a change is gonne come…?

Ross Gittins has hit it on the head. His latest article sets out a clear argument on why Rudd is really just a young Howard:

Rudd talks about his grand plans but, in reality, he keeps closing off his options, lumbering himself with commitments to keep pursuing Howard’s policies.

Which goes to show that Howard really is the cleverest politician of his generation. Even if he loses this election he will have dictated the bulk of his opponents’ policies for at least their first term.

Howard would be ruling from the political grave.

This is exactly the point I was making in the previous post. Rudd is in fact narrowing the political debate more than Howard ever did because he’s elevating Howard into a concept, an economic consensus, rather than just the person we’ve had to contend with for the last ten years.

Which brings me to the question – is this massive swing to Labor really so radical a change? Isn’t it in fact Howard who is the radical in this election? Howard is the one proposing a radical restructuring of industrial relations. Howard is the one committing to a high risk foreign policy in Iraq (one that is becoming increasingly marginalised). Even his climate change policy is more radical than Rudd’s because it breaks from international consensus and sets up its own independent treaty. And before you can say ‘education revolution’ note Gittin’s article:

The Howard Government has increased its grants to private schools and changed the previous Labor government’s needs-based funding formula to one biased in favour of elite schools. Rudd has promised to increase grants and keep the Liberals’ formula until at least 2012.

Whatever Rudd may really stand for, the public perception is that he is the safe option, promising conformism back to the centre. I’m not in favour of Howard’s policies (far from it) but what their reception reveals is that, in the Australian psyche, real political change remains increasingly marginal.

Consumer Politics

Kevin Rudd has dipped into the shopping trolley and promised to keep a check on the rising prices of bread, eggs, petrol and housing. As Dennis Shanahan writes:

The latest idea may be populist but it’s also popular, Rudd is shifting the argument from the abstract of the economy and economic management – the Government’s undoubted strength – to the details of everyday life. And, he’s putting a proposition everyone is going to agree with. Who doesn’t say their old school isn’t as good as it once was, who doesn’t say crime is getting worse and who doesn’t think food prices are rising?

The policy has received encouraging responses from the media and voters but it strikes me as worryingly similar to the kind of consumer politics first introduced by Bill Clinton. Back in 1996, on the advise of campaign strategist Dick Morris, Clinton shifted his re-election campaign away from the big issues – tax and health and welfare – to concentrate on the comparatively tiny concerns of key marginal focus groups. Clinton then shaped his whole campaign around bite-sized pieces of legislation, most famously a digital device that would screen out pornography on the TV, appealing to the public’s individual desires and feelings and, as a consequence, winning an election he was set to lose.

This kind of consumer politics always seems less about liberating people or encouraging their participation than about developing new ways of satiating and controlling them. Political leaders end up as little more than economic managers, utilising focus group techniques that were previously the sole interest of business. (See more in Adam Curtis’ brilliant documentary The Century of Self).

Since the rise of the New Left in Britain and the US, Australian Labor has yet to have its moment in power, so it’s still unclear what side of the fence it sits. I doubt Rudd will descend to the cloying depths of Clinton and Blair but his latest proposal could be a telling sign as to how Labor thinks it should address economic issues: bite-sized, personal politics that show Kevin Cares but in the end change little.

Politics For Dummies

Last week, I was moseying through Sydney’s Abbeys Bookshop, minding my business, when I spied a silver haired gentleman with a power suit and a refined look browsing the new releases. The guy seemed familiar. Suddenly it clicked. My boyhood hero – Tintin! On a second glance, I realised my error. It was none other than Saint Kevin himself – praisalord! And what did he buy? What else but the latest Quarterly Essay by Peter Hartcher: ‘How to Win the 2007 Election’. Well, at least it wasn’t ‘Politics for Dummies’… Seriously though, it’s good to know Rudd reads his Hartcher but I did wonder what words of wisdom he might gain from such a book. So I gave it a read.

Firstly, Hartcher opens with a method polling companies use to gauge politicians’ images. It’s called the ‘projective technique’ and has had a long history of being applied in market research in order to discover consumers’ ‘deeper, unarticulated feelings’ beneath their surface responses. It was recently used in the 2004 US election, where voters were asked, if the electoral candidates were cars, what make would they be? Bush got the Ford – old, reliable, American. Kerry got BMW – expensive, elitist, European. In Australia, we ask what kind of dog our politicians remind us of. So Howard got bulldog or fox terrier. In other words, the worker dog – small, agile, aggressive. Costello got labrador or cocker spaniel – the kind of dog you’d like to play in your backyard but not the kind you want to protect your house and family. Beazley, then Labor leader at time of poll, got Saint Bernard. Likeable and loveable but also big, cuddly, slow and dopey. Rudd wasn’t dog polled but Hartcher predicts that he would be more terrier than labrador.

But look, let’s be truthful. What we really want to hear is what kind of hobbit Howard and Rudd would be. There’s a great quote in Hartcher’s essay that he takes from Labor’s national secretary Tim Gartrell, who described Howard as “a 21st Century cross between Richard Nixon and Gollum from Lord of the Rings“.

Ouch. (Personally I always thought more Mr Garrison from South Park).

But then what does that make Kevin Rudd? Hans Blix crossed with Frodo Baggins?

