Bushfire Bill

The slow cook aspect in opinion polls regarding how people change opinions explains the desperation of the Coalition.

Ever since the polls turned savagely in 2001 with the Tampa business – and stayed there – the Coalition has been looking for another silver bullet.

More like Fool’s Gold, actually, as poll results this far out mean very little, like calling the Melbourne Cup after the outbound field passes the post for the first time: a pointless exercise.

There is a difference between polls and a horse race call, however. The early prognostications of a race caller fall on deaf ears: the jockeys’. With opinion polls, the jockeys and the horses have ears.

As do the punters.

Early election calls based on polls can possibly turn opinion, or hold it in place, because the field CAN hear the call and DOES react to it.

Keep the Cup punters disgruntled with a bad call and all you have is a bad call. Keep the political punters disgruntled and they might switch off politics and governance totally. Idle minds are the Devil’s playground. Get the public to accept a meme and it’s hard to shake it.

Make the caucus edgy with a bad poll and you can run Ruddstoration stories every day of the week.

The polls are used by commentators to game the system. How often have we heard that the polls mean that the government’s policies and actions need not be analysed because they won’t be around for much longer anyway?

How often do we hear the converse based on the Coalition’s polling figures? “They’re doing so well we’ll just have to accept they’ll win, take what we get, and hope for the best.” No need for policy analysis there, either.

Instead we get belly-fluff about the role of the public service, not analysis of the actual costings of Hockey’s Carbon Tax repeal program.If ever there was an “Inside Canberra” subject, the last week’s obsessing about who commissioned what and who leaked to whom was a classic.

Mr. “Araldited To The Anonymous Leaky Telephone” himself, Phil Coorey’s complaint on Insiders that Swan should have done a press release was just pure kabuki, icing on the seaweed. This guy has single-handedly kept Cochlear Industries in business and still whinges he wasn’t in on the story.

The way they’re suddenly discovering that Abbott might have been trash-talking the economy (and that Gillard is being so “political”, in criticising him for it) is a hoot.

Abbott and his cronies have probably taken a point or two of GDP growth with their Early Election and Economic Misery scams.

We’re constantly told to do nothing, take no risks, put the money under the bed, don’t bother investing, don’t buy a house, whinge and moan about how bad things are, until Tony is elected and saves the day, by going back to… John Howard… 5 years gone this month, and last successful in an election in 2004.

All based on keeping the nebulous poll figures up, so they can be reported as doom for the government (and hope for the Opposition). In the meantime, assume a holding pattern. Do nothing.

Result? One stuffed economy.

The whole thing doesn’t have to fall apart, we don’t have to “do a Greece”. All that’s needed is just a few points shaved around the margins to take the edge off profits and emasculate confidence (which leads to profits anyway).

The clear plan for the government is not to simply criticise Abbott for his trash talking (the failed, wimpish tactic so far), but to point out the consequences of it.

Personalize it. Give examples. Make it real.

Someone should up and state with certainty that every time Abbott or Hockey dismiss another initiative, or mock governance, or the economy, or say there’s no growth, or refuse to pass a piece of legislation, or (worse) say they’ll refuse to pass it then quietly pass it anyway, another factory gate shuts for good.

Every time they tell willing listeners that the Carbon Tax is ruining them, by producing faked up or just contradictory evidence and saying its genuine, they should stand accused of directly wrecking people’s jobs.

A “Loyal Opposition” is not loyal if it tries to destroy the nation it seeks to govern.

I see this everywhere in my “canary in the coal mine” industry. People articulate to me in no uncertain terms the notion that the economy is wrecked, with little chance of a recovery. Their business are going down the toilet because no-one is buying.

I try to link this to the complete negativity we see in the media and from Opposition politicians, with some success, but there are still die-hards out there who refuse to even consider the argument. They tell me that “an Opposition’s duty is to oppose,” which may be true to an extent… but not to wreck.

The early election tactic is long dead. Robb (according to reports yesterday) is now counting on a full-term government so he can get his costings and policies into some sort of ship shape.

If an election was called tomorrow, the first task of the Opposition would be to apply smelling salts to the nostrils of Abbott, Hockey, Robb and Pyne. They’d have all fainted from shock.

Yet the “Early Election” tactics continue to be applied, mindlessly, like the trench warfare of the “Home By Christmas” First World War. Who cares about mounting casualties?

The poll pressure is constant. There’s no relief from it. Blips are taken as being “caused” by something. The fairy tale that hundreds of thousands of voters change their voting intention week-by-week is put out as a serious hypothesis.

It’s similar to the erudite explanations we hear every day in the financial funny papers as to why the stock market has risen or fallen a few points here or there over the past 24 hours.

And about as useful.

The government really does have to stop whingeing in Question Time, to a tired gallery of hacks who don’t care (and don’t report it anyway) and start making people nervous about the Coalition’s negativity.

“A fear campaign”, you might call it, but one that might save a nation, because the consequences of not doing something are a looming, indeed lived reality.