Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen.

T Abbott 22 July 2002

Whoops. When Abbott was blocking the possibility of paid maternity leave in 2002, he was doing no more than articulating the interests of business. That used to be the role of the Liberal party – to articulate the needs of business in as popular a way as possible. To be frank, Abbott never used to be that good at it. He may have known what the needs of business were all right, but dressing it up to make it palatable was never his style. Gerard Henderson seems to think Abbott’s reputation for lousy people skills was a figment of left wing journalists’ collective imagination, but they didn’t dream up Abbott’s historically rotten poll ratings. Taking the side of big business so far as to attack someone dying from asbestos-related illness like Bernie Banton, was the sort of thing that drove them.

That was then, of course. From being the keeper of the right’s flame, now we have Tony the populist – kind of. He’s still not getting anywhere near the level of support that Turnbull got at a similar stage, but it’s enough to get Henderson excited. What Abbott is doing, of course, is trying to wrap a revival of traditional conservative values around what is really anti-political attack on the government. So far he has got away with it as the government has become more vulnerable after Copenhagen. But trying to revive an establishment party of big business on the back of anti-establishment sentiment is a tricky business and sooner or later it will come unstuck. Especially as the government has recovered its poise somewhat with an anti-political agenda of its own.

It could be argued that Abbott’s paid parental leave is trying to detract attention away from Rudd’s hospital plan and is in line with a traditional conservative upholding of family values. But the whole point of the right’s ‘family values’ is to make sure the family (women) take the strain and not put it onto business. Making business pay for parental leave rather misses the point.

Abbott’s policy on the run has been compared to Latham’s but the reasons are quite different. Latham’s style was possible because, despite all the moaning in his diaries, he, like Rudd, faced a party too exhausted to assert its own agenda and happy to let them get on with it if it delivered power. The Liberals are not at that stage yet. Latham and Rudd may have not needed to consult their party, Abbott didn’t dare consult his. He has only got where he is on the promise to restore the brand. Yet as we have already seen with what Joyce has done to the coalition’s economic credentials, and now with this latest manoeuvre, trying to be populist is likely to only undermine it.

And I’d say to state health bureaucrats and disgruntled State politicians and other opposition types, I think it’s time just to get out of the way of fundamental reform.

K Rudd 5 March 2010

What is striking about those “opposition types” or, as we used to say, “political opponents”, is that they now stretch right across the political class.

The panel on Insiders were bemused at Rudd’s political aggression towards the states, while noting the lack of policy detail in Rudd’s health plan. But this is all about a political attack, dressed up in the guise of a policy initiative. After all, if the issue here is about federal funding to make up for inadequate state revenue, Canberra could just give them more money like it did last year. The only real policy meat in the proposal is to take control off the states and give it to local boards, as Abbott wanted to do. This is above all a political attack on the states and it is that political attack that has made it such a popular proposal.

The general view in the media appears to be that Rudd has abandoned ‘cooperative federalism’ and followed Howard in his war on the states running up to the last election. But Rudd’s attack on the states this time is quite different. In 2007, Howard used the wall-to-wall Labor states to try and make a traditional political point about Labor’s inability to manage spending compared to the Coalition. In reality, either at the state level, or in Canberra under Rudd, there was no real difference in approach to government spending between the two parties. Howard was trying to make a political point that didn’t exist. So he left it open for Rudd to accuse of him merely playing politics and “the blame game”.

That was the real basis to Rudd’s cooperative federalism, namely that given the lack of real political difference in mainstream politics, the states and Canberra were unjustified doing anything else but cooperating. This applied as much to Liberal state governments as Labor. This is essentially the same point behind Rudd’s attacks now. He is taking advantage of unpopular state governments unable to make a political case why they should oppose power being taken away from them, other than wanting power for its own sake. Gillard on Friday morning’s Today made the point bluntly to Abbott:

If you want to back state Premiers on health, you do that. We’ll be backing the national interest.

Rudd and Gillard are campaigning against an arm of government. However, it is worth noting that they are also campaigning against the parties running them, including their own. Of course, this is not the first time state and federal governments on the same political side have fought each other in public. The difference this time is that Rudd is now challenging the state government’s right to do so.

Pretty well from the moment Rudd stepped out of Parliament House to meet the insulation employers to tell them, and everyone else, “he gets it”, the government has been slowly recovering the poise it lost following Copenhagen, Abbott’s anti-political attack and the insulation saga. Rudd’s political agenda that he used in 2007 is coming back into place. Empathy? Check. Anti-politics? Check. The only part he is still missing from what he had in 2007 is the international agenda that would give him the moral high ground and prevent his critics from accusing him of playing hollow political games as well. Without it he is vulnerable and forced to raise the levels of attack on any critics. Fortunately he has Obama’s visit at least in March to presumably play the traditional role US Presidents play for their Australian counterpart at this stage in the electoral cycle.