But back to my point (yeah Dude, what was your point?). My point, or rather Hartcher’s point, is about first impressions. Hartcher says that the two most important issues that will win the election are the economy and national security (or ‘Saruman’ and ‘Sauron’ respectively). These are the two issues Liberals are associated with image wise and the ones Howard has come out explicitly to emphasise in this year’s election. If Labor cannot first gain credibility on these two points they cannot win.

But Hartcher does give good marks to Rudd so far. Although it is going to be very tough (if not impossible) to gain ground on the economy he credits Labor for bringing Keating (or ‘Gandalf’) back into the fold after he was all but ignored in the last election. This way Labor can claim some credit for the economy through Keating’s vital economic reforms. Hartcher also predicts interest rates to be less of a scare button than the last election. This is because the ‘notorious 17 per cent’ criticism or the ‘yeah but yours were 17′ defence (what Hartcher calls the ‘Spinal Tap’ defence – ‘Yeah, but this one goes to 11′) were attacked last year when Wayne Swan reminded the Liberals that interests rates actually hit 21 per cent in 1982 under then Liberal treasurer John Howard.

In regards to national security, Hartcher is less optimistic. He believes that Labor can only gain the edge on this issue if it is given to them by ‘chronic misjudgment’ from Howard. I’m a little less skeptical. The Iraq disaster and Howard’s partisan criticism of the US Democrats earlier this year already seem to be major mistakes on Howard’s part. What more does he have to do?

The final (more interesting) point is that climate change (or ‘Treebeard’) has, almost out of nowhere, become the third critical issue. And this time Labor has the edge, mostly due to Howard’s ignorance of its electoral importance up until now. However, Hartcher still concedes that Howard might turn it around on Labor by emphasising that good economic management is the key to solving climate change (through investment in green technology, the $10bn Murray Darling water scheme, balancing the economic needs with climate compromises etc).

All in all, an excellent essay. There’s a lot here that would benefit Rudd, especially how he’s perceived among the electorate and the ways in which Howard preys on our fears and anxieties. Now the only question I have is what would Frodo do?

Broad-sighted

Peter Hartcher comments on how Rudd’s broadband proposal could play straight into Howard’s hands:

But the big political vulnerability is the financing. By funding the plan with assets from the Future Fund, Rudd has given the Government a political opening. As Peter Costello thundered yesterday, Rudd Labor is “stealing from the future”.

Rudd is now open to the charge that he will not observe the principle of setting aside today’s assets for tomorrow’s liabilities. And that makes his whole approach to fiscal policy open to attack. Already last night the Liberal Party was mailing out attack ads headed “Labor already raiding the Future Fund”.

It’s another cautious article from Hartcher but I’m just not convinced we’re looking at a mistep on Labor’s part – ALP strategy has been played more intelligently than that.

The battlelines being drawn in this upcoming election are looking more and more to be youth and vision vs steadfastness and stability (the strengths of Labor and Liberal respectively). Rudd’s speech yesterday was a deliberate attempt to contrast Labor ‘vision’ with Liberal ’stability’ vis a vis Howard’s Iraq speech, which asserted steadfastness but for a failed war that began four years ago. Against the disaster that is Iraq, Liberal stability becomes more stubborn conservatism than wisdom and responsibility. It becomes a strength stigmatised by lack of vision.

This is why Costello’s response that Labor was raiding the Future Fund can only sound shrill and hysterical. Asked by AM this morning why $2.7bn of $50bn of Future Funds shouldn’t be used for the national interest, especially considering that the government’s own broadband advisory board predicted benefits of $12-30 billion a year, the treasurer’s response soon became the reductive and obstinate “Because this is taking money out of the fund, it’s taking money out of the fund.” Costello appeared more willing to take cheap economic shots at Labor than to seriously discuss policy alternatives. Is this a case of economic tunnel vision on the part of Costello? Instead of problems arising out of a deeper look at Rudd’s policy implementation (as Hartcher claims), it could well be the other way around. If this story continues, it may bring into focus the viability of the Future Fund itself and its high opportunity cost of not investing in targeted and economically productive projects.

In regards to the broadband problem, Costello drew a similarly stunted conclusion. His only reported alternative was that it be handled by the private sector – an already failed option, as seen by the deadlock between Telstra and Optus’ broadband plans and the high cost of capital needed for the project.

Again, in the light of the context of Rudd’s speech, this stability Costello flaunts can only be seen as lacking vision and wisdom.

After ten years of a stable Liberal marriage, the question for the electorate is not going to be stability so much as it will be the question of where are we going? What kind of future are we creating with our prosperity? At the risk of sounding like a Labor spokesman, this is going to be an election based on vision. Vision for an exit strategy in Iraq, vision for economic reform and productivity, vision for action on climate change. Until Howard recognises this, it’s going to hover like an empty question mark over his head.

And I should mention that on top of all this, Rudd has not only small and big business behind him, including Optus and Telstra, but he also has the enthusiasm and support of big media owners Rupert Murdoch, James Packer and Fairfax’s David Kirk. On this issue, Rudd is going to have a media chorus in his corner. Just look at The Australian’s leading story:

“Public super ‘covered’ in $4.7bn super plan”