AAP Image/ Alan Porritt
IT IS INCREASINGLY difficult to name the next Liberal prime minister. Malcolm Turnbull’s prospects are receding and history, let alone the polls, is against his winning the next election. No new government coming to office after an election has been denied a second term since the Scullin Labor government was wiped out by the Great Depression at the December 1931 election. Some prime ministers have gone close to losing their second election – Menzies in 1951, Whitlam in 1974 and Howard in 1998 – but Rudd looks a near certain winner of the next election, which could be as early as March next year.
In the sixty-four years since the second world war, oppositions have formed new governments at only six elections. Governments have remained in office on average for ten years and eight months. From 1949 the Coalition, from Menzies to McMahon, held government for twenty-three years and won nine elections; Whitlam lasted three years, winning two elections; Fraser ruled for seven years and three months and won three elections; Hawke–Keating held power for thirteen years and won five elections; and Howard lasted ten years and eight months and won four. Rudd will celebrate two years of office in November.
Turnbull clings to the belief that the next election is winnable; after all, a small swing of 1.6 per cent against Labor and Rudd would be out of office. But given Rudd’s command of the polls since he took over as opposition leader in December 2006, it would be amazing if Turnbull succeeded in defeating easily the most popular federal political figure since serious polling began. The pundits in the press gallery, including the author, are at a loss to explain the extraordinary popularity of Rudd, a grey, no-frills politician. Like Howard, he is ordinary, and his oratory is far behind every PM since Bill McMahon. Nor can his polling easily be explained by the troubles of the Coalition in opposition. After all, as opposition leader and only five months out from the 2007 election, Rudd led Howard as preferred PM 46 per cent to 40 per cent. The Howard government was not in nearly as much trouble as the Turnbull opposition and enjoyed the advantage of being in office.
Rudd’s polling has gone to even higher levels since the 2007 election because the voters like what his government has been doing and have come to admire him even more. A factor must be Rudd’s much higher visibility as PM compared to his days as opposition leader. Having said that, it is clear Rudd’s domination of politics has been assisted by the failure of the Coalition party room to come to grips with opposition after Howard’s long reign. Brendan Nelson was narrowly elected leader after the 2007 election, mainly because Nick Minchin worked hard to find votes for him outside New South Wales. Nelson was happy to defend the Howard government record, but a majority of Liberal MPs soon came to realise that he was essentially a lightweight. Turnbull replaced him and set about fashioning a party that had put the Howard years behind it and looked to the future. But Turnbull found strong resistance from right-wing Libs and the Nationals, many of whom believed the election loss was simply a hiccough and voters would soon realise their mistake.
Turnbull has failed to persuade voters that the government’s economic stimulus program is dangerous and will load our children down with debt. Being factually incorrect doesn’t help him: Australia’s debt level is not a problem. Worse, his resistance to Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has failed to capture the public imagination. The Rudd approach to dealing with climate change is both timid and unconvincing, yet Turnbull tries to portray it as radical and dangerous. At the same time the opposition leader knows he will have to vote for it in November to avoid giving Rudd a double dissolution election trigger.
Malcolm Mackerras’s latest electoral pendulum, which takes account of the likely redistribution in Queensland and New South Wales (to be finalised in January), shows that a swing of less than 2 per cent to the government would produce a gain of thirteen seats. Should this occur, the numbers after the next election (assuming the independents retain their seats) would produce a House comprising ninety-six Labor members, three independents and fifty-one Coalition MPs – a very sizable government majority. The Coalition would then be presented with the monumental task of winning an additional twenty-five seats to take the election after next. In a sense this is a best-case scenario since the Coalition holds twenty-five seats by less than 5 per cent going into the next election.
If Turnbull loses the election and is dumped, Joe Hockey, although not of the right wing, is most likely to succeed him. But the Libs would be foolish to abandon Turnbull, easily the most competent of all the senior figures. If Hockey is favoured, Turnbull could return to the leadership before long. Jovial and likeable, Hockey is also accident prone and inclined to shoot from the lip. Labor will remind voters at the coming election that he was the minister responsible for pushing WorkChoices after Howard sacked Kevin Andrews as IR minister.
Tony Abbott is most unlikely to win the next leadership ballot. Many in the party room believe he is unable to separate his Catholicism from his politics. Abbott caused considerable unrest and even a degree of religious bigotry among some of his Liberal colleagues when, as health minister, he opposed legalisation of the abortion drug RU486. He also unsuccessfully opposed extending stem cell research to human embryos. Abbott would be a liability among women voters. He is also close to the conservative Cardinal Pell and David Clarke, the NSW Legislative Council member and leader of the right faction who, his opponents charge, is attempting to bring Catholic teaching into NSW Liberal social policy.
