electoral prospects pretty much shot. The UK will elect a new government this year and this window of opportunity will close.

These are the sort of opportunities you miss out on when your governments are crap and your oppositions are no better. You need ambitions not because it's great to be disappointed on a regular basis, but to set standards that won't be satisfied by whatever pap the incumbents think might be good enough for the likes of us.

Michelle Grattan by default

Michelle Grattan apparently takes great pains to ensure that she has quoted people accurately, but here is another example of a basic flaw in traditional journalism: never mind if I am quoting this person accurately, far more pertinent issues include:

• Is this person an imbecile?


• Do they deserve to be taken on face value?


• Is there any link between what they say they want to do, and what has failed or succeeded in the recent (and hence politically relevant) past?


• After four decades in this job, should I apply some analysis and experience or should I be reporting as though I came down in the last shower?

Grattan's piece shows that she has nothing really to offer ahead of someone with much less experience.

TONY Abbott said before Christmas: "I hope to be John Howard's political heir, not his clone." In this early stage of his leadership, Abbott is giving plenty of reminders that he is Howard's child.

No, he's showing that he's a clone.

He has made the Murray-Darling a centrepiece of his first election-year policy initiative, as Howard did in election year 2007;

He mentioned the Murray-Darling, but as I mentioned earlier a bit of a mention does not translate to a policy centrepiece. He also mentioned a creek running into Narrabeen Lagoon, another waterway which will benefit not at all from Abbott's half-baked attempts. The fact that Howard didn't attend to the Murray-Darling until it was too late is one reason why he lost the last election, and the fact that Abbott is pulling a stunt on this and other issues means he'll lose this one.

[Abbott] is embarking on a series of defining speeches, reminiscent of Howard as opposition leader in 1995.

Reminiscent of every Opposition Leader, really. Giving speeches is what they do, particularly in election years. You might as well say Abbott is "reminiscent of Crean as opposition leader in 2002" or "reminiscent of Snedden as opposition leader in 1974" for all the good that does.

He has even hired one of Howard's right-hand men, Tony O'Leary, as his director of communications.

My guess is that O'Leary hasn't been flooded with job offers recently - particularly as he, like most Liberals, hasn't learned why Howard lost in '07 and thus can't really be of much assistance in 2010.

Howard is personally much closer to Abbott than he was to former leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. "He does [seek advice] from time to time. I'm not in his ear every day," Howard said this week. "Tony has a lot a views that are the same as mine," he said, but added that they diverged too, a reflection of the age gap. For example, "Tony has had more on-the-ground involvement in indigenous issues."

Tony's main achievement in in indigenous issues was to cut Aboriginal health programs by $1.5b, and he may well be on first-name terms with Noel Pearson. That'd be it really.

Even in government, the two had some sharp differences, particularly over Abbott's desire for a federal takeover of the hospital system.

Does this make Abbott heir or clone? More importantly, was this a smart idea or a poor one, and has it improved over time?

Abbott's conservatism, like that of Howard, has a strong streak of pragmatism. He is not afraid to pitch for what would be thought of as the enemy's territory

Yes he is, he's petrified.

When the Howard government was bold enough to steal a march on Labor, it came up with great policy: East Timor was a left issue forever, but Howard stepped up with the one policy initiative of which all Australians can be proud. Abbott sat across a table from me in the late '90s and told me that Aboriginal issues were left issues, and that any attempt by the Liberals to steal a march on Labor was futile. I thought he was gutless then and still do.

Here is Grattan's explanation of "pragmatism" and "enemy's territory":

"The political left shouldn't be seen as 'owning' the environment … and I am determined to challenge any assumption that it does," Abbott said, agreeing he was bidding for green preferences.

While (leaving aside the Greens) the environment is Labor's natural ground, Howard showed that the Liberals can play there too.

