Year ends mired in a stalemate

THE project of mutual character assassination that engulfs Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott reached a new depth of poison on the final sitting day of 2012 but ended in an inconclusive stalemate.

After a week of vituperation, the political balance sheet reads as follows: the Coalition's AWU "slush fund" onslaught cannot bring down Gillard; yet Gillard is damaged on grounds of alleged improper and unethical behaviour and that will plague her to voting day; and Abbott by calling for a judicial inquiry has framed Labor ties to trade union corruption as an issue he will pursue in the election and in office. After outsourcing the attack this week to his female deputy, Julie Bishop, Abbott was on the warpath from early yesterday morning. It was the opportunity Gillard wanted as she moved to brand him, again, as a policy-free agent of smear and negativity.

In fact, the story Abbott seized from yesterday's newspapers was significant. It revealed that Gillard had written to the West Australian authority to overcome obstacles to the incorporation of the association later used by her then boyfriend to extort funds from companies.

Abbott's tactical mistake was elementary. He began the day accusing Gillard of breaking the law. Opinions on this will differ. But Abbott needed a fistful of opinions by QCs to this effect. Presumably, they would not be hard to get. Their absence, however, revealed the Coalition as under-prepared.

This issue is now corrosive in its lack of resolution. Abbott cannot land the killer blow and Gillard cannot convincingly answer her critics. Neither situation is likely to change.

The key to Bruce Wilson's scheme was having the Australian Workers Union in the title and Gillard was integral to that process.

The tantalising question is: how could the entity have been incorporated if not for Gillard's role?

The human emotion unleashed by this battle invests it with a frightening unpredictability.

The personal payback is unmistakable. Having launched an assault upon Abbott's character as a sexist and a misogynist, Gillard faces a form of political water-torture that goes to her weakness: the problem of trust.

Abbott knows he runs a political risk because Gillard has succeeded in turning his aggressive nature into a political negative. Hence Abbott's softer and moderate tone in his speech yesterday.

The lack of final resolution guarantees an intensification of this political war into 2013. It goes to character, power and the intersection of Labor's political-legal-union culture.

Gillard, the Labor Party and the union movement have a fierce emotional and institutional self-interest in Abbott's destruction, while Abbott, in turn, will perpetuate this issue to hurt Gillard's standing and further mobilise sentiment against the Labor brand with its union links and instances of corrupt behaviour.

Abbott came only slowly to the AWU-slush fund story. This week he went through the threshold. He is committed and will use this to election day to taint Gillard.

Gillard, in turn, has only one response: she must destroy Abbott.