Shifting politics

The problem the Howard Government has at the moment is that it’s looking very far indeed from a safe and secure set of hands. Setting aside the immediate effect of a string of scandals, Ministers are sounding increasingly shrill and hyperbolic in their dire warnings about a Ruddian dystopia. While Rudd is on the front foot with policy announcements, the Coalition look every inch a dysfunctional opposition rather than a confident government with their eye on the prize of the national future.

No doubt Labor does have to establish credentials on national security and the economy.

But the dynamic on foreign policy is starting to resemble the turnaround on these issues which has beset the Republican Party (GOP), albeit with something of a time lag. In the states, Democrats now enjoy an 18-point advantage on terrorism over the GOP (Grand Old Party). When perceptions that the Republican foreign policy was simply misguided and incompetent set in, they coalesced to the point where all the rhetoric in the world about a “vote for the Democrats being a vote for the terrorists” had no effect, or worse, rebounded on those articulating it.

The problem the government faces on the economy is two-fold. First, the unending prosperity message simply doesn’t ring true with many voters, who have suffered through a falling housing market, creeping real wages growth, and four interest rate rises. While Howard battlers probably aren’t aware of figures showing that the share of GDP going to wages is at a 35-year low, they’ll be feeling the effects, and the close alliance of big business and the Coalition in championing WorkChoices raises the spectre of “economic reform” fattening corporate profits rather than being in their direct interests, or the national interest.

The Coalition is also on the back foot because Rudd’s emphases on co-operative federalism and infrastructure respond to real public desires. The government has been simultaneously blaming the states for every conceivable failing in services, while getting its paws all over policy directly related to infrastructure and service delivery.

Its agenda has either been largely symbolic (as with the culture wars in education), or it’s pretty clear that the commonwealth simply hasn’t been playing its part. Infrastructure is going to be a huge winner in Queensland for Labor because voters are well aware that federal funding just hasn’t been forthcoming for things like major road projects and water. And investing in infrastructure is going to look a lot more forward thinking than the politically unsexy proposition of tipping massive surpluses into a public service pension fund.

All that is to say that the government's advantages in the polls in these two key areas Hartcher identifies, is likely to be residual. The trend towards Labor on national security and the economy is likely to accentuate, and when it does, to do so quickly.

Which brings us back to the question of whether a tipping point has passed already.

Latrobe Professor of Politics Judith Brett makes a persuasive case that it has. She argues that Howard is caught on the wrong side of a number of key issues which point to the future, not the past. Most importantly, climate change. The link between the age of his government and his own age may have already seen Howard’s sun set.

The aggression and indiscipline the government has recently displayed will have reinforced this perception. When every utterance of the Treasurer is bluster and hyperbole, the government faces the danger that they now stand where Kim Beazley stood - no matter what they say, no one will be listening. If there’s evidence that is the case over the next few months, and particularly if the budget sinks like a stone, then the argument that the Coalition will have already lost will be clinched.

If voters have indeed tired of the Howard era, incumbency won’t save them if Rudd continues to present as a viable and trustworthy alternative prime minister. All the sound and fury in the world and a negative advertising campaign to beat all negative campaigns may shave a few points off Labor’s lead. But it’s worth remembering also that when federal governments lose in Australia, they have a tendency to lose big.