Failings don't hand mandate to Abbott

LABOR may be doing its level best to lose the next election at the moment, but I am far from convinced the Coalition is ready to return to power.

It is hard not to be consumed by the federal government's botched selling of its new so-called super-profits tax on the mining industry. Kevin Rudd, the self-stylised master of policy implementation and wonk for detail, decided to consult with the industry only after announcing his tax policy, and he announced it without having read the Ken Henry review from which the mining tax idea was drawn.

It truly boggles my mind that we could be having a consultation process post fact. That is, post the revenue assumptions about the tax (as it is constituted at present), having been included in budget projections. No wonder the industry is concerned that the consultation process is just lip-service.

The only thing more surreal than the back-to-front process just outlined is the Prime Minister didn't even bother to read the Henry review in the months after the secretary of the Treasury handed it to the government. Rudd admitted as much on Sydney radio.

Having used countless press conferences calling for the need for "root and branch" reform of the taxation system, when he was finally handed the blueprint on how to do it, Rudd left it up to others to get across the details.

An important and often-missed point about this Prime Minister is that while he likes to be painted as a details man and a micro-manager who burns the midnight oil poring over legislation, he isn't actually good at it, certainly not managing multiple issues. One of the problems with micro-managers is they waste time on minor details of one issue that distract them from important details of another.

But all the talk about Rudd

and his government's failings in recent months, as Labor's polling numbers drop and Rudd's personal approval ratings plummet, ignores the elephant in the room: the viability (or otherwise)

of the opposition as an alternative government, and the credibility (or otherwise) of the Opposition Leader as an alternative prime minister.

This is where the political debate must inevitably turn as the election looms large.

As much as Rudd and his team haven't set the world on fire with their performances of late, and as much as their policy ideas such as the new mining tax are bordering on disastrous, I can't say I am filled with enthusiasm about the prospect of a return to Coalition governance so soon after the dethroning of John Howard.

All the signs indicate it would be too soon for the Liberals to have learned the lessons of why they lost last time.

Abbott's decision to bring back temporary protection visas as Coalition policy despite the extensive evidence about the distress and harm they cause to some of the most marginal members of our society is a sure sign he will never have the right to claim the mantle of a compassionate conservative, regardless of his generous paid parental leave scheme and his Jesuit upbringing.

The policy initiative of towing boats back out to sea is simply absurd, just as it was when Rudd made similar proclamations from opposition ahead of the 2007 election. (The difference this time is Abbott should know better, having sat around a cabinet table just more than 2 1/2 years ago).

Liberals spend so much time talking about hordes of asylum-seekers making their way to this country by boat you would swear the problem were akin to that of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexico border into the US.

While Malcolm Turnbull ultimately lost his job because of a failure to consult with his partyroom over what it wanted to do in response to the emissions trading scheme, Abbott has treated his back bench with even more disdain, failing to consult it before announcing policy positions across a range of areas, including on refugees. He is getting away with it for now because the opposition is competitive in the polls. If that changes Abbott will rightly be called to account, and that's when his poor personal ratings will go against him.

The resignation of Malcolm Fraser from the Liberal Party (giving up his life membership) and the imminent departure from parliament of two outspoken moderates (Petro Georgiou and Judith Troeth) are signs of just how moribund the input of the Liberal Party's left wing is, and it is only going to get worse.

Rudd may be watching his left and right flanks get peeled away to the Greens and the Coalition, hence his decline in the polls. But any voter with centrist tendencies is still likelier to vote Labor than Liberal, and most of the loss of Labor primary support to the Greens will return to the Labor Party under our compulsory preferential system.

The loss of big names from the Howard era rips the heart out of the opposition's ability to present as a viable alternative team. There are some senior frontbenchers with experience in cabinet from the Howard years whose administration of departments would exceed some of the maladministration we have seen from Rudd government ministers, and in some cases would exceed their performances in the quite different role of shadow spokespeople.

The losses of Peter Costello, Brendan Nelson, Alexander Downer, Nick Minchin, Mark Vaile and Peter McGauran and the omission of Turnbull from Abbott's front bench all leave a hole in the opposition's credentials as an alternative government.

The Liberal Party's campaign readiness is questionable. The federal director is Brian Loughnane. The chief-of-staff to the Opposition Leader is Peta Credlin. There needs to be a healthy tension between the person charged with running the campaign and the person charged with pulling together the policies. That can be hard to achieve when the pair are married but, more importantly, both Loughnane and Credlin have clouds hanging over their previous performances.

Costello used to joke that he didn't understand why he and Howard lost their jobs at the 2007 election but somehow Loughnane held on to his. And Credlin has been roundly criticised for her performance in Turnbull's office when he was leader.

Throw in Howard's stalwart media man, Tony O'Leary, who has been brought back to manage the Opposition Leader's press office, and authentic Abbott has been replaced with stage-managed Abbott as he gets dragged from media stunt to media stunt.

Finally, it is hard to get excited about a conservative party that shuns federalism, the very principle that would have positioned the Coalition perfectly to oppose the new mining tax on the grounds of states' rights to royalties as part of the compact with the commonwealth. Instead, from Howard to Abbott, Liberals no longer value federalism, and with that dismissal tacitly condone the centralising of power in the commonwealth that led to failures of administration by the Rudd government.

Rudd has done enough to deserve to lose the next election; the problem is the Coalition hasn't done enough since being booted out of office to deserve to win it. More time in the wilderness is the answer, unless we see a lot more to make Abbott and his conservative team more appealing.