Abbott Government needs a new course of action to win next election

DESPITE signing off on a series of significant policy triumphs, the Coalition hasn’t finished the year with a tick from the public in the opinion polls.

The reaction from some members of the government has followed a traditional path – blame the leadership. But it’s not Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has been the subject of the hushed water cooler conversations, it is his chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, the striking woman who cemented her place in the Liberal leadership office under Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. Targeting the chief-of-staff rather than the leader is also traditional. It would take a critical level of distress for MPs to brief against the Prime Minister. Abbott faltered in his defence of Credlin on Friday when he moved into the gender mire exploited by former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard. “Do you really think that my chief of staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was P-E-T-E-R as opposed to P-E-T-A?” he told ABC television. “I think people need to take a long hard look at themselves with some of these criticisms.” He said if people had a problem with his office they should bring the complaints to him. “This is the same office which ran a very effective opposition, it’s the same office which has got an enormous amount done this year sometimes under very difficult circumstances.” All true. However, Credlin didn’t get her job because she’s a woman, far from it, and if and when she leaves it will have nothing to do with sexism. Credlin’s gender is only an issue with feminists unhappy that her very presence in the prime ministerial (and previously Opposition leader’s) office undermined Gillard’s malicious claim that Abbott was a misogynist. What the government is discovering is that being in government is markedly different from being in opposition and requires very different skill sets. That being said, what is the actual criticism of Credlin? It is widely remarked that she is too controlling and that she went too far in vetting senior ministerial staff and over-stepped the mark when she demanded that some experienced veterans move to Canberra if they wished to remain in ranking roles in the Abbott government. There is no doubt that the Coalition lost some very good people who did not wish to uproot their families to satisfy that demand, particularly those with spouses who could not meet that demand. There is little point in comparing the operation of Abbott’s office to the manner in which either of his immediate predecessors’ affairs were handled. Both Gillard and Rudd let adolescents run the shop and it showed. Then again, neither Gillard nor Rudd had as much parliamentary experience as Abbott when they took office nor did they have the benefit of working with a master like former Coalition prime minister John Howard. Howard had three chiefs-of-staff during his nearly 12 years in office, none of them became media figures in their own right. They were Grahame Morris, Arthur Sinodinos and Tony Nutt. Howard had a very rough first year. He set a very high standard for ministerial conduct which saw seven ministers resign in his government’s first 18 months in office. Abbott’s poor polling can be put down to a number of different causes but the major weakness is its failure to sell its core message. It has failed to hammer home the message that Labor so badly mishandled the national wealth it plunged into ongoing debt that will affect future generations. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen should be laughed out of court whenever he appears and criticises the government for its handling of the debt – it’s his debt, Labor’s debt that the government is trying to fix. As Abbott has said he relies heavily on Credlin, he must ask himself whether her advice has been helpful or has it been ignored? Why has the government so spectacularly failed to meet public expectations? Has too much energy in the prime minister’s office gone into micro-managing and centralising of control, as the internal critics claim, at the expense of reminding the public of the simple and understandable narrative that the government used to win office? There is either a lack of strategy or the government’s tactics need overhauling as the polls would indicate that they seem to have been ineffectual. That communications from the Abbott government need overhauling – the lack of consultation with (even conservative) premiers about budgetary measures which dramatically affected their states – is self-evident. It seems to have been caught flat-footed by the election of the PUPs and Independent senators. Abbott has some breathing space over Christmas to consider why his government has not got its message through and decide a course of action. Leaders are often forced to choose between what is best for their organisations and their loyalty to those who they believe have served them well but whose skills no longer match changing operational needs. Abbott’s goal must be to win the next election and realise his nation-saving policies.