天堂.受难记

Wednesday, September 19, 2007, 11:55 AM AEDST

Libs chip away at Rudd edifice

By Paul Daley, National Affairs Editor

Question time on TV is for hardcore political junkies.

Of course you can catch a grab or two on the nightly news. But it doesn’t tell you the full story. No, to decipher the nuance and the mood in the opposition and on the Treasury benches, you need to watch the whole hour or so on the box or, better still, sit in the public gallery and peer over the edge.

Those hardcore types who tuned in yesterday might have detected a change in the mood of both the government and the opposition.

After what has been a disastrous couple of months for the government that has been dominated by nose-diving opinion polls and continued leadership speculation, suddenly there was new energy in the Coalition. Politicians routinely say that they don’t pay too much attention to opinion polls. But it’s just not true.

The last fortnight has been the Coalition’s worst of this parliament thanks to a Newspoll that showed it trailing Labor by 18 points. Yesterday’s poll brought Labor’s lead back to 10 points (55 to 45 after preferences). This is still landslide territory. But all eyes were also on the Coalition’s primary vote which, back at 41%, shows the government is edging towards competitiveness going into the election.

Coalition spirits soared. Imbued with a new energy and genuine passion for fighting Labor instead of each other, the government’s best performers set about doing something Kevin Rudd has hitherto failed to do adequately for himself. They set about defining the Labor leader.

Rudd has taken a calculated risk since becoming leader. By painting himself, quite honestly, as an economic conservative and as in-synch with Howard on most salient social issues, he has surrendered what the hard boys around here call "the edge" to Howard. The edge, that is, that defines who he – as opposed to Howard – actually is.

The government has, for some time now, been pursuing what we might call a high-definition strategy in relation to Rudd. But while Howard and his so-called "team" were drowning in their own proverbial, nobody could hear them. Now, things have changed.

Rudd, they’re telling you, is a passion-less public servant, a bureaucrat whose instinct when confronted with a problem or a hairy decision is to refer it to a committee or "review". It’s a good way of deferring decisions, of course, until you’re in government and for a long time now, Labor has been resting on an assumption that punters don’t care too much – mainly because they’re all assessing Rudd’s style ahead of his substance.

Which brings us back to question time yesterday. Now, you can’t win every day. But yesterday was, according to some Labor MPs, more than just a "loss" in the house. They fear it was the turning point for Rudd Labor – the day when the government finally found traction with a leader whose measure has thus far escaped them.

Rudd, in contrast, was (with one exception where he uncharacteristically spat the dummy) pretty much an automaton. It’s a persona he’s adopted consistently at the dispatch box, turning his back on the monkeys across the table as if engaging them is well beneath him.

It’s worked pretty well. And Rudd is no fool; he surely knows such a tactic is not without risk. Now he’s being painted as a bloke who can’t make a decision – a leader who sits there impassively and announces policy by committee and turns his back on the argument. Right now some conviction from Rudd on some burning policy issues – the proposed Tasmanian pulp mill, tax reform and housing availability – would, some in his party believe, go a long way.

A couple of weeks ago, I quoted my mate Jack, a Liberal campaign strategist of considerable note, in relation to the Libs’ leadership woes and the government’s general malaise.

This morning I asked him about this latest government tactic regarding Rudd.

Here’s his e-mailed response: "Yeah, I don’t know what to make of this latest `tactic’. It runs the risk I guess of back-firing if they cross over into full frontal personal attack style of campaigning. For some reason Rudd seems to evoke personal sympathy whenever he drops his jaw and starts to pout and complain that he is being hard done by, by the clever, cunning Mr Howard.

"However having said that, I suspect they have got the timing just right and this tactic’s shelf life could well resonate for the duration of the campaign. People have criticised the Liberal tacticians for allowing Rudd to define himself throughout the course of this year without rebuttal but maybe that was the smartest thing they could have done in hindsight as it now allows the government to chip and niggle away at the self-made self-styled Rudd edifice with this `Bob the Bureaucrat’ line. No point in going after Rudd head on – he’ll just run away. Better bet to start the niggle. A niggle here, a niggle there – might just drive him crazy.

"Rudd has run all year as a one man band, and he runs the risk of now beginning to sound stale – all alone out on the stage and afraid to bring on the band. Throughout his bureaucratic life, Rudd has always run his own ship, never seeking or relying on anyone else to tell him what to do. His enormous ego demands it. The last Labor Leader to run solo and run his own show was Mark Latham. You can’t win an election campaign in Australia by running the `Me, myself, I’ strategy. That’s not New Leadership, that’s the Kath & Kim approach - `Look at me, look at me’. As they would say in court, all the prosecution team (government) has to do is prove there is sufficient reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury about Rudd’s evidence and innocence." 

Howard and his inner sanctum have detected a barely discernible shift in both public attention and mood.

Can they make it pay?

Hold tight.