The Real Tony Abbott

 

Abbott's gamble on cultural change

 

by: PAUL KELLY, EDITOR-AT-LARGE

  From: The Australian

BENEATH his notorious negativity, Tony Abbott and his senior frontbenchers are devising a blueprint to change decisively Australia's national policy and philosophical direction.

The carbon tax is the engulfing fog that dominates yet obscures.
It has defined Abbott's leadership since December 2009 and is the instrument he has used to ruin Labor's brand. Yet the Opposition Leader's anti-carbon tax crusade has constituted a dramatic trade-off: the price he has paid to destroy Labor in the nation has been a negative personal rating.
For Abbott, it is a willing bargain. The consequence, however, is the public either remains unsure about the values that will infuse an Abbott government or still clings to the long list of anti-Abbott prejudices that begins with his alleged hostility to women.
While the media recycles talk of Malcolm Turnbull returning as leader down the track, Abbott's hold is entrenched.
He is far advanced in the recasting of the Liberal Party. It is not a solo project. On the contrary, it is underpinned by tight frontbench collaboration and deep backbench support.
Global and domestic events have imposed essential changes on the old Abbott, once besotted by the utility of state power. Abbott and the Coalition now stand, above all, for three core ideas.
The first is a deep commitment to the prudent state typified by surplus budgets, debt reductions, dismantling "Labor values" spending and an attack of sorts on the entitlement culture, an idea pushed by economic spokesman Joe Hockey, long seized by the fiscal task he faces.
Second, the Coalition seeks a rebalancing between enterprise and the environment with a sweeping agenda to dismantle Labor "green and red tape", purge regulatory complexity, facilitate development, promote northern Australia as an export food bowl and run environmental policies that are more direct and practical.
In this sense, carbon tax repudiation, important in its own right, symbolises a decisive switch in values, policy and political culture.
Third, as a social fabric conservative Abbott wants to curb the idea that "government knows best", limit interference in people's lives, cut social engineering and, as a perpetual volunteer in his personal life, promote Edmund Burke's concept of "little platoons"-Abbott's notion of social communities based on individual initiative and much greater personal responsibility.
Facing an election where he cannot spend much money, Abbott will campaign on values. This sounds fine in theory but, in fact, it is an electoral risk. The essential test is whether the Australian public accepts Abbott as a reliable, predictable and stable leader capable of steering this basic change in the nation's direction.
In many ways there are two Abbotts on display - the uplifting leader with the personal ability to engage and win the confidence of stakeholders for his agendas, and the testosterone-charged political brawler who can't stop throwing punches, bouncing on trampolines, impersonating Teddy Roosevelt and seemingly incognisant of the real scale of the fiscal agenda he enunciates.
Even on values, the risk is that Abbott projects better what he hates rather than what he loves. Above all, he detests what he sees as Labor's fixation that government has an answer to every problem including the ultimate conceit that it can change the earth's temperature.
At this election Abbott seeks to channel public opinion to a revised balance on green issues. This is an article of faith across the Liberal and National parties and tied to the quest for greater productivity.
Finance spokesman Andrew Robb, chairman of the policy development committee, says this is a visceral sentiment: "The stuffing has been knocked out of people. The disconnect between city and country is profound and growing year by year. There is a despondency in many parts of the nation about new projects and the sheer difficulty of getting them off the ground. The balance is out of whack and it must be restored."
Abbott will use the carbon tax not just as a cost-of-living weapon (where his epic exaggerations make him vulnerable) but as a template for the broader changes he wants.
Much of the vast policy, agency and regulatory apparatus Labor has established to cover the environment and climate change will be swept away. Abbott's future environment minister, Greg Hunt says the savings across the forward estimates will be upwards of $10 billion.
Agencies to be abolished are the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Energy Security Council, Climate Change Authority, Climate Commission, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. This list is not yet concluded.
Abbott and Hunt believe Labor has created a bureaucratic monster tied to carbon pricing and the ETS. The departments of Environment and Climate Change will be merged. "We will be getting rid of 30 of Labor's programs at the national level," Hunt says.
