A sorry tale of two leaders in denial

THERE are lessons from recent political history for both national leaders.

They help explain the difficulties Julia Gillard is having repairing her brand, as well as the problems Tony Abbott will have in government if the polls stay where they are and he becomes our next (elected) PM.

On the night Kevin Rudd was elected in November 2007 a senior Liberal Party operative was quick to put the result in context when I and others were declaring it was the beginning of a long stint in the wilderness for the conservatives: "We'll see, [Labor] have set themselves some tough KPIs."

In politics, key performance indicators are management-speak for fulfilling election commitments. Early on in his prime ministership Rudd was fixated on honouring his promises. It pulled him in all directions.

By the end of Rudd's time in power - brought to a close sooner than any of us expected - he had many unfinished projects on the go. He hadn't refined his focus down to key achievements to warrant being given a second term, either by the voters or his colleagues. Rudd witnessed the political pain John Howard suffered after the 1996 election for dividing election pledges into two types: core and non-core promises. He didn't want to suffer similar slurs as a political liar.

Of course Howard had a good excuse for reneging on 1996 campaign pledges: he inherited a larger budget black hole than anticipated. Restoring fiscal responsibility was his over-arching compact with voters and that meant spending pledges had to go.

That didn't stop Labor scoring cheap political points against Howard for years to come, not to mention the sanctimonious lecturing the former PM received from sections of the commentariat. In the long run, however, Howard won people's respect for balancing the books and narrowing the band of what he aimed to achieve, resulting in a more limited number of completed tasks, but completed all the same.

Rudd had the mother of all excuses to narrow the band of what he was pledging to achieve as prime minister when the global financial crisis hit. But he would have none of it.

He planned to forge ahead with the National Broadband Network when finances were strained.

He wanted to push through health and hospital reforms when the public was more concerned about jobs and mortgages.

Climate change remained the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time, we were told, but tackling it would strain the national economy right when the global economy had wobbled.

In the aftermath of the GFC Rudd's rigid commitment to his goals continued. Despite the economic pressures applied to workplaces, his Fair Work Act was not for turning.

The Building the Education Revolution program had been a useful tool to support the construction sector in its hour of need - not to mention for improving schools - but continuing to stimulate the sector after the GFC when the Reserve Bank began warning us about inflationary pressures was crazy.

And if the government didn't have enough on its plate at that time, Rudd added implementing a divisive mining super-profits tax to the political lexicon. When opportunities presented to freshen up the front bench and promote obvious talent, also demoting shadow ministers who never rose to the job of governing, Rudd demurred, believing holding together a second-rate team was better than sharpening it up by admitting his initial line-up wasn't first rate.

As we know, it was all too much. Rudd's polling numbers collapsed faster than any other prime minister's have (perhaps other than Gillard). He didn't make it to his first electoral contest as PM, despite stratospheric polling numbers midway through his term.

Ironically, the one policy area where Rudd was prepared to change direction from what he had pledged at the election was implementing a timely ETS. Had he delayed doing so in the middle of the GFC, he may have got away with it. But of all of Rudd's election promises the ETS was the hardest to back away from, given the rhetoric used to justify it.

More ironically still, the pair of senior ministers who talked Rudd into the backdown was the same pair now at the forefront of selling the carbon tax, Gillard and her deputy PM Wayne Swan, and only after both pledged in the dying days of the election campaign last year not to introduce one.

Abbott's direct action plan is far inferior to Gillard's model, but it matters not. Turning the public around on what she promised not to do at the election is hard because of the reasoning behind the U-turn. It wasn't just that Howard changed his mind on the "never ever" GST pledge at the 1996 campaign, taking it to an election in 1998. He had established himself as an economic reformer, so when Howard explained the U-turn, in time voters honoured him with having an ideological commitment to what he was doing.

Abbott has no ideological commitment to climate change action or denial, but voters know that and simply shrug their collective shoulders at his multi-billion-dollar spend in that policy area which has no chance of achieving 5 per cent emissions reduction targets. Gillard, however, openly admits that her reason for a U-turn on a carbon tax is because she couldn't have anticipated the minority parliament outcome of the election last year.

Fair enough. The Greens wanted a carbon tax as their sales pitch over a return to a Rudd-style ETS as the price for the alliance and to save face for their previous opposition to Rudd's near identical scheme. But what does that do for Gillard? It leaves her trying to sell a broken election promise because she needed a deal with the Greens.

It's hardly the high moral order of ideological commitment Howard had up his sleeve when spruiking the GST. And, unlike Howard, Gillard doesn't have the 46-seat majority to burn.

That all adds up to the likelihood that, notwithstanding the time between now and when the next election is due, it is hard to see any other outcome than Abbott becoming our next (elected) PM. A primary vote of 27 per cent with a PM with record low personal ratings is hard for Labor to recover from, all the while selling a new tax with only a minority of seats.

Abbott supporters can't stand journalists focusing on the opposition: hold the government to account, they say, frothing at the mouth. But Abbott wants an early election, is a mile ahead in the polls and has an agenda that simply doesn't add up. Income tax cuts with no carbon tax to pay for them. Direct action, which won't deliver pledged emission reduction targets. No mining tax to pay for spending commitments. A pledge to roll back Labor's reforms, despite the technical difficulties of doing so when they are embedded in the economy. Such a shambolic lot deserves attention.

It's time for Abbott to refine his message, lest he go into the next campaign promising too much. The senior Liberal operative (someone Abbott knows well) was dead right when he reserved judgment in 2007 on the longevity of Rudd's tenure. Unattainable KPIs can come back to bite leaders.