Rudd's trial on two fronts

A BASIC tenet in the art of war warns against fighting on two fronts - think of the Germans in World War II facing the Russians on the Eastern front and the other Allies on the Western front.

It's common sense, really, but like so many other articles of common sense, it appears not to have reached the strategic thinkers in the ALP. Even as Prime Minister John Howard introduces his new frontbench, hand-selected with a sharp eye on the possibilities and pitfalls that will emerge on the road to the election later this year, it is clear that new Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd faces dual challenges. He has to convince the public that he has the capability to manage those sections of the nation's fortunes that are within the reach of political power (and he has been given a generous degree of trust, according to the polls); but he also has to demonstrate that he can manage his party. This is already proving to be the harder task and lobbying for the ALP conference, with its tough positions on issues such as uranium, has barely begun. Just before Christmas, Rudd was warning the nation that the High Court's decision to uphold the Coalition's industrial relations reforms opened the door to widespread and wholesale hijacking of state areas of policy by the Federal Government. Barely a month later, he is promising a Labor federal government would be deeply involved in such traditional areas of state responsibility as water and education. On both issues, however, sections of his party and some of its princi-pal union supporters make him look, err, rudderless. The ALP's media members at Fairfax (``Fairfax's default position was to turn left and be agenda driven,'' former Fairfax chief Fred Hilmer says) and the ABC (is the organisation part of the ALP, or is Maxine McKew returning to her cultural home?), have made much of Rudd's ability to find common cause with the Labor figures who head every state and territory. But in reality the premiers and chief ministers, and more importantly, perhaps, the ALP's big trade union sponsors are just as likely to be at odds with him. Last Sunday, Rudd proposed bringing water under one federal ministry, ending the ``blame game'' between state and federal politicians. It is clear however that while state leaders may be happy to go along with such a theory, there would have to be a lot of arm wrestling before anything took place in practise. Victoria, for example, has so mismanaged its water policy that the Bracks Labor Government is refusing to guarantee further funding for the $320 million Victorian Water Trust and its future looks bleak. Queensland's Beattie Government is also unlikely to be much help, given its parochial approach to drawing water from the Murray system without regard for downstream users. Rudd has also outlined ambitious and long overdue plans for national standards in education, but the critical opponents to such reforms have been the state teachers' unions and the Australian Education Union, which bankrolled the ALP's 2004 election campaign with a $1 million fighting fund. Concerned parents (not the stooges in the politicised parents and teachers organisations) are interested in genuine curriculum reform that delivers competency in the basics, not in the AEU's preoccupation with such fads as the abolition of ``heterosexist'' language, rejection of the assessment of individual teachers, alternate families, the promotion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes and a black armband view of history. Howard instinctively understands such concern, noting: ``We need basic standards of literacy, of numeracy, a proper and rigorous understanding according to an appropriate narrative sense of the history of this country, the history of the influences that have made and conditioned this country. They are the sort of things that we need more than anything else in education. ``They are things that we have been on about for years and they've been stymied by Mr Rudd's mates in the education unions.'' Not withstanding the AEU's demand for Rudd to promise more money for education (what's new?) the union has vowed to campaign every day until the next federal electionto ensure the defeat of the Howard Government (nothing new there, either). It has also accused the Howard Government of ``coercive federalism'' in making education funding conditional on embracing its agenda. Given the AEU's fringe beliefs, it would be a vote winner for the Coalition to demand some rigour in education. The Carpenter Government in Western Australia is only now dumping the peculiar curriculum promoted by its former education minister Ljiljanna Ravlich, which left approximately 20 per cent of Year 7 students unable to reach the minimum standards of literacy and numeracy. In NSW, Premier Morris Iemma can't even get Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt to enforce his desire for plain language school reports which will tell parents exactly how their children are performing. Rudd's broad-brush policy outlines may make fine headlines, but they will be of little value if his state and territory ALP mates can be guaranteed to scupper them every time.