For the 1996 election, Howard promised a $1 billion natural heritage trust from the proceeds of part-selling Telstra. In 2004, he cultivated the conservationists - but then when Mark Latham overreached on Tasmanian forests, Howard stepped back and stymied his opponent.

The Tasmanian forests are no better off for Howard's dosie-doh around Mark Latham. Like Annabel Crabb, Grattan perceives policy as the plaything of politicians rather than course of action adopted and pursued by government which affects the way the governed operate.

In one of the ironies of pragmatic politics, the election pitches of Howard and Abbott on emissions trading are diametrically opposed. As part of his struggle on the climate change issue, Howard in 2007 promoted an ETS that was later substantially reflected in the Rudd model.

Howard wasn't strongly committed to an ETS any more than he was to a federal takeover of health. It is likely to have been "non-core". Abbott isn't strongly committed to an ETS either: clone, Michelle, clone.

Abbott is walking both sides of the environmental street: his proposal for a private member's bill to unlock Queensland's wild rivers does not exactly fit the bid to be a greenie.

What Abbott's advocacy of federal action on the wild rivers and (if necessary) a referendum to get federal power over the Murray-Darling have in common is the resort to central power. Howard and Abbott both broke the nexus between conservatism and federalism.

Abbott is not walking both sides of the street: he is walking the anti-environment side, or at least the side that regards any development in environment policy since 1995 as irrelevant.

In his policy speech in Sydney on Thursday, Abbott sought to contrast his style with an unflattering description of Kevin Rudd's ... This is an attempt to reprise how the opposition of 1995-96 portrayed Paul Keating as arrogant and obsessed with highfalutin causes.

You say reprise, I say clone.

Howard became opposition leader (for the second time) about a year before the 1996 election; Rudd also got the job around a year out. They both had one big advantage compared with Abbott: they faced governments that people wanted to defeat. The Rudd Government is new and highly popular; it would be extraordinary if voters did not give it a second go.

An heir would be able to adjust to circumstances; a clone cannot.

Rudd was relatively unknown when he became leader; Abbott was a senior minister for a long time and a controversial figure because of some of his views. But many voters have little idea of him as alternative PM. People had a fix on Howard, even though for the '96 election he sanded off some of his harsher ideological edges.

This is the real point of departure: Abbott is burring up his rough edges. He is going to look like a real pissant and lose all credibility when Liberals realise Abbott's rough edges are leading the party away from government, not toward it. Grattan of course has missed this. Abbott's case is that Howard's loss in 2007 was a mistake, that voters really want more Howard not less and that the result of '07 will be reversed like a clerical error and dissipate like a bad dream.

Tom Switzer, a member of the Liberal Party and former staffer to Nelson when he was opposition leader, believes Abbott has the ability to win over "Howard battlers", especially in Queensland. "They deserted the conservative cause in 2007 because they felt WorkChoices, rising interest rates and costs of living threatened their economic security."

Abbott has said he wants to basically reintroduce WorkChoices, and he hasn't said much and can't do much about the other issues. Does Switzer think that Queenslanders are mugs? Does Grattan?

Left-leaning Phillip Adams, in this week's The Spectator Australia, argues that Abbott resembles Latham, and is as big a risk for the Liberals as Latham was for Labor. "Both are high-impact leaders. Like Latham, Abbott will campaign strongly and rattle the incumbent, at least at the outset. And like Latham, he's doomed to self-destruct … Abbott's no John Howard who constantly risk-assessed."

... Anecdotally, Abbott has made a better start than many expected. Liberals report good feeling among the conservative base. But his juggling act, which he started this week with his environment pitch, is to reach out to middle-ground voters at the same time as appealing to his stalwarts.

The "conservative base" are people who'd vote Liberal anyway, whether for [insert your idea of a moderate liberal here] or [insert your idea of an arch conservative here]. His environment pitch shows Abbott cannot relate to the facts in this area as revealed over the past fifteen years. There is one Liberal with environmental credibility and Abbott replaced him. Any attempt by Abbott to depart from his "stalwarts" would not only lead to "bad feeling", it would be fatal. Why would the Liberals rely so heavily on "anecdote" when the whole Textor-Crosby philosophy during the Howard ascendancy was built squarely on fact? "Anecdote", from anonymous sources? What next?