The main item in the $10bn savings comes from abolition of Labor's industry assistance (as distinct from household compensation) to offset carbon pricing.
In addition, the Coalition will save another $10bn off the budget given that this is the capitalisation for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Environment is a case study in Abbott's philosophy of liberalism - getting rid of green and red tape, reducing agencies and simplifying process. "We have thought through every agency and every policy," Hunt says. "We will be making these changes in the first year of government. We want a single national approach to emissions reductions."
Hunt plans to rationalise the federal-state shambles of multiple green schemes. The new single national agency, the Emissions Reduction Fund, will run the Coalition's "direct action" or abatement funding mechanism.
At the same time, Hunt says the single "one-stop shop" for environmental project approval will be vested at state level. He says federal-state duplication is now absurd and the issue "is no longer about standards but about productivity". This means amending the federal Environmental Act and related laws. The aim is to purge "pointless bureaucracy".
The Coalition argues Labor's "green" record is much talk and poor results - the exhibits being the home insulation disaster and related failures on green loans, cash for clunkers and solar programs.
Labor's problem, documented in the recent Lowy Institute poll, is that most Australians no longer subscribe to immediate action on climate change. The poll showed 63 per cent oppose Labor's carbon law with 45 per cent "strongly against". Only 36 per cent, down from 68 per cent, want immediate action even if that involves significant costs.
On the pivotal carbon-pricing issue, Abbott will give instructions for its abolition on day one. Hunt says the bill will be introduced in the first week of parliament (a simple negation of the price mechanism).
Abbott's aim is to knife Labor swiftly. He will force Labor into an immediate post-election vote on carbon tax abolition. If it refuses, he will launch a renewed campaign as prime minister on Labor's repudiation of the public's verdict as a prelude to creating, as fast as possible, the grounds for a double dissolution. Hunt says the entire process including abolition of carbon pricing at a joint sitting can be accomplished within 12 months of any initial victory.
As the July 1 countdown to carbon pricing approaches, there are two realities: Labor will expose Abbott's "end of the world" exaggerations and Abbott's own campaign will make the carbon tax as unpopular as ever.
But remember the bottom line: Abbott's future, probably his survival, depends on the prolongation of the European and US economic crisis. This is because the sinking of the Western economies keeps any global carbon price on the backburner. If this situation were reversed and international momentum rekindled, then Abbott's epic rejection of carbon pricing would be in trouble.
At present, there is no sign of that: Abbott in 2009 read the future much better than did Labor.
Meanwhile the Coalition, behind the scenes, has finalised about 50 policy documents via meetings of its senior figures: Abbott, Julie Bishop, Hockey, Robb, Hunt, Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce.
A buoyant Hockey said: "We have done the policy work and we will deliver the surplus in our first year and every later year. Our policies are now fully costed, fully funded. The Australian people will see all our policies and costings before the election."
He had better be right given the costing blunders last election. Obviously, the Coalition will not release such costings until the campaign.
Abbott elevates Howard as his model - yet Howard's final years betrayed a fiscal softness rather than the steel Abbott and Hockey will need. Labor is contemptuous of Abbott's ability to steer any consistent course. It points to his record in opposition of calling for smaller government and opposing most of Labor's savings. Is this just tactics or proof of a deeper flaw in Abbott's character?
Abbott has been the most effective opposition leader in decades but the bigger test is his ability to implement his agenda in office.
As a populist he has exploited the natural instincts of the public. Yet the transformation in political culture he envisages is daunting. It works only if Abbott has toughened up with the courage to impose genuine productivity-raising policy.
"Bigger government means smaller citizens" is an Abbott slogan. It sounds great. But delivering smaller government for grander citizenship is truly hard. The whole world knows Abbott is a born sloganeer. But slogans aren't enough. Abbott must persuade the public to trust him and provide