After the honeymoon
Has the government of Kevin Rudd lost the plot? Or has he even got one? Is Australia's cleverest policy wonk still searching for a big, animating guiding principle? Less than a year after taking office, is the government a bit, well, Rudderless?
The prime minister's approval rating has fallen to 54%, the lowest since he took office last November. While he remains twice as popular as the new Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, the most recent Newspoll poll suggests that more voters trust the Liberals when it comes to running the economy than Labor. That is a worry for Labor.
Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, who is enjoying something of a revival at the moment - the brilliant musical which bears his name has been playing to packed houses - says that Rudd needs an overarching narrative. The opposition has also come up with a neat line that the Rudd government hit the ground reviewing, which has such resonance because it sounds so very accurate. Now it has started calling him "Kevin 747", because of his 46 days of international travel since taking office.
Certainly, Rudd's small-bore policies, like FuelWatch and its food equivalent, GroceryWatch, have been a bit of a flop. His education policies, grandiosely dubbed the "Education Revolution", are not particularly revolutionary. The phrase was appropriated from the former Labor leader, Mark Latham, and the policies were mainly appropriated from the former Liberal leader, John Howard. Admittedly, the emissions trading system promises a major reform, but John Howard advocated one, too, albeit on a slightly less ambitious timetable.
The grand gestures that attached meaning to his first few months in office were gifted to him on a plate by the Howard government. Ratifying Kyoto was easy. So, too, was saying sorry to indigenous Australians for past injustices. Having plucked and then feasted on these low-hanging fruit, the menu now looks a bit meagre.
Last month, as parliament reconvened after its eight-week winter break, Kevin Rudd delivered what was billed initially as important, agenda-setting speech where he would lay out his plans for the remainder of his three-year term. Then the prime minister's spin doctors tried to rein in expectations, and said that he would only be addressing education.
Some policies, like Rudd's idea for an Asian equivalent of a European Union, were announced with great fanfare and then followed by silence.
These days the most eagerly anticipated announcements come not from the government but the Reserve Bank, as it decides what will happen to interest rates.
When all those reviews publish their reports, new policies will no doubt flow from them. But this preference for reviews and studies tells us much about the prime minister. He is a process man, with a bullet-point mind rather than a visionary political imagination. For him, governing is about prose rather than poetry. The former diplomat and Queensland civil servant - he used to be the Queensland Premier's chief of staff - offers cautious "managerialism". After 11 years of conservative rule, should not a first-term Labor government offer something bolder and exciting?
Pushing for an Australian Republic might lend his government some crusading zeal, but his offer to Malcolm Turnbull to jointly come up with a timetable for a new referendum appeared like a political stunt designed to split the Liberal Party rather than a genuine attempt to accelerate the debate.
As your excellent comments amply demonstrate, there is clearly an appetite for a debate, and a high quality one at that. Many people seem unhappy with Malcolm Turnbull's new formulation that a Republic is off the agenda while Queen Elizabeth is alive. Though a Republican, tazitiger80 validates that stance, but I wonder whether many Australians will increasingly come to agree with scrapthejack that the country should set its own timetable.
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Nothing wrong with a government not being 'exciting'. They're there to run the country, not appear glamourous. If that's what they wanted then they should have gone into Rock n' Roll instead, or is that somewhere where a modicum of talent is useful?
I don't know about Oz, but I'm truly fed up with politicians over here in the UK trying to be exciting, and feeling that they have to change everything around in order to justify their existance.
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That Australia still cannot move forward and sever it's umbilical ties to the Monarchy shows how immature the country still is. What does it take to become a sovereign state in its own right? What are Australians afraid of?
But then again, when you look at the quality of the leaders in Parliament and in the opposition the question answers itself doesn't it?
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Why do republicans think keeping the monarchy makes Australia immature? Does that make New Zealand and Canada immature? We should be proud of our traditions and history. By being comfortable with who we are as a nation and not trying to pander to some expectation of what a "mature" country should be, would truly show our maturity. At the end of the day who would we be impressing with a change in a largely ceremonial position?
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Well said BrightonStevie. When I'm in a plane I prefer the pilot to be boring, same thing with the guys running the country.
If Kev can keep things nice and smooth, find the best path through the turbulence then I'm happy.
As an asside, he seems fairly limited on what he can do anyway - interest rates are out of his hands, as are a lot of State run issues. In effect he's already in quite a 'presidential' role and most of his efforts have been on international issues.
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Sounds like KRudd is not the only one running out of ideas. Your blogs are becoming a tad repetitive. Good job summer's coming - you will have some frisky kangaroos and German-tourist eating crocodiles to write about.
