Tony Abbott, the in-your-face opposition leader, has morphed into an almost accidental prime minister. Source: News Limited
POLITICS is not a zero-sum game despite the behaviour of politicians and the expectation of an often breathless media.
Australia has just emerged from one of the weirder, more extreme periods of heightened political activity, beginning on the night of June 23, 2010 and sort of ending on September 7 this year.
The “good idea at the time” flash mob coup against Kevin Rudd more than three years ago sent politics into a kind of hyperdrive, where a relentless opposition kept the dial to 11 seven days a week and the supposedly vanquished in Labor ensured the enemy within was always deadlier than the enemy without.
Looking back on this period, it’s easy to see the pitfalls we all were victim to. Whether lessons were learnt is a question worth posing.
The zero-sum game question emerged because justification was framed – more so than in times past – as a comparison with the sins of others in the past.
The three-year-long destabilisation of Julia Gillard by Labor MPs, whose first duty should have been loyalty to party and leader was OK because Gillard, Bill Shorten, a few right-wing senators and the NSW machine did it to Rudd in 2010.
The maxim that “what goes around, comes around” has never been truer because Labor has never had a politician like Rudd before – someone genetically wired for revenge and vindication.
Many believe he’s not finished yet.
If past behaviour is the best predictor of the future, he certainly is not.
The “you did it, so we will” excuse shouldn’t have credence but it is now a foundation of modern politics.
The bad behaviour of politicians was always judged against what happened on the other side in previous parliaments.
The Coalition’s failure to be honest and transparent about the costs and cuts behind policies rested on what Labor did in 2007. Even the debate about debates was rooted in what went before.
The use of bad precedents to avoid setting good ones debases our politics but none of the current crop appear big enough to break the merry-go-round.
Far too much media reporting in this frenetic period sought simple answers to complex questions and insisted every action had to have a reaction.
Surprising as it may seem, politicians often do things just because they do things. Sure, there are subtexts and Machiavellian stratagems at work quite often, but not all the time.
Tony Abbott, the in-your-face opposition leader, has morphed into an almost accidental prime minister.
He sits in his office and nothing is said about what he’s doing, who he’s meeting or what he’s planning.
His news conferences have been few and uninformative. He says he’ll only say something when he’s got something to say, a riff on the American saying, only speak when it improves the silence.
This makes sense in an intellectual sense but voters do like to hear from their leaders more than once a week and they like to know what the bigger story is.
So far, we’ve only been told the opposition mantra of stop the boats, scrap the taxes, end the waste and build roads is now the Government mantra.
Abbott may grow into the role but he’s starting to look a little shocked to be where he is.
After this three-year political road trip, I’m taking four weeks in the Spanish sun to seek out the perfect chorizo. See you in November.
Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor Twitter: @dwabriz
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