Sorry Bill, but we’ve learned from the Kevin ’07 failure
Just like Bill Shorten is doing today, Kevin Rudd faked empathy and promised the world at the 2007 election. And like Rudd, Shorten’s promises are mirages but this time we’re not buying it, writes Miranda Devine.
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Kevin Rudd burst back into the Australian election campaign this week, new hipster beard and all.
Not only has the former PM been campaigning in marginal seats in Sydney and Brisbane where his Mandarin skills are prized, but he made a ghost cameo in the story of One Nation’s strip club embarrassment.
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After A Current Affair aired footage of Steve Dickson groping dancers in a Washington DC strip club, it didn’t take long for everyone to remember Rudd’s own drunken visit to a Manhattan “gentleman’s club” with then-New York Post editor Col Allan in 2003.
Only, unlike Dickson, Rudd didn’t resign. Instead his popularity soared, and the rest is history.
Rudd’s presence, along with Julia Gillard’s, at Bill Shorten’s campaign launch in Brisbane on Sunday will formally cement his shadow, for better or worse, on Election 2019.
Now, here’s a frightening fact.
In October 2007, a month before Rudd beat John Howard in a landslide, Australians rated the Coalition “best economic manager” in Newspoll by 53 to 27 per cent.
So even though voters knew in their bones that Rudd’s grand promises to alleviate their cost of living pressures rested on the shaky foundations of Labor’s economic management, they took a leap of faith and made him prime minister anyway.
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Just like Shorten today, Rudd promised the world at the 2007 election. He echoed the conversations going on around family kitchen tables about housing affordability, rising rents, soaring grocery bills, petrol costs and the increasing cost of childcare.
He heard our pain, but he had nothing except fake empathy.
Remember Grocery Watch and Fuel Watch, Rudd’s grandiose method of keeping a lid on household costs which amounted to nothing more than a couple of bodgied up websites that cost more than $30 million before they were killed off?
Like Shorten, Rudd promised to extend Medicare to dental care — only for teenagers, rather than pensioners.
And, like Shorten, he promised massive spending on “the war against cancer”.
“I am an economic conservative, I am committed to balancing the budget,” Rudd said.
Well, it didn’t take long for buyers’ remorse to set in.
Labor inherited a $20 billion surplus, turned it into a $27 billion deficit in its first year, and doubled that effort the following year.
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We are still paying the price.
So why do the polls show we are about to vote in many of the same personnel on Labor’s front bench who were part of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd debacle, and a leader intimately involved in both leadership coups, whose campaign consigliores are none other than Wayne Swan, who delivered six budget deficits in a row, and Kristina Keneally, whose short reign as NSW premier was the gift of Eddie Obeid?
One reason is the self-inflicted harm committed by the Coalition, the inevitable transaction costs of decapitating two prime ministers, events which Shorten never fails to mention.
It’s taken a superhuman effort for Morrison, virtually single-handedly, to claw his way back this week to a credible 49-51 position in Newspoll, where the Coalition was sitting before last August’s Turnbull coup.
But the other reason Shorten is favourite is because, yet again, Labor is beating the Coalition at the empathy game.
You could see how it worked at the first face-to-face leaders’ debate in Perth on Monday.
In a tiny TV studio, the Prime Minister and Shorten perched awkwardly on bar stools in front of an audience of 48 undecided voters.
Scott Morrison’s opening pitch was to continue providing a stronger economy, record jobs growth, a budget surplus, record funding for hospitals and public schools, and lower taxes: “If you can’t manage money, you can’t manage the country”.
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Which is true, but it speaks to the head and not the heart.
Shorten speaks Ruddish, but he speaks to the heart.
He said he felt the pain of “everyday Australians” with their “cost of living pressures”. He empathised with the “one million Australians doing two jobs and one million Australians who are underemployed… The economy is not working in the interests of everyday people.”
He scolded Morrison, who’s “been in charge six years (and) people are going backwards”.
Like Rudd, his promises are mirages, although nowhere near as hyped, but Shorten is listening. It’s what Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson do. They listen to people’s grievances, and reflect them back as empty slogans.
While the Liberal Party has been busy infighting, Shorten has been travelling around Australia, holding town hall meetings and getting to know local people.
For instance, he’s been to Perth 41 times since becoming Opposition Leader. This week was the 21st visit since the last election. He has been listening to people’s gripes for a long time, he says he is here to help, and that is what gives his election pitch its emotional vigour.
But with the memory of Rudd’s reign still fresh, voters may be more wary of appeals to their hearts.
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A case in point came yesterday, at a steel manufacturing facility in Fremantle, WA. Shorten was in his element, embracing his union organiser roots.
He gave a stirring stump speech to about 600 workers in high-vis vests and hard hats assembled in neat formation in the sunshine.
He spoke of his own father: “In the late 1980s he lost his job because people weren’t investing in… commercial ship repair facilities.
“He lost his job and I don’t want to see another generation of Australians sold down the river.”
He started shouting: “My bosses are you. My bosses are the working and middle-class people of Australia. My bosses are not the big banks. My bosses are not the owners of the newspapers or the television stations. My bosses are not the people who are making the 39 per cent corporate profit. The people of Australia are the people who employ me.”
It made for rousing TV footage.
But the workers seemed unmoved. The applause was polite.
Brian Geilman, 63, a boilermaker turned quality assurance inspector who inspects the pipes destined for the Chevron project, was unimpressed.
He’ll probably vote for Clive Palmer.
“I haven’t got any time for the AWU,” he said after watching the speech. “And I don’t have much time for Shorten. He’s never worked a day in his life, for a start. He’s been a union hack all his life. He’s getting more union hacks into the government who’ve never worked a day in their life.
“All they’ve done is stood out there and done what he’s done and geed up the blokes.
“I’ve been in enough of those meetings and enough of those walkouts to know that they’re only in it for themselves. It’s all bullshit. I do not trust anybody from the union. I’m 63. I’ve had a lot of run-ins with them.”
Shorten is facing an electorate which is more cynical than the one Rudd faced in 2007, at the end of the “relaxed and comfortable” Howard era.
It’s a case of fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.