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Billy, that's perhaps a little harsh on Nick Bryant, one of the few UK Australian correspondents who *does* write about more than just shark attacks, UFO spottings and randy koalas. To be honest, even though I check in on the news from home regularly, life down there has seemed pretty uneventful over the past few months. Perhaps things are just so nice in Oz now that John Howard is gone and commodities continue to prop up the economy that Kevin Rudd doesn't have anything to bother altering. From what I've noticed, Australians aren't all that into radical change anyway.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I am somewhere between Keating and the 6th poster Minamitek.
Rudd does need more profile for activity, but his agenda is also about reality - aren't we all sick of over promising and under delivering from politicians?
What about a PM that is fully cognoscente of the role's limitations?
maybe its all a bit too clever for the Tele readers who demand urgency, action, failure and drama.
Australia is over governed. But is it also overly expectant of revolution?
Revolution is hard from a federal level in most matters of the state education, health, etc)...hence Keatings great foreign success becuase it is a solo portfolio for the federal government.
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Well capitalised financial system, interest rates threatening to go down, unemployment rate low and apparently going nowhere, large budget surplus, summer almost upon us, Bush's deputy sherriff gone.
Life aint that bad.
Not sure I'd swap Rudd for someone who's ego demands they do "something", just for the sake of it.
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I have to say that I for one am disappointed with The Ruddster. He was elected on the promise of change. Something that most Aussies really wanted to see.
What he has actually done though is make life harder for anyone 30something and living in central Sydney. Elected on a greener ticket than we have ever seen he has promptly removed the solar panel rebate for families that have a household income of over $100,000. Quite who he thinks were the people that were installing solar panels I don't know but the option of being able to do something additional for the environment has been stripped from us.
Then we have the removal of the baby bonus for a lot of families. Does Labor have any idea of how expensive it is to rent/own property in central locations? With no paid maternity leave and now the removal of the baby bonus many couples are choosing to delay starting a family again.
The federal government has a huge surplus, why does Labor feel the need to make things harder for people already battling higher rents, food prices and fuel prices.
I liked the signing of Kyoto and the fact that we said "sorry" but it seems that Labor does not care about whole other sections of Australian society.
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Nick says "many people are unhappy " with Malcolm Tunbull's view that a republic is off the agenda while the Queen is alive. To use Margaret Thatcher's question: "Tell me who.". What polls? The last definitive poll was the referendum which said no to a republic. Too much time drinking latte with the chattering classes Nick? Go out and meet the average Australian.
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The major future social policy issues are unemployment "benefits" and state pensions, both of which are nowhere near enough to survive on. Unlike in EU countries, the state has never paid rents for pensioners or the unemployed - and rents are very high now. Poverty is now at US levels but many Australians talk about "when they bought their first property" and leave social heroism to the Anzac myth. For the over-mortgaged and the 25% of the population who don't own a house, the test will come when the Chinese currency is revalued or the US goes into recession.
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My vote is that Nick's "on the money". Rudd talks a lot and has done not much.
Turnbull, for his part, has at last lost the need to waffle about policies he didn't like or understand (vide: anything he said about water). Now he owns the territory of throwing mud - which he does much better than what was his name.
The issue, and I think Nick is pushing this theme, is that we really don't know where we're going. We need the Cheshire Cat to tell us how useless we are.
Oh! and one last note about the Republic; We had an outstanding Governor General (clone for "President") in Major General Michael Jeffrey and now we have another winner in Quentin Bryce. Who needs a republic with this quality?
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Dear Post #2, FosterFoskin.
Australia is immature? Moi?
take a bex, have a good lie down, and then take a good long hard look at the Royal Family of the UK.
A case study in little boys and girls who never grew up.
A mature country...an immature country...I just can't get my head around such distinctions.
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Nick Bryant's comments saying that the ratifying of Kyoto and saying sorry to the Aborigines were easy things to do for the Rudd Government are puzzling. If these things were so 'easy' why didn't the Howard Government do them while in office? Bryant makes the comment that Howard did propose an admissions trading scheme though admittedly a 'less ambitious timetable'. What does this mean? Howard's tortoise-like manoeuverings over climate change were legendary. Admittedly Rudd still needs to prove himself as a fully-rounded prime minister by addressing issues of the economy which will be at the forefront given the current world climate.
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Very well written article about a government who seem to be a body without a head. Being an Aussie living in the UK I don't get all the news from home but check as much as I can on the internet and I agree that there hasn't been much fanfare or great policy announcements from Mr Rudd that have been blasted over the online news services.
I may be missing all the key ones but it seems the government is not doing much. Are they in cruise control at 38,000 feet enjoying the trappings of government and with it the extra perks after 11 years or are they sailing a ship without a map and hoping they've chosen the right course, you tell me commentators....
PS - ***These days the most eagerly anticipated announcements come not from the government but the Reserve Bank, as it decides what will happen to interest rates.*** Awesome line Nick, so true.
