Rudd's easier for Abbott to knock out than Gillard

HEALTH sideshows aside, it must be galling for the Prime Minister. Kevin07 delivered the Labor Party government after more than a decade out of office. Sky-high personal ratings surpassing those of that old political crooner, Bob Hawke. Recession staved off. Unemployment nowhere near the much feared 8 per cent. First term not yet up. And already the buzz around town is about the next Labor PM: Julia Gillard.

The chatter is not just media gossip or Liberal troublemaking. This deadly serious leadership talk is deep within Labor ranks. Rudd must be thinking: "Comrades, where's the respect? Don't I get another full term? And another? Like Hawke. Like John Howard." The answer is: not a chance. The Labor Party appears to have already moved on from Rudd to Gillard. And this is why the 2010 election is Tony Abbott's best shot at taking the Lodge.

The boffins say history is on Rudd's side. James Scullin in 1931 was the last Australian prime minister to see his party voted out of office after one term. Since then Australians have stuck with their first-term governments. We give them a fair go. And Rudd is hardly facing the turmoil that brought down Scullin. Sure, Rudd confronted the threat of a recession but it was hardly the Depression that dominated Scullin's term. Sure, Rudd has no friends in the ALP but the party is not splitting apart as it did under Scullin in the 1930s.

That said, Rudd must still be saying a private prayer each night to the saint of second elections. In the lead-up to the election, millions of pink batts have become a most effective de facto political opposition. Every new fire and its front page headline will remind voters of the Rudd government's recklessness and ineptitude when it comes to managing even a relatively minor policy. Pie-in-the-sky health promises may not be enough of a distraction.

Rudd's other problem is personal. Think of the political roots of the modern cast of former prime ministers. Malcolm Fraser, Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Howard were steeped in the political tradition of their parties, spending at least 20 years in parliament before becoming prime minister. As ACTU president, Hawke was a prominent Labor political figure long before he became PM in 1983.

With no deep ties to the ALP, Rudd is literally on his own in a party deeply suspicious of his philosophical shifts, jaded by his treatment of his most senior ministers and worried by his personality snaps. No political warrior, Rudd is just a guest in Hotel Labor. Soon enough he will be kicked out of the presidential suite when the party turns back to one of its own. And when your own party is dubious of you, voters will catch up soon enough. You cannot go from using to language of "mate, mate" to talking about "detailed programmatic specificity" without looking like a charlatan.

This is why "The Authentic Mr Abbott", as ABC1's Four Corners referred to him last week, has a chance at the next election. Voters are taking a good look at him - many like what they see - and his party is rallying around his leadership. There are no factional wars simmering away, none of the caustic animosities that plagued the Howard-Peacock years and the Turnbull times. The up-front and affable Abbott is discernibly from the Right of the Liberal Party yet is well liked even by those on the party's Left.

Rudd, who has the distinction of standing for nothing in particular and being universally disliked across the Labor spectrum, has a few reasons to be nervous. Abbott's sense of being the genuine Aussie bloke has much in common with the man who unseated Scullin in 1931. Described as the "plain man of politics", Joseph Lyons was the devout Catholic and one-time Labor minister under Scullin who opposed the government's inflationary, pro-Keynesian policies. Lyons's commitment to financial responsibility led him to resign from Labor, form the United Australia Party and win three successive elections. Described as the forgotten conservative, the amiable Lyons was one of the most popular Australian prime ministers.

Abbott should cultivate the Lyons in him, not the Latham. With the Rudd government bleeding economic recklessness with burning pink batts and overpriced school buildings, the Opposition Leader should be selling himself as the guardian of economic responsibility. Instead, his undisciplined parental leave policy is pure Mark Latham. Abbott's promise to impose a 1.7 per cent tax on companies with a taxable income of more than $5 million to fund six months' paid parental leave at full pay up to an income of $150,0000 is, like Labor's MedicareGold policy, riddled with inequities, inefficiencies and cost blow-outs.

The inequity is obvious. Those who will reap the most benefit from Abbott's new tax on companies - women earning $150,000 - are the ones who need it the least. Most will already have access to generous maternity leave policies. Consider the inefficiency. At a time of tough competition for capital, Australia's biggest companies will be hit with a higher tax rate; Australia would become the country with the fifth highest business taxes in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Requiring big business to pick up the parental leave tab for all businesses, including government bureaucracies, is a great way to turn a big business into a small business. And a great incentive for bloated government bureaucracies to become even more overstocked and overpaid when someone else pays for its employees to take six months' leave.

Abbott needs to find the right balance between his social conservatism, which favours policies supporting the family, and his economic rationalism. A gold-plated parental leave policy that exceeds legislated leave entitlements in other countries and allows Greens leader Bob Brown to declare he has "been out-greened by Tony Abbott" is way off-kilter. After all, Abbott must prove he can be trusted to continue Howard's legacy of prudent economic management.

If Abbott loses the next election, his party will probably do what it normally does after a loss: within months it will replace its leader. And even if the party sticks with Abbott, his next contest is likely to be a much tougher one: a Gillard v Abbott match. The Liberal Party pugilist who won two Oxford blues for boxing once told a local English newspaper reporting his victorious debut match that he just made believe that his opponent in the ring was Hawke. This year he should imagine that he is fighting Gillard.