Labor argues that Abbott is a polarising, extreme figure who will divide people. An alternative view is that Abbott, because he does come through as "authentic", could be quite liked by those who find many of their politicians too confected (Abbott also has to juggle staying "authentic" but keeping disciplined).

But there is a big step between liking a leader and being willing to vote for him. Voters could warm to Abbott because of his "what you see is what you get" personality, but still be unprepared to take the chance that if he were running the country they might actually get something unexpected.

"An alternative view" doesn't stack up, and hence is not worth reporting except to knock down. This is exactly the argument that Labor put in voting for Mark Latham, and Grattan should have examined that rather than just mention it.

Tony Abbott is John Howard without the flexibility. The Liberals regard the 2007 election as a clerical error, and are seeking to reverse it with a string of policies that should start with "What we REALLY meant to say was ...", followed by a reprisal/clone of what was said by Howard at some point in the past. That's the political analysis we need, not the silly and groundless assumption that what is said by a politician is the same as what is done by a government or expressed by a populace at election time - or the equally silly assumption that what is said, by persons named and unnamed, is actually news.

Recycling

The Liberals' environment policy as foreshadowed in 2010 by Tony Abbott is pretty much the same as the Liberal environment policy of 1995. The dependance on landcare and work-for-the-dole on small-scale projects in the hope that they might add up to something greater is the essence of the Liberal approach to the Australian environment, then as now.

In 1995, "brown issues" were seen as the best way to reframe the debate about Australian environment. Never mind emotive but ultimately trivial issues like a proposed road through a rainforest, the real environmental issues were salinity and riparian property rights. It clothed the naked self-interest of the Nationals in a kind of patriotism, invoking the fierce toughness of Dorothea Mackellar's My Country (though not Nancy Cato's Mallee Farmer, which cast the supposed custodians of the land in a harsh light). It made Labor and the Greens look shallow by focusing on minor issues that looked good on telly, issues affecting broader tracts of land and bigger chunks of the economy, issues that no hippies would be seen anywhere near.

That year, Gerard Henderson released a book called A Howard Government?, in which he appraised the then Opposition and considered what sort of government it might make. The year before that, Liberals released The Heart of Liberalism in which Liberal MPs dared imagine what a Liberal government might do. Judi Moylan's article in the latter work, "Balanced Environmentalism", reads like a rough draft of Abbott's speech sixteen years later - except with a focus on WA Landcare rather than the Murray-Darling basin, and of course Moylan can be forgiven for not bagging the Rudd Government. What Moylan's article also referred to Menzies a lot, gingerly, like someone having to balance liberal and conservative forces in a way that is simply no longer necessary.

One of the key failings of the Nationals is that they didn't follow through on the brown issues. It's also a key failure of rural Libs, of whom Bill Heffernan was the leading advocate - all that culture-war stuff against Michael Kirby detracted from what little focus there was on these issues. It isn't good enough for Abbott to say:

The essential problem in the Murray-Darling basin is that there’s rarely enough water to meet human needs, environmental flows and irrigation allocations. Water has been over-allocated because no state government has an equal responsibility to everyone with a stake in the system.

That was the case in 1996, and it was still the case ten years later.

After years of frustration at the slow pace of reform, the Howard Government’s 2007 $10 billion plan involved improving irrigation infrastructure to make existing water rights more productive, buying out unviable irrigators and, most importantly, changing governance arrangements so that each state couldn’t sacrifice the interests of the others.

Years of frustration, my arse.