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Well it's not terribly surprising. The Curtin and Chifley governments didn't have much trouble finding a blueprint for change - both Prime Ministers were thoroughgoing socialists.
Hawke and Keating were obviously not in the same vein as Curtin and Chifley but still combined an economic liberalisation agenda with social reform.
Whitlam was a bit between the two - slashing tariffs but founding Medibank, etc. By 1972 there were also alot of things which had been sitting in the 'to do' pile for years or even decades for him to deal with.
Rudd, however, seems to have all these avenues closed off to him. He has proclaimed himself to be 'not a socialist', and pretty much proved it with his industrial relations legislation, so that is Curtin and Chifley's government led nation building and social welfare programs (or even a pale imitation thereof) out of the question. He is also quite conservative and therefore has a predisposition not to do much in social matters either. If he were around in the 1980's he could have seized on the liberalisation agenda, but of course then Howard took that to extremes in many areas. Of course, Rudd could, if he wanted, reverse something else Howard took to extremes - socialism for corporations (revealed by a parliamentary inquiry to be biggerin total than our social welfare budget), the rich and marginal electorates - but he won't. Things like FuelWatch and GroceryWatch show that Rudd doesn't think that anything much needs to change and that all he needs to do is tinker a little bit.
Meanwhile the fact that other apparently grander notions have dropped off the radar suggests that they were just poorly thought out ploys that he never really cared about. The only other explanation is that whereas Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating (like them or not) had the mettle to push through an ambitious agenda, Rudd doesn't.
And things like Kyoto and apologising to the indigenous population are easy - how much did it cost to do either? All that stopped Howard was his obstinacy.
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regarding spectacularludo, comment that polls show australians want to retain a british monarch as its head of state, what polls are these? I've yet to see one with less than 60% support for an australian head of state, the issue is the republican model , dont confuse this 'current' lack of clarity on republican models with any deep founded support for a british monarch as our head of state because they're aint any, apart from the anglophilles of course.
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The honeymoon is definitely over for Kevin 747 and what have we got? Symbolism and jetlag.
The education revolution is a dud that State Governments will have to pay for, living conditions for many Aborigines haven't improved even though the government has apologised to them and KRudd has burned expended more greenhouse gases on overseas flights more quickly than any prime minister in living memory (and there's no carbon-neutral project like QEII had for her last world tour).
Even workchoices, which Labor famously dumped as their first job in office, is back like a 'fox' in sheep's clothing (there are no wolves in Oz) with unions now spending their warchest campaigning for Rudd and Gillard to keep their promises to the public.
For Joe Public, nothing of substance has happened in Australia since Rudd and Co assumed power, and we're fast coming up on the first anniversary.
Obviously, they'll ferret away all the cash until election eve but if they keep working this way, malcolm turnbull will face an unloseable election!
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Rudd is doing the right thing in the current credit crisis, nothing. There is enough argument going on in USA without Australia joining in. Lets hang on to our money until we are forced to release some reserves to look after Australias interests. Thank goodness we have some reserves to carry us through. The truth is yet to emerge in USA and they have yet to make a decision as the worlds reserve currency maker. This has been coming for over 12 months and I do not recall the previous government bringing it to our attention. No, steady as she goes is right even if it is boring to some. When the dust settles will be the time to make plans and decisions for the future. A bipartisan dialogue will also help so that no time is lost on politics. Lets hope we come out better than the USA and UK who were in bed together in all this.
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Hey Nick,
didn't make it out of Sydney to report on the AFL grand final and all the hoopla in Melbourne??? or is it coming...?
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When it comes to health, the area I work in, I find the Rudd government has been little different from the Liberals. We still have the same problems - the most obvious of which is the massive workforce shortages in doctors nurses etc. Rudd's health minister Nicola Roxon has done nothing but talk about reform and working families and convene a huge number of committees, taskforces and talking shops, who are all supposed to report back in a year or so. Meanwhile, the health system becomes ever more arthritic. I find the Rudd government, for all its talk, simply doesn't have the talent, the nerve, energy or imagination to actually do anything.
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I get the feeling that the reason we get nothing but endless reviews out of Rudd (and indeed all his predecessors for as long memory lasts) is that he wants or at least claims to want a better social welfare system, but doesn't want to pay for it.
He appears to believe either that someone can come up with a way to provide quality public services at a low cost and in an equitable manner, or that lurking somewhere in the system there must be some mountain of unnecessary costs or bottlenecks that are frustrating everything. This is despite the fact that successive governments have been 'rationalising' the public service (apparently this means firing the people that actually provide services to the public and hiring more consultants to do reviews) or hiving parts of it off to the private sector entirely for thirty odd years now.
What he doesn't seem to understand, at least in this context, is the basic tenet of a market economy - supply and demand. If, for example, he wants better healthcare then he needs to start by opening up his cheque book and paying healthcare workers more and making the training cheaper to obtain.
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