And Labor won’t be immune to leadership pressures. Should Rudd win the next election, there will be many in the caucus pushing for him to retire and hand the leadership to Julia Gillard. They might not win this argument first time around, but if Rudd wins two more elections he will most certainly retire. The caucus would grab with both hands the opportunity to refresh the leadership with the first woman occupant of The Lodge. At forty-eight, Gillard has many years of politics still before her. But she might not have to wait on Rudd’s decision; the Labor caucus demonstrated a willingness to dump a successful leader when it supported Keating in his challenge to Hawke, even though Hawke was the most electorally successful leader Labor has ever had. •
Rob Chalmers is editor of Inside Canberra and is the longest serving member of the federal parliamentary press gallery
3 Comments
Why Hockey - he is the Stephen Bradbury of Australian politics - he only ‘won’ the seat of North Sydney because Ted Mack decided not to run again -
Good article Rob C, really enjoyed it, although I did not agree with a probably half of it.
For starters, saying the electorate has really come to admire Rudd more sounds like a support club mantra being recited on command and not a considered observation.
I’m sure everyone would agree that Rudd has the peoples votes in his pocket but the question of ‘why’ will be debated by the brains trust in both major camps as well as the fourth estate until the next election - but I do not believe it is because of growing admiration.
My two cents on this is there are two primary reasons for Rudd’s popularity: 1) Rudd has not had to make any hard decisions; 2) Rudd has subsequently starved the opposition of relevance;
If anything, Rudd is playing great politics and it is probably the average political observer who is growing in admiration.
Observers often mention the cash handouts, the promotional 20/20 summit, and school grants as either a positive or negative strategy. But individually these are micro strategies – or battles within a war.
I suspect the main strategy for Rudd’s first term is based on a Political Blitzkrieg – shock, awe and destroy your opposition. We have seen many ALP state governments use this strategy to great and devastating effect. They get elected and use the first term (and part of the second term) making popular decisions and leaving the opposition with no room to move. At the next election, they greatly increase their majority, decimating the opposition along the way.
Down the track, when the opposition has been all but wiped out, they start to make the hard decisions, safe in the knowledge there is no one left to oppose, and those who are left lack credibility due to low numbers.
Finally, to dismiss Tony Abbott from the Conservative leadership because of his Catholicism would be akin to those who dismissed JFK for his Catholicism - it would be absurd.
While I may not agree with everything Abbott says, he is the conservative politician I admire the most - he is tough, honest, capable and very intelligent. And he has a growing appeal to the average voter.
Also, Abbott is to ALP voters what Phil Gould or Benny Elias is to QLD, the man the opposition love to hate.
That does not rule him out of the leadership. It should actually move him to the front of the line since the person you want leading your party should be the person the opposition fear the most - and for the conservatives, that is Abbott.
Malcolm Turnbull may be lots of things, but is he really “easily the most competent of all the senior figures”? If so, then the Liberal party will be in opposition for years…
Turnbull fails to impress because he appears to have no rudder. He consistently fails to stand for anything, or provide any idea of a value system which might guide a Liberal government, or any vision for the kind of place Australia might be under his leadership.
Instead he appears to be entirely focused on scoring political points and winning polls - neither of which he does with any noticeable impact. He comes across as a selfish, opportunistic, politician. While that may be true of most politicians, Turnbull lacks anything of any substance which might make this less obvious. He is, perhaps, the most souffle-like leader we have seen since Andrew Peacock, and without his charm…
Howard may have thought he was “in touch” with the electorate - in truth he was widely disliked, even despised. The lack of a credible opposition, under Beazley particularly, kept him in power. Rudd, Like Hawke, blind-sided the Liberals. He gets on with things and quite clearly has both a vision for the country and the administrative ability to make things happen. He is obviously in charge, and quite clearly puts up with no nonsense. His bad tempered behaviour is excused, at least partly, by an electorate who allow this in a man who is in a hurry to get things done, and brooks neither opposition nor obstruction wherever he sees it.
It is hard to like Rudd though. Still, we really didn’t like Howard, (cucumber sandwich club excluded), and that was no bar to a long period in office.
What do the Liberals stand for apart from self interest? An apparently elitist bunch of no-hopers, they will have to be content to sit on the sidelines until Rudd drops the ball and hope that the Australian people don’t like Julia Gillard. Unfortunately for the Liberals, Julia Gillard may well turn out to be as, or more, effective than Rudd and, perhaps surprisingly, more likeable. She has, perhaps, the potential to be one of Australia’s truly great PMs.
In which case, she might well be in office until old age. She reminds me of a modern Queen Elizabeth I - so obviously in command of her responsibilities that she is…
I also suspect that Rudd will be content to move on when his time is up. He seems to be challenge-driven and he can look forward to a significant role on the world stage if he leaves office at the right time, and doesn’t stuff things up in the meantime.
All in all, a very depressing outcome for anyone who likes their bread white, without crusts, enclosing slithers of cucumber…