A bad week for Liberals and Labor

EVENTS this week in federal politics highlight just how uncertain the terrain has become.

No first-term administration has lost a re-election attempt since 1931, but circumstances this year mean the government can't take this for granted. Backflips on policy, broken election commitments and a significant loss of voter faith in the Prime Minister have added up to a Labor Party battling for the public's confidence.

However, voter concerns with the government haven't translated into a warming to the Coalition, even if it is more electorally competitive now that it isn't tearing itself apart.

It seems to be a race to the bottom between the two main parties, with neither capable of winning the public's imagination.

Consider just some of the events this week: Tony Abbott's public confession that he doesn't always tell the gospel truth; Lindsay Tanner caught out for denying past comments about difficulties with raising the superannuation guarantee; revelations Peter Dutton purchased shares in BHP Billiton when his leader was talking down the company's prospects because of Kevin Rudd's new mining tax; and the admonishment of Joe Hockey by journalists at the National Press Club for not releasing his proposed spending cuts before speaking. These events were a consequence of increasing transparency in politics. Exactly how the information age will affect the election remains to be seen.

From the easy access of interview transcripts online to the high volume of communication media our politicians now use, it is hard for politicians to avoid getting caught out. The classic example occurred on the ABC1 program Q & A during the week when a member of the audience said: "Lindsay [Tanner], you said in March that an increase in super contributions from 9 per cent to 12 per cent would actually have a negative impact on wages." The government in the budget announced it would be lifting compulsory contributions by that exact amount in the coming decade. Tanner denied the claim: "I think there's a certain amount of verbally going on here." The audience member said that she had the evidence on podcast, and indeed she did, not that she was allowed to reveal it at the time.

It hasn't been a particularly good week for either side of politics. For the Coalition the week started with revelations Dutton made a politically damaging decision to purchase shares in BHP Billiton. It ended with Michael Johnson, the Liberal MP for the marginal seat of Ryan in Queensland, being expelled from the party for attempts he made to broker a coal deal with a Chinese company, as revealed in The Australian. Johnson has said he will run as an independent, thus splitting the conservative vote, surely delivering the key seat to Labor.

The Monday release of Newspoll stung the government, confirming that the poor poll two weeks earlier wasn't a rogue one. Both polls reflected a sag in the Labor primary vote and Rudd's net dissatisfaction rating -- the number of voters who are satisfied with his performance minus those who are dissatisfied -- is dropping to dangerous levels.

Partly because of the polling evidence, and partly because of his appearance last week on ABC1's The 7.30 Report in which he lost his temper with presenter Kerry O'Brien, the Prime Minister has been surprisingly absent from public view this week.

It was predominantly left to his deputy, Julia Gillard, and Treasurer, Wayne Swan, to fend off leadership questions, criticisms from the mining sector that the new resource super-profits tax on the industry was a bad idea, and to defend the budget measures.

Rudd started the year with a virtual addiction to visiting public hospitals to sell his health reforms package, so much so that Labor backbencher Michael Danby recently attacked him for it in the partyroom. In a climate of growing public cynicism about whether he can still be trusted to deliver on what he promises, Rudd's hospitals road show has been scaled back.

The difficulties Rudd is having with community trust made Abbott's slip-up on The 7.30 Report on Monday all the more disastrous for the opposition. It came right when the Liberals should have been pressing home their advantage.

Instead, the narrative in politics for the remainder of the week included Abbott's admission that he couldn't always be trusted because, as he said, he didn't always tell the "gospel truth".

Coalition strategists tried to spin the slip-up as an example of Abbott's plain-speaking style, which may well be the case. But you can be sure Labor advertisements using Abbott's words will start appearing en masse closer to the election.

They have appeared online already.

In the short term, Labor MPs may sound shrill attacking Abbott, but in the medium term his words to O'Brien are likely to put enough doubt in people's minds to cost the Coalition votes.

Combined with question marks over some of the opposition's saving measures outlined by finance spokesman Andrew Robb following Hockey's press club speech, the foundations have been laid for the public to baulk at voting Coalition at the next election. There is a long way to go until then, but the difficulties for the Coalition in a week when Labor had bigger picture problems are a sign that as the campaign draws closer the opposition may struggle to compete with a cashed-up government. One senior Liberal who I asked to tell me what would be the Coalition's biggest problem heading into the election campaign said: "Money, money, money. We don't have it."

The mining companies may help with that, if they don't strike a deal with the government. But in raising money the Coalition is coming from a long way behind. Two years of bitter internal divisions, leadership changes and poor polling will do that.

The spectre of the Liberals' past also emerged this week with public comments from Malcolm Turnbull. However, in a sign that he is trying to play a team game, Turnbull took aim at the government, attacking Rudd's plans to address climate change now that he has junked his commitment to the emissions trading scheme. Standing by his principles, Turnbull made the point that he still believed an ETS was the best method to lower emissions.

But his substantive comments were about Rudd's new alternative for action on climate change not being as effective as Abbott's direct action plan.

It is an important sign Turnbull wants to be seen as a contributor, not a wrecker, which in time may put pressure on Abbott to include him in the Coalition's economic team.

Rudd certainly isn't getting things all his own way any more but whatever the problems the opposition had this week, and there were more than a few, Labor has a popular alternative prime minister of its own in the shape of Gillard. In contrast to question marks for years over whether Liberal deputy Peter Costello was a drag on John Howard's vote, exemplied at the time by Labor attack ads directed at him, Gillard will help prop up Labor's vote at the next election. If her contribution to the campaign is seen as vital, and Rudd's popularity doesn't improve, the combination should be enough to propel her into the leadership not long after the election.

Peter van Onselen will interview Joe Hockey today on Saturday Agenda on Sky News at 8.15am