The flipside is that on current polling, the government may not be around to implement these schemes. Few would argue that dealing with these issues would provide significant social and economic benefits, although with the carbon tax forecast to generate less revenue following the removal of the floor price, there are question marks as to how the government will fund the schemes as well as achieving its other key aim of keeping the budget in surplus. The same can be said of the government’s recently announced $4.1 billion public dental care scheme, which will ensure the treatment of millions of children and low-income earners under Medicare. The National Disability Insurance Scheme, forecast to cost approximately $7.5 billion per year, is a long overdue reform and one that the government would be keen to stress as representative of its overarching aim in providing assistance to those who need it most. In addition to this, the government’s recent policy announcements have placed the party in a better strategic position than it has been in some time. Gillard came out fighting to accusations of wrongdoings in her earlier life as a lawyer at Slater-Gordon, taking questions from the press for over an hour in what many have described as her strongest performance since taking the top job. More importantly, the carnage earlier in the year appears to have been cathartic for the party and for the Prime-Minister.
While rumours of a Rudd return have persisted beyond his defeat in the leadership challenge, the chances of this happening look increasingly slim.
For a party that has traditionally gone to considerable lengths to maintain internal discipline, this was a rare display of public disunity but perhaps a necessary one. Senior ministers publically lashed out at Rudd, describing him as a control freak who consistently put his own ego ahead of the party. The visceral response within the party to Rudd’s attempts to win back the leadership was nothing short of spectacular. However, you certainly couldn’t accuse the government of being driven by spin a few months later when Rudd challenged Prime-Minister Julia Gillard for the leadership.
Politicats retiring series#
The relentless hostility of the Opposition, internal destabilisation at the hands of the Rudd camp and a series of communication blunders by the Prime-Minister all contributed to the Gillard government’s inability to effectively articulate its message with voters and the party suffered in the polls as a result. When sealed sections of the review were leaked in late 2011 amidst disastrous opinion polls and internal bloodletting, the story that emerged was one of a government “lacking a core purpose and being driven by spin.” While the accusation was levelled specifically at the leadership of former Prime-Minister Kevin Rudd, little changed under Julia Gillard in her first year in office. In the wake of an insipid federal campaign in 2010 that saw the party narrowly avoid defeat, ALP heavyweights Steve Bracks, John Faulkner and Bob Carr were commissioned to produce a review of the election.
This is a message that has been driven home repeatedly by journalists, academics and rival politicians, but also by members of the Labor party itself. A recurring theme in the narrative of the past five years in Australian politics is that Labor has lost sense of what it stands for as a political party.
0 kommentar(er)
