With the Coalition gaining a 3% swing in the poll, many of its supporters are enjoying a ‘told ya so’ moment about the electability of Tony Abbott. James Paterson (not the thriller writer) brought them all together in an article for the Oz Spectator, rounding up the usual suspects. Your correspondent was surprised and pleased to be included:
And Crikey’s resident angry former Marxist, Guy Rundle, after comparing Abbott to Taliban leader Mullah Omar… …boasted that ‘vanquishing Abbott shouldn’t be too hard’ because Abbott is ‘a weird little creep’ who would destroy himself without much help.
Please because at least someone is paying attention (former Marxist?), surprised because taken out of full context the quote is exactly the opposite of what I suggested. Here’s the full quote:
The possession of an idea of politics, of what it is as a distinct activity, has thus given Abbott an instant towering quality, compared to the people around him. Turnbull, Hockey, Nelson — these were political kalkitos figures. Remember Kalkitos? Those transfer figures — soldiers, astronauts etc — that you attached to a cardboard landscape with a pencil? That’s been the Liberal Party for two years. Abbott is no kalkitos, and he may well give the party a sense of purpose and forward motion. But he will do so from the deep wellsprings of his own politics, of a sense — literal or otherwise — that the world is simply a shadow of a deeper order….
…With the election of Abbott, Labor has no choice but to make this a fight between modernity and its other….That shouldn’t be too hard, if Labor maintains a positive message about modernity, hope and possibility, and what a weird little creep Abbott ultimately is.
‘towering quality…purpose and forward motion…deep wellsprings….’, yeah I really underestimated that guy, didn’t I? My point was that Labor, using intelligence, grace and wit, should have drawn all Abbott’s weirder attitudes out – not as the main game, but as a side issue that put him on the defensive.
My one error was to say that shouldn’t be too hard – but that was not because I underestimated Abbott, but overestimated Labor (merely saying that Labor has a pulse would have been to overestimate them). What could Keating or Hawke, with Watson, Freudenburg, Ellis etc etc have done with Abbott’s remark about his daughters’ virginity? A direct assault wouldn’t work, but four well-placed jokes could have had people snickering every time Abbott posed with near teenage girls. At that point, Abbott could have announced a cure for cancer, and no-one would have noticed. As with ‘can a souffle rise twice’ and ‘I want to do you slowly’, a single well-chosen line would have resituated Abbott entirely.
Why didn’t Labor do that? Because they would have had polling that nine people and a cane toad in Queensland think Jesus rode a dinosaur to church,and might not attacks on Abbott’s medieval Christianity. But that’s the whole point of humour. It allows you to say something while not doing so. Humour is the way you bring voters over the line – making it impossible for them to vote for your opponent, because they simply can’t take her/him seriously, even if they feel closer to your opponent’s politics
Strategically, this inability to stitch Abbott up – as a religious conservative of a European reactionary type, as an essentially un-Australian figure – was one key reason why Labor couldn’t lay a glove on him. Given that they didn’t have stability or incumbency as much of a backstop, you would have thought that painting Labor as, in the last analysis, the sane party, would have been one useful substitute.
But doing that would have required some breadth of knowledge, and Labor’s new supremos know nothing except numbers and polling – the not un-useful set of techniques that, when raised to the status of politics tout court, become a self-defeating pseudo-science. Politics will always be an art, not a science, and the character of an art is that the skills it demands can never be reduced to a series of methods. Labor’s hacks have reduced their party to this pathetic state because it’s all they know, and encouraging any other methods would endanger their control of it, retention of which they regard as a higher priority than winning.
So I over-rated Labor, but I never underestimated Abbott. Labor never estimated him at all. I dont know what any of them did for the first two weeks of the campaign, maybe they were still on holiday. Two fourteen year olds riffing at a bus-stop could have got Abbott’s measure, but it well beyond Labor’s collective wit.