The problem with the media’s discussion over the states’ problems with the health service is that it takes it too much on its own terms. It is discussed as though there was some Golden Age of state services from which we have since fallen. Yet the real issue is not just the condition of the public services, but that state governments are seen as about little else.

State governments have depoliticised and hollowed out. We have no clearer example than in South Australia right now. It is not only the lack of difference between Labor and Liberal in an indescribably dull election campaign and this week’s “Great Non-Debate”. An even more graphic example of how little politics means at the state level is a SA Labor Cabinet that can comfortably accommodate a National MP and a former Liberal within it.

Without any political agenda, and any real base in society that it could represent, state government is becoming not only about little more than public services, but lacks the authority that might let them manage any problems that arise. Probably the clearest example is Queensland where Labor has had continual trouble over the sub-standard health system. But when was it ever not in Queensland? Twenty-five years ago Joh could preside over an abysmal level of services of health and education without it causing much problem whatsoever. Sure a gerrymander helped, but even in the rural regions where National support was entrenched, services were well below the national average. But Joh had above all a political agenda, which allowed him to get away with it for decades. When even Joh couldn’t sustain what was the nation’s last recognisable right-wing agenda, suddenly services became a problem and gave the leg up for aspiring bureaucrats called Kevin.

Labor’s clean sweep of the states was testament to its better ability to adapt to this depoliticising of state government over the last decade. But its hold on government is insecure, despite the massive and unprecedented majorities, and, as seen in WA, can get turfed out on the flimsiest pretexts. This is a sign not of the revival of the Liberals at the state level but rather that Labor might be able to adapt to the situation but not resolve the problem of what state government stands for. In reality, Labor has won state government because it stands for nothing, but can lose it for exactly the same reason.

In Canberra, they have the international angle, but without it, a similar problem. Using the declining authority of the state governments as a counter-foil for the political problems at the federal level has been governing federal relations for some time. Howard tried it on with his “war on the states” in the run up to the last federal election. It was a failure because there was no real content to the “war” and so came across as an empty political manoeuvre.

Rudd’s strategy has been more appropriate for the conditions. Even before the 2007 election, Rudd was using health as a basis for his anti-political agenda. In this case, he has offered a way for states to offload responsibility and deflect criticism away from them, while still setting up the possibility of targeting the states for playing political games if they don’t “get with the program”. For states like NSW and Queensland, where they have had flak for handling hospitals, it offers a basis for cooperation. Even in SA, where the government is struggling to find a reason for re-election, playing up its ability to be in a “partnership” with the federal government is one possibility, although there is hardly anything stopping the Liberals from doing the same.

Rudd’s plan to centralise funding at the federal level but promoting local control, bypassing the state government to split power between federal and local authorities, is an agenda he has been pursuing since he came to power. There are some similarities to what the Coalition, and especially Abbott, was musing while in government as a way of by-passing the state based public service unions. Rudd’s strategy no doubt has that element in it, with the ‘professionals’ like the AMA salivating over the opportunity of having more control. However, it also reflects how this is being taken a step further, accommodating to not just the declining power of the unions, but of the state itself.

But what political ground? The editorial in The Australian summed up the media’s problem. In crowing over Rudd’s admission of his policy failings, nowhere does it really say what they are. To read the editorial, it seems to be only a problem of process and that he has taken on too much at once. There is no real problem with what the government is doing, just the way it is doing it.

The lack of substance to the current criticism of the government was summed up by the installation fiasco itself. There was little complaint about the actual program, rather the way it was implemented. Even the opposition, who had complained about the program being a waste of money, by the end were complaining about the consequences of the program ending and all the jobs lost that they didn’t think should have been created in the first place.

It’s no surprise that a self absorbed media might think that Rudd’s confessional mood is all about them. In reality it is the lack of substance behind current criticisms of the government, from even its harshest media critics, that gives Rudd room to concede ground on process without actually giving that much away. However, it is also that lack of political agenda from either the government, or its critics, that makes it vulnerable to the electorate at large and it is that which Rudd was addressing.

Rudd was reluctant to dump Garrett, not only to give ground to Abbott, but also internal critics not happy seeing traditional ALP power bases being over-ridden by a celeb such as Garrett. The result, however, was to make the government look stubborn for no major principle, made it look unresponsive and out of touch more broadly in the electorate – something that Abbott’s anti-political tactics were willing to exploit. Rudd’s taking of responsibility for the insulation fiasco, much like his Friday spot on Sunrise are meant to counter this sentiment of being out of touch, and prevent Abbott doing to him what he did to Howard in the last election.

