An essential for good government, in our variation of the Westminster System, is an effective opposition.
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Opposition leaders have had varying ideas as to how best to operate. My concept was to strongly ‘oppose’ when I disagreed with a government initiative, but also to accept the responsibility to try to set the policy agenda, to hopefully drive the government to deliver ‘good policy’ and better government.
This was seen as a risky strategy and, when I lost in ’93 – having run on the Fightback package, presenting thousands of pages of policy detail on almost every policy challenge of the day – it was dismissed as ‘the longest political suicide note in our history’. The policy detail was an easy target, making it very easy for the likes of Keating to run effective scare campaigns.
The response of subsequent oppositions was to run what became known as a ‘small target strategy’, providing as little policy detail as possible, focusing on objectives, aspirations and promises rather than policy detail. Howard won against Keating in ’96 by essentially doing just that.
In the last couple of decades, politics has become increasingly short-term, opportunistic and negative, with the bottom reached in terms of negativity under Abbott as opposition leader, where he set out to disagree with almost everything that Rudd/Gillard/Rudd did.
Bill Shorten, as Opposition Leader, started out by both setting the agenda in some areas, such as advocating an attack on negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions on housing investments, while also running extremely negative, scare campaigns in areas such as health and education.
Against an arrogant and complacent Turnbull campaign in the last federal election, the Shorten strategy almost worked, with the government’s margin in the lower house reduced to just one seat. However, it was made easy for Shorten, as the government left him relatively free to mount his unanswered Mediscare campaign, rather than attack him over his union links and excesses, having sold out workers for personal political gain.
The recent budget was a very pragmatic, political document, designed to play political ‘catch up’, and to neutralize Shorten in key policy areas such as health, education, infrastructure and the banks.
Surprisingly, Shorten did not handle this well, resulting in significant internal ALP criticism led by the likes of Albanese. Rather than ‘congratulate’ the government on having accepted Labor policies, and then going on to tell the government what else they needed to do to ‘complete the job’, Shorten tried criticism and ran false concepts of ‘fairness’ in a very ineffective response. He looked very much like the proverbial ‘kangaroo in the headlights’ – effectively wedged!
Now Shorten is on the back foot, with significant internal division, and some of his colleagues leading him in the polls as ‘preferred leader’, the government should probably up the attack on him.
However, Turnbull’s government is still behind 53/47 on a two-party preferred basis in the polls, which he won’t turn around by simply attacking Shorten. Turnbull will need to build on his budget strategy. It did neutralize Shorten, but didn’t give Turnbull the poll lift he wanted. So, Turnbull needs to start to live up to the expectations of effective government which made him PM.
Leadership is Turnbull’s most effective response, and the electorate will cut him a lot of slack if he shows some.