Meanwhile, I stand by my assessment that Abbott has some fatal speck of narcissism that will never allow him to give of his all – hence the botched health debate early on, hence the botched broadband thing on 7.30 Report, and the ongoing botching of negotiations with the rural independents,the doubty three. The one thing he could fix by simple hard work – debate and interview prep, mastery of the details – he flubs. Why? Because it’s the one thing that’s most flubbable. You simply don’t do the work, and then you say …’man, if I’d done the work, I would have nailed it. Now we’ll never know.’ Should his sloppy and evasive work on costings give the doubty three the pretext to back Labor, he can then sail back into Opposition with that tune ringing in his head. If he ever manages to fix this tic, he’ll be unbeatable – should his divided party give him a second chance (and of course by next week he may be PM).
But as bad as this would be for Abbott, it would be catastrophic for his fan club in the commentariat. While Abbott draws his strength from the Holy Trinity (Santamaria, George Pell and Christopher Pearson), they – dispirited cosmopolitans with a right-wing branding – draw their strength from Abbott. They don’t partake of his medieval mind-set, but they’re glad someone does, it’s a last resort gold standard for the deflated currency of their ideas. Should he remain opposition leader, hoping for a governmental collapse, he will do so under a bad sign, that of being Gillard’s bitch, Holofernes to her Judith. Should he vacate the leadership – well, who else is there? And where would he go? And what will become of poor old James Paterson and Tom ‘Heidi’ Switzer, who warm their chapped hands by the glow of his burning zeal?
14 Comments
Nobody at the Oz can read, so quoting out of context is more a way or working than a bad habit there…stopped reading their crappy paper and website a year ago…its pointless.
As Julia would say. “Scoreboard, scoreboard” .
Can anyone verify whether Mark Arbib, Carl Bitar and Bill Shorten have at least apologised for blowing the ALP up months before an election.
The True Believers are looking for answers as they sip their chardonnays and chastise QLD and NSW. Apparently their votes don’t count.
“Because they would have had polling that nine people and a cane toad in Queensland think Jesus rode a dinosaur to church,and might not [like?] attacks on Abbott’s medieval Christianity”
Gold!
“And what will become of poor old James Paterson and Tom ‘Heidi’ Switzer, who warm their chapped hands by the glow of his burning zeal?”
Guy, you’ve given me the stitch again. Today’s offering is not only spot-on commentary but highly amusing. The “doubty three” and “Gillard’s bitch”…these gems will keep me going over the weekend. Heartfelt thanks.
“doubty three” – should that be “doughty three”, or is it a pun that it too obscure for me?
Oh dear Peter Smith, you missed Guy’s best joke…
I think doubty is what one is when one doesn’t believe the ‘Truthy’….
Tell me one thing though, if you’re an atheist trying to win an election, and you’re up against a crazy fundie who wants to lead the country straight back to the Dark Ages, why oh why do you not once, ever, confront him on his crazy views ? On abortion, contraception, global warming, I mean, it should have been the easiest thing in the world to show people what a nut the guy is.I just do not get it.So I agree with you, we didn’t underestimate Abbott, we got let down by Gillard.
Rorschach, because an atheist can’t make a frontal assault on one aspect of religion without it being a war on all religion. Someone with a more conventional Christian background might have made the case and had a feel for the subtleties with which to do so.
The way to go after Abbott is not to say that he’s a nut. The way to go after Abbott is to say that there’d be nobody to hold Abbott back because of the conservative leadership principle. The telling moment in Abbott’s political career was when Parliament overturned his ban on RU486. There was no old-school feminist cheering, it was all done more in sorrow than in anger, but Abbott had the same shirtfronted look that he had when all that stuff about the kid-who-wasn’t-his came out.
That same effect is what Labor should be trying for now: comprehensively outplaying him, shifting the ground beneath his feet so much that he doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. This happened a couple of times during the campaign but he always scurried back to safety by sticking to his lines, and the Mobile Mushrooms on the bus never dragged him out of his comfort zone.
Ehm, who other than a nut would you have to hold back when given a position of power anyway ?
And yes I agree, he hardly ever got dragged out of his comfort zone during the campaign.Abbott is not any more lucid than Katter, but somehow you can’t imagine Katter getting close to being elected PM, the Jesus statues would have given it away at some point.