There is a danger with the strategy, that came out in the first part of the Insiders interview, where Rudd can end up appearing like someone buffeted around by events. It is what is touched on when commentators claim that Rudd can end up like a ‘national Premier’ and a mere service provider who can never satisfy. Towards the end of the interview, however, Rudd started to brighten up as he took up the cause that he had let drift since Copenhagen, but which gives the government the moral purpose it desperately needs, the ETS. If the government succeeded in recovering its high ground on this, then it could turn attention on the biggest block to process, the opposition. Without it, Rudd will be as insecure as any of the other Premiers heading towards re-election this year.

What we saw from the Prime Minister today was a Peter Beattie moment. The Prime Minister may not be much of a Queenslander, but he has learned this much from the former Queensland Premier: when your government has got it seriously wrong, you say, ‘Yes, we created the mess and here I am—I will fix the mess.’

Tony Abbott in Parliament 24 February 2010

Of course the Prime Minister is very much a Queenslander, politically at least. In a state with the combination of a decentralised government and an historically weak labour movement, anti-politics has been the name of the game for some time, and from Joh to Beattie, successful ‘populist’ Premiers have known how to use it. Those tactics came to Canberra in 2007 and now, with the government facing the problem itself, Rudd has had to adapt.

On several levels, the Garrett episode has brought together both what is distinct about this Labor government, but also its weaknesses. At the level of policy, part of the problem has arisen in the nature of the program itself, in that it represents a shift in government infrastructure policy from the traditional areas in the public realm (roads, schools) to the private. Government intervention into thousands of individual homes has ridden on the back of the rising importance of environmental policy and an increased focus on individual behaviour, which Garrett, with his sermons on how to use plastic bags, now oversees.

Such intervention is not only done through private and fragmented industries, such as for home installation, but where union presence has historically been weak. Everyone has seen the installation deaths as a problem of lack of government regulation of worker safety but, of course, pressure for such regulation has ultimately come from the unions, or more correctly the employee members that actually benefit from it. It’s in this way that this new role for environmental policy has inevitably come up against a deregulated industry for which it was not prepared.

The sidelining of unions at the policy level had its payback at the political level. It was the unions who played a key role in the early stages of publicising the programme’s problems. Garrett was especially vulnerable as the Cabinet Minster uniquely not from a faction and no ties in the labour movement. The unions’ prominent role at the beginning was payback not only for a celeb shoe-in brought in over the party’s head but a government from which they had become detached.

Yet what was critical for this issue taking off was the role of the media. The problems of the program were becoming evident in Parliament for some time, but as some commentators were noting, the Liberals were unusually slow to pick it up. There may have been a slight political problem in that they are led by arguably the least appropriate person to pursue a problem of worker safety. As Barrie Cassidy brought out in an interview with Chris Pyne a couple of weeks ago, the importance of worker safety is one of those ‘left-wing’ issues that it is important for intellectual warriors like Tony Abbott to draw the line against and shift the responsibility back to employees.

Nevertheless, despite the Liberals’ awkwardness on the issue, it didn’t really matter as it was the media that pursued the story. Some thought the recess in Parliament would ease pressure on Garrett, but of course it didn’t, as it was the media rather than Parliament that was controlling the momentum. It was something Cassidy again summed up in a piece in The Drum

But still the debate rages and still the media remains interested, way beyond the normal timeframe for stories about ministers in strife. That is partly because Garrett is a celebrity minister, and partly because the nature of the mess has so many strands to it.

This usurping of the opposition’s role by the media is a result of the hollowing out of the political debate and in this case the political point the Liberals were trying to make. It was why there was aimlessness to their prosecution of the case in Parliament and Abbott was vulnerable to the charge that he was using the deaths to play politics, a view that drew a round of applause when made on Q&A this week. But what allowed the media to take the lead also meant the media itself ended up getting lost on what point it finally wants to make. It has insisted on Garrett’s resignation, and the Liberals have duly followed, but the last few days have seen Rudd turn it around.

The turning point came when the scheme was closed and so transformed the debate from the problems of the scheme, to the problems of the scheme not continuing. The media merely changed tack and still kept on attacking the government undeterred, but now with tearful insulation employers talking about the pain of sacking workers to save some money. However, it left the opposition now having to oppose the closure of a scheme they didn’t want anyway.

How far the debate had turned around was shown on Wednesday when Rudd went out to meet insulation employers and took their names down in his notebook with Abbott following finding nothing to play on. It was capped off last night with a bravura performance in humility from Rudd, where he basically redefined responsibility to an indignant Kerry O’Brien from ministerial resignation to fixing the problem. It was a definition that the employers and employees outside Parliament the day before were only too happy to agree with.

Garrett is not necessarily politically dead as Grattan claims in a piece that gets about everything else of this episode wrong. He and the government now have the chance to redeem themselves by doing mass empathy in the electorate such as Rudd used to call for in the early days of government, possibly combined with a whole whack of new regulation. It may have been a messy learning curve for the government, but is more regulation where the Liberals’ intellectual warrior really wanted to end up?