Old Mother Howard went to the cupboard and ... found it bare

Here we are in the midst of our longest boom in history and yet there’s just been an emphatic vote against the government to use the word of its leader John Howard. It’s hard to find a precedent.

What went wrong?

There is always a large element of Rorschach test in how we read poll and election results. Some demographic information comes our way from comparing swings in different electorates. But as for those changes in national mood that are the subject of so much punditry - our evidence is scanty.

Mired in our own ignorance, it’s hard not to let our wishes influence our analysis.

Those lamented by the right as reflex “Howard Haters” will tell us that duplicity and divisiveness, the embrace of plausible deniability have finally caught up with Howard. Perhaps. But why didn’t it happen last time around?

Then there’s that haven for the complacent - the “it’s time” explanation. If politicians come equipped with some pre-set “it’s time” date there’s nothing much to be learned from their demise.

I think my own explanation fits the facts, but, it’s also built around a bit of preaching I want to do. For the art of politics and political punditry is for nothing if it isn’t about trying to bring politicians’ self interest into some constructive relation with the welfare of those they govern.

Though Howard was a conviction politician in the culture wars, he’s actually been relatively uninterested in policy.

He had two major achievements in economic policy.

It’s hard not to admire Howard’s political courage in launching the great tax adventure. Still it’s worth reflecting on the circumstances that brought Howard to that point - an increasingly strident concern from the business community at Howard’s lack of policy vision. The GST provided Howard with a (very nearly politically suicidal) bit of off the shelf policy vision.

The other great economic reform was WorkChoices. It’s an ad hoc, 700-odd page mess full of arbitrary regulations and penalties for unions rather than a coherent economic and legislative labour market liberalisation strategy. Again there was a huge political price to pay. A more straightforward approach - as proposed by the Business Council in 1999 and rejected by Howard - of a wage tax trade-off would arguably have been better policy and certainly better politics.

But with the GST and WorkChoices in place we watched on in 2007 as Old Mother Howard went to the cupboard and, finding it bare, improvised one attempt after another to sledge or wedge its opposition.

Minister Ian Campbell resigned despite the widespread acknowledgement that he’d done nothing wrong so as to intensify a political attack on Kevin Rudd; plans were announced to takeover the Mersey Hospital in Tasmania; Australian Electoral Commission plebiscites were announced to place pressure on the Queensland ALP Government’s plans for local council amalgamations.

A campaign was hastily ramped up for expanding nuclear power only to ramped back down on learning of the electorate’s reaction.

The only time I can remember when I had less knowledge of what excursions might turn up in the next day’s papers was during the Whitlam Government.

When insisting on staying on in the top job, Howard said there was much more he wanted to do, but when asked what it was, said there wasn’t time to say. Six weeks of campaigning didn’t improve the situation.

It is said that without vision the people perish. One interpretation of this Government’s political history is that without vision it has been forced to make promises it could not keep and take political risks it otherwise would not have been forced to take, to hang onto government.

If people can see their government constructively engaging the problems of the future, that greatly relieves the pressure on it to buy its next election victory with election promises it can’t keep - promises that is which taint the victory and make subsequent defeat more likely.

This happened in 2004 and in 1993 with Paul Keating’s L.A.W. tax cuts helping to seal his fate. It’s happening again.

Politics is about gaining and maintaining momentum. And to govern well and successfully one must not just win the next election but do so with enough in the tank to win the next.

Let's hope the incoming party of government has the ambition to learn these lessons.