The minister who made that possible is the leader Abbott, and other Liberals, replaced. Turnbull's achievements as Environment Minister are not only greater than any ofhis Liberal predecessors, but Abbott is right when he implies that those achievements are greater than those of the incumbents. Those "governance arrangements" etc could have been put in place by 1999 at the latest, if they'd been serious.

Intensive labour is required if weeds and feral animals are to be removed and if national park infrastructure is to be maintained. Notwithstanding the scientific breakthroughs of researchers with the CSIRO and our universities, the dedication of Australia’s 4000 land care groups and the professionalism of our farmers and foresters, Australia is losing the battle against environmental degradation.

I blame poor leadership, myself. Any federal government agency thatidentified environmental problems was sneered at by ninnies like Abbott and Minchin, and threatened with funding cuts.

Properly restoring only the most obviously degraded land would require a labour force that just isn’t there.

And they won't be there on $50k a year, with no training and no career path - especially not on the Warringah peninsula.

Over 11 years, the ... main problem with the Green Corps was that it was too small – there were never enough Green Corps teams to deal with all the environmental restoration projects submitted by councils, landcare groups, and national parks. Too many of them involved studying a problem rather than fixing it. As well, the original Green Corps format, individual teams of ten young environmental trainees with a supervisor/trainer, did not lend itself to tackling larger restoration projects.

See what I mean about sloppy leadership? This area of the budget will always be cut and cut again. Rural communities, beset by environmental degredation and depopulation, will not be sustained by jobs like this. Imagine if an Aboriginal community had the temerity to suggest that a given project was a waste of time, or required more than clearing a bit of lantana? His first task in government was a resounding failure, hardly the basis to ask for another go.

Would you take this "land army" away from infrastructure projects, or trades training? If people in immigration detention centres volunteered for such work, would it help their applications? It's bullshit from the word go. He's not serious, the words are meaningless and impress no-one.

A concern to protect the environment should mean ... preferring those trying to do good rather than merely to look good on this issue.

This is a man whose whole life has involved sneering at do-gooders. It's industrial-strength cant, like invoking the Fraser Government, which he regarded as Liberal in name only.

Here's a piece that could have come from the Fraser government, and shows how inadequate Abbott's approach is to government:

Reducing emissions matters because many scientists think that they are having a serious impact on climate.

This is dog-whistling for the deniers. Reducing emissions matters because it is an exercise in risk mitigation. Pulling weeds around Narrabeen Lagoon won't do a thing to mitigate the risk to the country, the economy and the world in general from anthropogenic global warming. They didn't have the Stern Report in 1995 but the Coalition doesn't have that excuse.

Over the next few months, along with the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, I will be talking to organizations such as Conservation Volunteers Australia and Greening Australia (the bodies that formulated and subsequently ran the original Green Corps) about the potential for a much larger and more capable national conservation corps.

More fool Greg Hunt for lending his name and credibility to such a self-defeating and futile exercise in greenwashing. There is no linkage between stuff like this and any practical action: wasn't in 1995, isn't now. Shame on the Coalition for fooling us once: shame on us if we let them fool us again.

Update 16 Jan.: This article seeks to portray Abbott as victim: only animals and rugby players engage in "mauling". Look further though and see which namby-pamby politically-correct latte-sippers are showing Abbott up:

the National Farmers Federation, the National Irrigation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the NSW Irrigation Council.

"It's just ridiculous," said Arlene Buchan, rivers spokeswoman for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Indeed it is.

"The issues are so complex, and for Mr Abbott to come out and say that he can fix the river system by the commonwealth taking full control . . . well, I think it's a bit simplistic."

The National Irrigators Council said it did not support a full federal takeover because there was no evidence shifting management from one group of politicians and bureaucrats to another would improve the operation of the system. "The states have already referred some powers to the commonwealth, and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is engaged in the development of a basin plan that will set new sustainable diversion limits that all basin states will have to comply with," chief executive Danny O'Brien said.

Never mind Abbott or his pony Greg Hunt, I want to vote for Danny O'Brien.