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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| nomadjack wrote: | | Wokko wrote: | | The Liberals are running from the John Howard playbook |
Nup, think you'll find it's the Rudd/Gillard playbook. They are lurching from one screw up to the next many of which are self-made problems. Serious problems with Abbott's management of cabinet and very poor communication and coordination. Also finding out the hard way how much fun it is to try and work with minor parties and independents. Karma as they say, is quite the bitch...  |
Interesting though, that Krudd started off quite well. A lot of the stuff in the first 12 months was positive but when it started to turn to shit it did so in a big way.
By contrast Abbott had a shit first 12 months so it still could go either way. he Libs won't change this far out unless he really stuffs something up so he practically has 15 months to get stuff together otherwise a Krudd/Gillard arrangement may happen.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Interesting though, that Krudd started off quite well. A lot of the stuff in the first 12 months was positive but when it started to turn to shit it did so in a big way. By contrast Abbott had a shit first 12 months so it still could go either way. |
That's an interesting line of thought, Stui. On first sight, it's a puzzle alright. When you think about it for a while though, the answer becomes pretty clear. For the first year or so, Rudd behaved pretty much as expected. It turns out that he was a terrible micro-manager and a hopeless cabinet leader, but no-one outside the party leadership knew that at the time, and they weren't about to bad mouth their own leader. So far as the public knew, it was business as usual and the Rudd government sailed along nicely, basking in the luxury of being amongst the most popular administrations of all time.
Then everything changed. Rudd came up against a couple of difficulties requiring political leadership and courage; in particular he came up against opposition to the carbon trading scheme. Instead of taking it to an election, which the polls all show he would have won in a landslide, Rudd took the cowardly option and walked away from his single most important promise.
His popularity crashed. That was his one big promise and he backflipped on it. He went from being Mr Eighty Percent to Mr Forty Five Percent almost overnight, and went on dropping as he twisted and turned and backflipped on a stack of other things as well. He lost people's trust, and never, ever regained it.
In short, Rudd remained popular for exactly as long as he remained honest.
Abbott is massively unpopular for the exact same reason.
The difference is that Abbott's lies and backflips started the very first day after the election. Like Rudd, he has proved himself untrustworthy and unfit to govern, and from there there is no recovery. The public cut Abbott a fair bit of slack - his popularity actually went slightly up just after the election for a few weeks - but the lies and broken promises kept on coming thick and fast. Then came the Hockey budget, a budget so palpably unfair that no-one outside the IPA could excuse it, and so obviously dishonest after all of Abbott's pre-election promises to eliminate the deficit, to govern for all Australians, and not to cut the ABC, not to cut education, not to cut health, and not to introduce new taxes.
Since then, Abbott's response has been to lie about not lying and blame everyone except himself for the ungodly mess he has created. (Remind you of anyone, such as, for example, K. Rudd?) Like Rudd, Abbott has abused the public trust and it's hard to see how he could ever regain it. His standing in the polls reflects that.
Can he recover? I doubt it. Unlike Rudd, Abbott doesn't have a hard core of competent ministers (people like Swan and Gillard and Roxon and Burke and Wong and Albanese). Instead he has crew of hard-line loopies like Hockey, Abetz, Brandis, Pyne, Hunt and Andrews in key leadership positions, a gaggle of crazy-weird throwbacks like Christensen and Bestiality on the backbench, and only Morrison, Turnbul and the Asbestos Witch to rely on. If this Liberal team was a footy side, you'd already be looking at their playing list and engraving "2016: Liberal" on the wooden spoon.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Just to be clear, I'm not trying to defend Abbott, just pointing out the plays.
When I say it can still go either way, Culprit I think referred to the plan of doing all the nasty shit early, then suck up toward the election process. That's still a possibility that he could backflip with a double pike, 8/4 twist and degree of difficulty 12/10 and nail it. Unlikely at this stage but 22 months is a long time.
Re Krudd, the really interesting thing is that he retained a level of public popularity far higher than his in house one, and got a serious sympathy vote when he was resurrected to replace Gillard.