Also Rorschach, I’m not so sure that “..on abortion, contraception, global warming…” (what a combination), Julia Gillard could appear any less confused and confusing than Abbott. Labelling Abbott a ‘nut’ and then looking at Labor’s journey from Copenhagen to blaming the Greens for the failure of the CPRS, does nothing to enhance your argument.
The Labor inner sanctum made such a dogs bollocks of the run up to/ election,-even an oil slick could equal them.
And he did.
“As with ‘can a souffle rise twice’ and ‘I want to do you slowly’, a single well-chosen line would have resituated Abbott entirely.
Why didn’t Labor do that?”
Why didn’t I see it? It’s so obvious when pointed out concisely. The ALP failed for lack of a pungent phrase. If only Julia had phoned Don Watson, mad monk would have been crucifying himself naked by now.
The Left is in deep shit if this facile “analysis” is taken seriously. It treats the electorate with contempt. As if the knifing of Rudd by Julia Macbeth and the cabal of uglies didn’t matter. As if the ostentatious machinations of Howes, Shorten and Arbib didn’t sicken everyone. As if the litany of botched “stimulus” schemes could be excused. Labour was warned repeatedly that the building industry was a rort inside a scam rammed up the public arse. What the fuck would a sleaze of labour lawyers know about the real world? None of them have ever been in a roof space. Gillard couldn’t fit through the personhole.
Then there’s the Crime of Miss J. Gillard: excruciating banality. The more we saw then more we winced. The tone-deaf, metronomic delivery, the injection of infantile aspirational autobiography (“hard work”, “ejukation”). Shallow, ignorant and provincial: that’s Julia. She made ponderous, peculiar Abbott look sophisticated.
And do you think voters overlooked the East Timor fiasco-solution? Or the half-billion cash-for-clunkers crap? Or the killing of solar and the billion dollar gift to useless wind? Amateurish and insulting.
Labour was killed by its CV: student politics-lawyer-staffer-MP. The fact that Abbott and his tribe are much the same is irrelevant- the electorate has only two choices. The Australian political class is an incestuous clique. Tasmania in a suit.
The only remarkable thing about the election was that Labour went so close…but they confronted a rag-bag of Howard relics led by a failed priest. Hockey and Robb as your stars? Jesus Christ. A real opposition would have reduced the ALP to a rump.
Back in December-Jan, Crikey and its conga-line of wishful thinkers was convinced that the Libs would split, disaffected Libs would vote Green (remember Higgins and Bradfield? Remember Savonarola Hamilton?) and the Colossus of Rudd would march on. The Left could not comprehend that Rudd had succeeded in colonising Turnbull via the ETS. The Right knew the Libs had no future except as ALP vassals. Turnbull had to go. Abbott was universally underestimated by the Left because it didn’t understand the underlying politics.
Rundle and the tossariat need to, umm, resituate themselves.
Today I went looking for the philosophy of the Liberal Party, and found its website. But something’s wrong with my computer. It keeps putting extra stuff in, enclosed in square brackets. Must get it attended to.
Here’s what it delivered:
LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA
We Believe…
•In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives, [like womens' right of access to RU486]; and maximises individual and private sector initiative
•In government that nurtures and encourages its citizens through incentive, rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes [the hospitals, schools, roads etc they pay for] and the stifling structures of Labor’s corporate state and bureaucratic red tape.
•In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy – the freedom of thought, [no matter how Mediaeval or neanderthal] worship, speech and association.
•In a just and humane society in which the importance of the family and the role of law and justice is maintained.
•In equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth so that all [our upper middle class base, those that get under the downward trickle] may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education and social justice.
•That, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals – not government – are the true creators of wealth and employment. [Keeping people alive, safe, educated and the rest has nothing to do with it.]
•In preserving [whatever's left after we're finished with it, of] Australia’s natural beauty and the environment for future generations.
•That our nation has a constructive role to play in maintaining world peace and democracy through alliance with other free nations [like China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia].
In short, we simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, [or even just pay lip service to it] then ours is the Party for you.