PM's political ticker has ground to a halt

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd is a political coward, lacking in political ticker who has demonstrated a failure of leadership - says Kevin Rudd.

Or was he lying when he told federal Parliament on June 24 last year that "to have no vote at all (on an Emissions Trading Scheme) is the ultimate demonstration of political cowardice, the ultimate demonstration of a lack of political ticker, the ultimate demonstration of a failure of leadership"? Rudd's dumping of his planned action on the ETS as the "greatest moral challenge" of our time was the greatest political backslide in Australian history and his belated and impersonal apology to the parents of one of the four insulation installers killed - despite repeated warnings to the Cabinet of the dangers inherent in the program - ranks as the most uncompassionate act of any Prime Minister since Gough Whitlam's rejection of freedom for the Baltic states and abuse of those fleeing the Communist forces of North Vietnam. Rudd's response was to attempt to distract the attention of voters with the announcement of a new tobacco tax and today's release of the Henry Tax Review's new wealth redistribution package. Slugging nicotine addicts with a heavier tax is not new; selling cigarettes in plain packages is like selling smutty magazines between brown paper wrappers. Voters now have a clear choice between staying with a proven liar and demonstrable coward or opting for a rough-edged but comparative cleanskin in Opposition leader Tony Abbott when they go to the polls at the end of the year, or possibly early next year. The Rudd Government's mandate runs through to February 10, 2011. An election must be held by April 16, 2011, just under a year away. Since he came to office in 2007 Rudd has been using the threat of a double dissolution to bludgeon the Opposition but his lack of political courage has shown that menace to be no more than bullying intimidation. It worked against former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, a political naive, but it hasn't resonated elsewhere and appears to be just another gutless attempt at coercion. Now, Rudd and his parliamentary followers - except for Treasurer Wayne Swan, who was still talking double dissolution last Wednesday - say that the Labor Government is committed to serving a full term. Even as Swan was raising the double dissolution spectre though, the new line was being repeated by Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong, who has now joined her junior minister Peter Garrett in having a title but nothing meaningful to do for the remainder of this government's term. Labor's commitment to a full term is another lie though as there have been at least seven issues which members of the Rudd Government have threatened to use as double dissolution triggers. Before he had even been sworn in Rudd warned on November 30, 2007, that the electorate would not be happy to go to the polls again if the Senate blocked his industrial relations program, a threat he reiterated the following March. Alcopops loomed as the next trigger in April, 2009, followed by the ETS in May, 2009, when the two independent senators joined with the Coalition in blocking Rudd's costly Emissions Trading Scheme. Then, last August, Wong was sent to the National Press Club to warn that "if the Liberals fail to deliver, the Rudd Government is not going to give up on this. We will press on with this reform (the ridiculous Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) for as long as we have to." It was, she said, up to the Liberals whether they did it "the easy way, or the hard way". Now she and the rest of the Labor team have shown they are all for the easy way, every time. The other issues Labor tried to leverage through threats of a double dissolution election were health reform, paid parental leave and private health insurance, all of which centre on broken Labor promises to a greater or lesser degree. It is no secret that Labor's 2007 pre-election promises, now removed from its website, pledged to introduce a Commonwealth takeover of hospitals by the middle of last year, build childcare centres and committed Labor to retaining all private health insurance rebates. Even desperate Labor strategists must realise that threatening to bring on double dissolution elections over their own broken promises might make the dumbest of their rusted-on true believer supporters think twice. Labor's spin merchants, Hawker-Britton, seem to have hit on a formula to keep the die-hards mesmerised like hypnotised chooks. Labor figures from Rudd down uniformly speak in monotones, sound authoritative even as they deliver nonsensical phrases, maintain a flow of conversation with their interviewers and avoid hesitation at all costs, even though their answers bear no relation to the questions. The theory is that few in the media and fewer in the wider audience ever examine the content of the interviews and they will zip, to use Rudd's word, home free. While Labor refuses to release transcripts of any interviews which expose its empty promises and outright lies, there is a mass of material now circulating which demonstrates the hypocrisy of such principal characters as Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard and players such as Wong on a range of policies. Here is Wong on climate change on two separate occasions just last month: "Nevertheless, the Government is committed to taking action on climate change and we will continue to press for it, we can't walk away from the position that is the best policy option for Australia", and " if we continue to debate and delay all that will occur is we will increase business uncertainty at a time where we need to give business the right incentives to invest in clean energy and we will simply ensure that Australia's emissions continue to rise." All baloney, of course, now that Rudd has pulled his landmark policy out of the debate and attempted to shelve it until the election after next. As even some of Rudd's most fervent media supporters are finding, he stands for nothing.