Labor should stop whingeing and focus on Tony Abbott

IF Labor wants to give itself any chance of recovering its political position it must redefine its attacks on the opposition before also sharpening the defence of its record.

If it doesn't do both, it is only a matter of time before Labor faces a train wreck result at the next election.

The twin attacks on Tony Abbott that Julia Gillard and her team are mounting are that he is relentlessly negative and a climate change denier. But these insults play into Abbott's hands and may even detract from a more fruitful line of attack.

Whingeing about Abbott's negativity invites voters to ask why he is acting thus. The answer is because the government has been a disappointment. Relentless negativity about a government that polls say voters have switched off from is likely to be supported by most of the public. The latest Newspoll had dissatisfaction with Gillard running at 62 per cent, while Labor's primary vote was just 30 per cent.

There is little wrong with being negative about an administration that has botched initiatives: the pink batts, Building the Education Revolution and health reform failures have hit the headlines.

Labor needs to stop arguing a case against Abbott that might appeal to its true believers, the ever decreasing quotient of the electorate still casting primary votes for the government. It needs to start appealing to mainstream voters, who at the moment hear Abbott attack Labor's incompetence and agree with the sentiment.

That is the quotient of the electorate that voted for Kevin07 but has moved its support across to the Coalition or third parties.

If Labor can get on with governing and prove it can run the country effectively, doing so will, by definition, refute Abbott's negativity. There are signs that this is happening: the resumption of the cattle trade, for example.

Voters then can be left to make up their own minds about Abbott's approach, unprompted by government ministers claiming he is a carper.

The longer Labor is in power, the likelier this is to happen: introduction of the carbon tax, the mining tax and ongoing laying out of the National Broadband Network. If the surplus is achieved, that will help, too.

Gillard's abilities to negotiate inside the beltway are helping the government sustain itself for long enough to improve the quality of its administration.

Labor ministers like to condemn Abbott as a climate change denier, regularly citing his "absolute crap" comments about the conclusiveness of the science of climate change.

But given that opinion polls clearly show the number of Australians favouring strong action on climate change is diminishing, the attacks could in fact help Abbott to maintain support among the growing number of voters unsure they want their standard of living impinged by efforts to save the planet.

The Lowy Institute's annual poll on whether we should take steps to address climate change even if the cost of doing so is significant has tracked declining support: from 68 per cent four years ago to 46 per cent in May this year.

Labor would be better off highlighting that Abbott, like Gillard, wants to hit an emissions reduction target of 5 per cent by 2020, but his method of achieving it is inefficient and costly.

Such an approach might have the added advantage of separating climate change deniers from the Abbott support base where they presently reside. It might wedge Abbott on his right flank in a similar way Gillard is being wedged on her left flank by the Greens.

After all, achieving emissions reductions via a market mechanism, as Labor is proposing, is preferred by most economists to Abbott's direct-action policy whereby government picks winners. And it is a model Liberals should intuitively support.

Asked on the ABC's 7.30 program this week to name even one economist in this country who supported his climate change policy, Abbott was forced to fudge (a polite term for misrepresent). He said: "I can certainly name a very credible organisation, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, probably the most reputable economic lobby group in our country, which prefers our plan to that of the government."

Sounds convincing, but not when you follow up the false assertion with what ACCI head Peter Anderson (a former Abbott senior adviser no less) said on Sky News' Australian Agenda.

Asked: "Do you have concerns on behalf of business with any price inefficiency in direct action under Tony Abbott's plan?" Anderson answered: "Well, we do. We think that the right approach for Australia is to calibrate our action on carbon pricing with international action and direct action or emissions trading or carbon taxes in the abstract all add costs."

He didn't stop there. Asked whether he had a preference between the government and opposition schemes, Anderson said: "Not necessarily. I think you need to look at the details of both approaches. They both can add quite unreasonable cost to our economic activity. We know that there are a range of direct action mechanisms being introduced at a state government level which are quite inefficient."

With support like that . . .

If Labor wants to put doubts in voters' minds about Abbott as a leader, it should start calling him on his misleading claims, not simply try to cast him as a dinosaur of the modern political age.

The government underestimated Abbott from the moment he assumed the Liberal leadership. Labor advisers high-fived each other in the corridors of Parliament House when he beat Malcolm Turnbull by just one vote in late 2009. Even when Abbott eroded Kevin Rudd's support, forcing Labor's caucus to move against the first-term PM, Labor MPs again underestimated Abbott's ability to unsteady Gillard.

It is time Labor stopped underestimating Abbott. He won't implode, as Mark Latham did late in the 2004 campaign.

His socially conservative ideology is not out of touch with mainstream voters: more likely it gives him an edge over the PM. And while his small-target strategy is a failure of leadership, Abbott is getting away with it.

The government needs to start from scratch and unpick what the opposition is presenting, once its own house is in order as legislation is bedded down in the coming months. The Coalition's climate-change policy is a contradiction: backed by sceptics, more inefficient than Labor's, but with the same emission reduction targets. The economic approach is akin to a magic pudding: personal and company tax cuts, billions into direct action, no mining tax, yet a budget surplus. The party that first presented an intergenerational report highlighting the challenges of ageing now won't back lifting compulsory super to a level experts argue is necessary to combat the looming ageing crisis.

There is plenty there for Labor to sink its teeth into, rather than simply whinge that Abbott doesn't play nicely.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.