Gillard was going to lead Labor to an absolute wipeout, Krudd at least saved the furniture. Pharck knows how or why but his personal level of popularity minimised the loss.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Oh, Stui, there is a reason why Rudd retained his popularity with ~40% of Australia. A very good reason.
Pharck knows what it is though.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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1061
Joined: 06 Sep 2013
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| Thanks to Abbott demonising Gillard the non LNP Voters had someone palatable to vote for, simple really. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Culprit I think referred to the plan of doing all the nasty shit early, then suck up toward the election process. That's still a possibility that he could backflip with a double pike, 8/4 twist and degree of difficulty 12/10 and nail it. Unlikely at this stage but 22 months is a long time. |
Quite so, Stui. But how? He's landed himself between a rock and a very, very hard place, and the problem is the budget. Not this most recent budget, the next two.
Abbott came to power screaming himself hoarse about a "budget emergency". Now you and I and every economist on the planet knows that there is no budget emergency and there never was one, but Abbott pinned his star to that mantra, and he will find it very, very hard to live down. In the meantime, Abbott has doubled the deficit - he's made the budget problem much worse. (That's "much worse" than "not too bad", so it's still no show-stopper, but it is certainly a concern which needs to be addressed reasonably promptly.)
Now the standard Politics 101 theory, as you say, is "do the bad stuff in Year One, steady-as-she-goes in Year Two, and spend like a drunken sailor buying votes in Year Three.
Abbott's problem is that he has done a heap of bad stuff, broken promises left, right and centre, pissed people off enormously .... and still not achieved a thing! His budget position is worse than when he started. From here, he can (a) keep on slashing vital services like health and education - not something you want to be doing 18 months out from an election - and become even more unpopular, or (b) think of something else.
If he sticks with plan (a) (keep on slashing and burning) he will have a chocolate kettle's chance in the election. What's worse, Plan A won't fix the budget, not even close. He would need to make cuts so savage that his government would never recover - and in any case, he has Buckley's chance of getting shit like that through the Senate, so he'll wear all the bad opinion and still not get the savings he thinks he needs.
To understand this, you need to look at two things.
(a) Abbott's big-ticket new expenses: huge buckets of money going on his security chest-beating obsession; the absurd and very expensive Direct Inaction carbon scheme everybody knows won't work, and of course his ridiculous and unfair paid parental leave plan. These are all new expenses, over and above the everyday costs of government.
(b) Abbott's insane idealogical revenue cuts. These are even more significant. Between scrapping the carbon tax, restoring about 60 different tax-avoidance rorts Labor had abolished, and abolishing the mining tax, Abbott's revenue decisions have been a disaster. Making that worse, he has sacked half the staff at the tax office and ordinary income tax revenue is set to plummet 'coz they simply don't have the expert staff to chase the big tax avoiders anymore. Worse still, income and company tax revenue is dropping because of the changes in the terms of trade, the end of the mining boom, the decline in average real wages, the Queensland drought, and the decimation of manufacturing industry. And the cherry on top of all this is that international interest rates are starting to go up, so the cost of borrowing is set to increase.
Not a pretty picture.
So draw a line through Plan A. He won't just not have the money to bring down a generous pre-election budget, he won't even come close to having the money.
So what's Plan B? Plan B is to deal with the actual problem, which is the big decline in revenue. This has come about through a number of causes, some of which can't be fixed, and some of which merely require enough political courage and the ability to work effectively with the cross bench. (Abbott doesn't seem to have either of these things, but let's imagine that he does.) The can't-be-fixed revenue things include the end of the mining boom, the collapse in commodity prices, the dead man walking which which is manufacturing industry, the insane unsustainable tax cuts brought in by Howard (mostly) and Rudd (a bit), and of course the depressed employment market brought about by Abbott's cuts. (Fewer jobs + lower pay = less tax coming in.)
The can-be-fixed things include massive and ever-growing superannuation tax rorts for the wealthy; huge subsidies for the mining industry via a suite of tax write-off provisions; the negative gearing rort; and the unbelievable failure to make big foreign companies like Google, Apple, and Ikea pay any tax at all. These things are responsible for our current mess; these things are the reason we can't fund the budget even after the massive cuts Abbott brought in after promising not to do anything of the kind .... and these things are the very things Abbott won't go near in case he offends Rupert or Gina.
