No silver hair, but plenty of bodge

CRITICISM directed at the federal government yesterday and on Friday is emblematic of just how different Labor today is to the 1980s government of Bob Hawke.

While Hawke managed to win applause (albeit sometimes begrudging) from the business community and trade unions, the government Julia Gillard leads is being attacked by both sides.

It is a study in contrast, between a successful consensus leader of the past and a current leader seemingly incapable of operating effectively outside the narrow beltway of parliament house.

Yesterday, on Sky News's Australian Agenda, the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, Tony Sheldon, took aim at the government's handling of the carbon tax, specifically the performance of its Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans.

Sheldon was scathing, claiming his views were echoed across the union movement, and he called for Evans to be sacked. The embarrassment for the Prime Minister, with a senior union official calling for Evans's head, is heightened by the fact that Evans is also part of the leadership group: he is the government leader in the Senate.

On Friday, at The Australian-Deutsche Bank Business Leaders Forum in Melbourne, business leaders including Transurban and incoming Westpac chairman Lindsay Maxsted and Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford said the government was short-term in its focus and didn't have an adequate grasp of important policy issues, including industrial relations. Maxsted went so far as to say the relationship between business and the federal government was the worst he had ever seen.

The difficulties Gillard is facing in the polls is explained by more than the carbon tax backflip. It goes to the heart of Labor's inability to forge better relationships with key stakeholders.

Instead of viewing business as partners in good policy development, the government treats them as rent-seekers. Instead of treating government as a facilitator, it sees it as all-powerful.

How ironic that unions and business are targeting Labor in the IR space, and yet the government thinks Tony Abbott is weakest when he runs an outdated anti-Work Choices campaign.