Labor will accentuate the negative

Lobbecke

THE topsy-turvy ugliness of national politics has reached a level of obsession we haven't seen in Australia before. And it is set to turn worse before it gets better.

The negativity has reached a new intensity but, most unusually, the government is hellbent on attacking the opposition when the reverse is the natural order.

It is weird, for instance, that a man lauded as a prized and cerebral recruit to the foreign ministry should seek attention on day one by comparing the Opposition Leader to a circus hypnotist.

A favourite of the Labor legions, the gallery and the political class, Bob Carr was welcomed as an adornment who would elevate the tone on Capital Hill.

Yet he offered a rehearsed attack as he entered parliament and was being questioned about the horrendous massacre of 16 civilians by a US soldier in Afghanistan, where 33 Australian soldiers have been killed and hundreds still risk their lives.

Asked if the soldier should face a public trial, Carr said: "I won't commit myself on that, that is a difficult, that's entering a difficult legal terrain. Can I just say something about that poll in the paper today?" And he went on to ridicule Tony Abbott as the "cheapskate hypnotist". As Hunter S. Thompson said: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

The episode shows Carr has a little to learn about the heavy responsibilities of his portfolio. But the broader point is how it underlines Labor's obsessively aggressive tactics to tarnish Abbott. Six years of reading and musing outside of politics - a lifetime of thoughtlines - and the first order of business for a Labor luminary transfigured into a federal cabinet minister is to deliver a caricature of the Opposition Leader. But Carr is no orphan.

The Abbott attack fetish has infected just about everyone on the Left - Greens, Labor and trade union officials alike.

The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union - one of the militant unions - is running television commercials deriding Abbott as a handmaiden feeding grapes to billionaires, and as a servant accepting cash "donations" from the mega-rich.

Prime ministers comfortable with their agenda or running on their record would usually ignore an Opposition Leader. The political orthodoxy is to deny the alternative prime minister the oxygen of publicity and refuse to elevate them in the national debate. Yet Julia Gillard has mentioned Abbott more than 30 times at some media events, and often mentions his name more than a dozen times.

"Thank you for your faith then, keep that faith now," she told a Labor conference at Cessnock in NSW last month when she was campaigning to keep Kevin Rudd at bay, "and I'll see you on the campaign trail in 2013, when we defeat Tony Abbott."

On the same day, announcing his intention to support Rudd, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said: "What I want after Monday morning is for that passion to be channelled, regardless of the outcome, into defeating Tony Abbott at the next election. He's not a conservative. He is a reactionary."

Finance Minister Penny Wong, who has been at the forefront of attacks on the Opposition, also framed the leadership contest in the negative: "We need to then buckle down and get on with the real job, which is the job of governing and the job of ensuring that we do not see Tony Abbott become prime minister."

You have to remind yourself these comments are coming from a government midway through a term, and they refer to the Opposition Leader. Because the rhetoric is more like an opposition attack on an incumbent.

The tactic is deliberate and it is, at least in its intensity, unprecedented. And if you want to see just how vindictive it can become, you have only to look at Premier Anna Bligh's campaign against LNP leader Campbell Newman in the Queensland election. Newman's dealings with business and developers during his time as lord mayor generated plenty of fodder, but no wrongdoing. Yet the Labor campaign has been a full-frontal attack on the alternative premier - feeding information through the news media, negative advertising and brutal rhetoric from Bligh (under parliamentary privilege she claimed Newman would end up in jail).

Liberal strategists see a trend in Labor campaigning, with similar but less brutal attacks used against Premier Ted Baillieu in Victoria, and the increasing focus on Abbott in Canberra. On the Liberal side there was a strong touch of this negativity used in 2004 to undermine Mark Latham.

Clearly, it is a style most suited to unpopular governments that are having trouble relaying a positive message. Labor insiders confirm the instructions have gone out to MPs to ensure their messaging is relentlessly focused on attacking Abbott over his perceived negativity. The irony is obvious as we see an intensely negative attack on negativity.

Abbott has run a fierce assault on the government over competency and broken promises. It is orthodox in its design but memorable for its energy, aggression and effectiveness.

While published polls show the Coalition performing strongly, they also show this has made Abbott even more unpopular than most opposition leaders. So, to a degree, Labor is playing to an obvious weakness.

But the ALP strategists are also aiming to sow enough doubt about Abbott so that a super-charged assault in an election campaign can do serious damage.

This is why Australians should be expecting the next campaign to be the ugliest the nation has seen, a version of the anti-Newman campaign from Queensland, played out nationally.

Labor strategists argue they have little choice but to attack Abbott because he has put so little policy on the table that they have nothing else to work with. And of course they will be on the receiving end of vicious attacks about leadership, faceless men and broken promises.

The danger for Labor's Abbott attack is that it can backfire. Polling in Queensland suggests voters might have been turned off by Bligh's attacks. It hurt Newman early but those gains seem to be disappearing. We will see.

So we can expect Abbott and his team to try to bell the cat by identifying Labor's campaign as a smear that plays the man and not the ball. They will try to convince the public that Labor is only interested in smearing - thus insulating themselves against all criticism, legitimate and otherwise.

All this ugliness stems in part from our unique situation of a permanent campaign. From the time of Abbott's ascension, through the deposing of Rudd, the 2010 election, and the resultant minority government, federal politics has remained on a hair-trigger. Both main parties have constantly been in campaign mode, the opposition in pursuit of an election, the government fighting to resist.

It won't get any prettier.