He is gawn.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
You're calling a 2 horse race over before they get to the half way mark.
You may well be proven right but I'm tipping there's a lot more twists and turns to come over the next 22 months. The fat lady is sitting in the chair, strategically positioned before the midday show, her back is arched those lips are parched but she hasn't started singing yet.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| How about that. OK I will try to be proven right but he or she'm tipping there's more twists and turns to come over the next 22 months |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | You're calling a 2 horse race over before they get to the half way mark. |
Fair point, but oblige me. How is he going to get out of the budget trap he's made for himself? There is no option but to find more revenue, and lots of it, and I just can't see how he's going to do that. Can you see an answer?
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I have no idea how he's going to do anything. I just know that the electorate has a notoriously short attention span and, oh- bright shiny thing, I like flutterbyes, what were you saying again? Oh, that's right how will Abbott oh great shot , well played. Are those boys lighting up over there? I'll get mothers little helper oh hello james are you here now?
What were we saying again?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Great post somewhere above, Tannic One.
Plan A is always the racist hate vote, though. Asylum seekers, terrorism, and whatever fear and dread is laying around at the time is to be cobbled together to activate the collective Neanderthal brain, suppressing rational thought and getting them over the line.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | You're calling a 2 horse race over before they get to the half way mark. |
Fair point, but oblige me. How is he going to get out of the budget trap he's made for himself? There is no option but to find more revenue, and lots of it, and I just can't see how he's going to do that. Can you see an answer? |
I don't think he can, so he'll have to let the deficit blow out, which he can semi-plausibly claim to be the result of commodity price weakness. Australia's public Debt/GDP ratio is so low by international standards that it's literally negligible. So he'll hold off the revenue raising until after the next election, while claiming that Labour will raise taxes, try to ride the significant increase in disposable incomes as a result of oil's fall, and of course run on the "I stopped the boats and Labour won't" chestnut.
I don't know if that'll work, but history suggests that it's capable of surprising. The politics are probably achievable, but the problem is that so many of the senior Liberals, as you pointed out, have such deeply unattractive personas, and a lot of people vote on that.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Lazza
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
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| pietillidie wrote: | Great post somewhere above, Tannic One.
Plan A is always the racist hate vote, though. Asylum seekers, terrorism, and whatever fear and dread is laying around at the time is to be cobbled together to activate the collective Neanderthal brain, suppressing rational thought and getting them over the line. |
The items of news regarding plan A (except for the Muslim terrorism aspect) is drying up fast. However I totally agree this WILL be his main plan of attack over the next 18 months or so, and the far right wingers and such like imbeciles will ensure that the polls will get very much closer than they are right now. That is a given.
Not too sure if its enough to get them over the line though.....
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Don't confuse your current path with your final destination. Just because it's dark and stormy now doesn't meant that you aren't headed for glorious sunshine! |
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partypie
Joined: 01 Oct 2010
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | You're calling a 2 horse race over before they get to the half way mark. |
Fair point, but oblige me. How is he going to get out of the budget trap he's made for himself? There is no option but to find more revenue, and lots of it, and I just can't see how he's going to do that. Can you see an answer? |
How about a tax on carbon emissions?... |
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3.14159 
Joined: 12 Sep 2009
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Treasurer Joe Hockey has a new reason for the Senate to pass his budget:
Australians could live to 150!
"There's great news on the horizon for Australia," Mr Hockey said. "The fact we are living longer is great news. It's kind of remarkable that somewhere in the world today, it's highly probable that a child is being born that is going to live to 150. That's a long time".
The statement was immediately branded his 'Sarah Palin moment', but experts in the field say the notion is not as ridiculous as it seems -
although the connection to last year's budget might be a long bow.
According to Mr Hockey, such extraordinary longevity explains why Australians should accept cuts to government benefits.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockeys-comments-on-living-to-150-a-sarah-palin-moment-says-bill-shorten-20150119-12tbvn.html
That of course means that eligibility for the old age pension won't start till we reach the age 130... or so! |
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